Mystery shopping is a market research technique for monitoring and measuring organisation performance. Interactions which take place between customers and company employees are tested using pre-defined set of scenarios. These are often developed by customer experience teams, operations managers or marketing teams to help measure important business KPIs.
Mystery shopping relies on observation and recall of the outcomes by the shopper. The mystery shopping survey is then completed off site or after the visit has taken place. When using video mystery shopping the survey can be used as a guide to score the overall performance alongside the video evidence. In this instance the video can be more conclusive and is not open to interpretation.
Whichever method is adopted the mystery shopper remains covert for the activity and will assess areas which can have an impact on the customer service.
Elements often tested can include the environment, staff friendliness and product knowledge. In some instances, the shopper may also consider things such as the number of people in a queue, the number of tills open at a certain time, what items and brands are present on a shelf.