Mystery Shoppers Guide to Successful and Fun Experience as a Mystery Shopper

Mystery shopping is easy and fun, but it does not hurt to get some helpful advice on how to become more successful. To master your performance as a mystery shopper, you need not be only a good actor, but also be able to follow instructions and to act on contingencies adequately. Let me tell you why.

One of the beauties of mystery shopping is that you actually get ready for a real-time experience that is only partly staged. You cannot predict all the situations that can occur, but can only get prepared for your major tasks and goals – how to play, what to require, what questions to ask, what demands to pose, what attitude to show, and what to observe. It is definitely fun to be doing all these things simultaneously – posing as a real customer and watching out for all the details included in your task instructions.

However, being a mystery shopper is more than just following the instructions. Once deployed at your shopping location, you need to focus not only on the particular details, but to grasp the whole picture and be an objective evaluator. Some mystery shoppers tend to overemphasize the technical part and may go to extremes that are likely to expose them as pretended customers. I know cases when mystery shoppers are so anxious to take photos or ask the right questions that they end up blushing, flipping pages, walking about chaotically or acting inconsistently with their instructions. This can be a result of the stress some secret shoppers may experience during their shopping task, but such situations are likely to compromise the results of the mystery shopping task, rather than to serve its purposes. Even though newbie mystery shoppers are likely to get a little but nervous on their first shopping tasks, you should keep in mind that you cannot give realistic picture of what the customer service on the particular premises is unless you yourself act as a realistic customer. Therefore, there’s no better advice to mystery shoppers than to be natural and realistic, according to their shopping instructions.

Mystery shopping jobs can be extremely exciting, as shoppers need to play different characters – some pretend to be very picky; others pose to have some particular technical or design preferences, etc. Improvising from your mystery shopping instructions is appreciated when it is consistent with revealing important aspects of customer service. For instance, if you are at an electric appliance store, it may be unreasonable to ask for a pink refrigerator or insist on being offered a fridge that can also dry clothes, unless specified in the instructions. Also, you have to keep an eye open for any emergency situation that might occur, and report it if it is rendered important – a wet floor, a disagreement with another customer, lack of cooperation between staff members or anything that caught your eye. Even though you might have never had to observe such details as a regular shopper, you have certainly noticed things that you didn’t like while shopping. Therefore, it’s not only the details you were instructed to observe that are important, but also the overall atmosphere and the customer friendliness of the shopping environment.

Becoming a mystery shopper is a challenging and fun experience that has significant impact on the development of businesses. Following instructions is important, but you also need to be prepared to both catch the details and grasp the big picture in order to provide quality mystery shopping feedback, while truly enjoying being a secret shopper.