mystery visits

Mystery Visits

These are carried out in many industries including retail, hospitality and leisure, and banking.

The company being assessed and the mystery shopping company develop a number of questions that will address certain areas within the business.

For example, certain major retailers within the UK assess their employees against a certain customer service style that they have already been trained on.

They do this in order to ascertain if their employees are actually using the methods they should be using and also adopting a positive language/attitude towards the customer.

In major retailers a mystery shop is conducted normally once every six weeks and usually at various times and in different departments within the store. This is to ensure that the retailer is getting feedback on different departments and members of staff.

One well known retailer adopts these types of questions in a mystery shop:

• The store name
• Date and time the store was visited
• What department of the store they visited
• How many employees were present on the shop floor
• Appearance of shop floor
• How long did it take to be greeted by employee
• Was it a friendly greeting
• What was the name of the employee
• What questions were asked by the mystery shopper
• What products or services were offered by the employee
• Was the mystery shopper asked if there was anything else he/she required
• Did the employee impress the mystery shopper and how did the rate them
• Overall percentage of visit

All of these questions are asked in all the departments that the mystery shopper visits and then the percentages are averaged out to give an overall percentage to the store.

The retailer then receives all of this information and then either rewards the employees that impressed or takes action with the employees that did not impress.

Altogether the mystery visit enables the store to ensure that all members of staff are providing a positive customer service.

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