Skills that a mystery shopper must possess

One of the best ways to find out whether customers are experiencing well-defined services as intended is to choose mystery shopping. It is a marvellous marketing tool that allows a company to evaluate customer experience and develop better strategies to deliver more satisfaction.

A company engages experienced mystery shopping services to recruit mystery shoppers. They are designated to visit certain business points with a questionnaire addressing pre-defined factors. A mystery shopper then behaves like a customer and identifies the pain points and evaluates customer experience by walking through a buying journey.

We can clearly conclude that the skills of a mystery shopper determine the outcomes of this program. Let us take a quick look at the desirable skills that a muster shopper must possess.

Skills of a mystery shopper

1. Following the protocols

A mystery shopper must be well-experienced and trained to follow the specific protocols and ensure that all the factors are touched during a visit. He must be aware of the aspects of a specific industry so that the factors in a questionnaire get properly evaluated and answered.

The visit will not be long enough to draw a conclusion. It means the appointed mystery shopper must be efficient enough to gather information as fast and accurately as possible to generate analytical reports for the mystery audit.

2. Concealing identity

A good mystery shopper has an eye for detail and knows what to look into. In fact, he will also have to be very intuitive and secretive to conceal his identity from the service staff working at a designated business point. If a pretentious shopper gets identified, he will be treated differently and the program will not deliver the right outcome.

3. Eye for detail

Another important skill that a mystery shopper must possess is an eye for detail. He must have keen observation skills to understand and evaluate the factors better. For instance, a restaurant visit will comprise many factors such as hygiene, staff behaviour, dressing sense, waitressing skills, explaining menus and specials, maintaining the ambience, takeaway service, drive-through, etc. Considering all these factors and the time allotted, a shopper will get very less time to observe and evaluate. Hence, his observation power will determine the efficiency of the program.

4. Honesty and reliability

One of the prime reasons for hiring mystery shoppers is to get a 3rd-eye view of the services designed and provided by a company. Hence, a mystery shopper must be reliable and honest to provide the same. A company will spend a fortune to get the reports and to make the customer experience better than before.

Mystery shoppers decide the outcomes

Understanding these four main skills among many, we can conclude that mystery shoppers are the foot soldiers a company relies on. They will submit their reports in a digital mystery shopping platform and actionable insights will be designed based on the analytics. This is why companies hire mystery shopping services to ensure the best profiles are chosen for this job. They are the flag bearers of a mystery shopping project.