How to provide QUALITY Mystery Shopping service?

The quality of the Mysterey Shopping is an important factor in determining the correct focus of the company’s development activities, whether it is retailers, catering, hotels-spas or financial institutions. How so? Mystery Shopping service evaluates “how does it turn out in reality?”, i.e., what is the reality of the moment?

Based on this service, future action plans are established – a “diagnosis” is determined. Based on this, it is decided which trainings are necessary and for whom. But … how to evaluate the quality of the evaluater? How to understand if the provided Mystery Shopping service is with high quality? In other words, how to evaluate the one who makes the diagnosis?

1. Mystery Shoppers motivation

Mystery Shopping is a job like any other! Completing tasks by a Mystery Shopper includes quite a lot:

understanding the general service process principles;
familiarization with the initial task of the individual work (scenario and behavior);
familiarization with the particular questionnaire;
planning the logistics of the visits (especially if the project is with name based targeting, taking into account work schedules);
making a visit;
filling a form.

Undoubtedly, the fee paid by the Mystery Shopping company is an important motivator for the Mystery Shopper to do this work long-term and conscientiously. 3-4 Euros would rather not motivate to do all these steps with high quality.

2. Key to quality Mystery Shopping is objectivity!

The quality of the Mystery Shoppings is directly affected by the objectivity of a visit report. If the Mystery Shopper is asked what they personally think or feel or even recommend, and these results affect the overall score, then a contradictions easily arises with what the evaluated employee feels, thinks, or even with what the employee knows that the employer actually expects from him based on the service standard. There are other services and opportunities for collecting personal opinions of customers! (Read about customer’s feedback collecting service here:). However, allowing subjectivity in Mystery Shopping leads to challenging the results, because situations are understood differently. In order to ensure objectivity, questionnaires should understand the service situation being observed and be based on the service standard of particular company. In different service situations (such as a pie counter, a bank teller, an electronics store, or a hotel reception) it is definitely wise to use different questionnaires because the nature of service proccess and customer communication in these situations is very different.

How to achieve quality in Mystery Shopping service?

On July 21, 2021, the European Union EBA (European Banking Authority) published a document created and thoroughly developed by professionals with recommended guidelines for organizing Mystery shopping in Europe. Here are few of the guidelines that all Mystery Shopping companies customers should know so that the service could be meaningful:

avoid asking Mystery Shoppers for their personal opinion;
prepare clear scenarios;
in the questionnaire no more than 30 questions;
Mystery Shoppers should not provoke or bully the tested employee, rather they should behave like a normal client;
provide comprehensive training and instructions to Mystery Shoppers;
avoid perceptual questions;
if used, separate subjective questions from objective ones;
measure employees’ compliance with the company’s expectations;
optional free text comments on the questionnaire;
a clear project manager for the Mystery Shopping waves who communicates with the Shoppers;
categorization of results.

The medicines we consume must be of high quality. If everything is well discussed and settled in the preparatory work process, the Mystery Shopping service will not cause allergic reactions in employees, but rather it is a tool that supports, strengthens and systematically develops them as individuals as well as the entire company.

Eero Palm
Trendline Analytics, CEO