Mystery Shopping: the strategy to improve your business

No es una técnica nueva pero sigue resultando tan útil que empresas de todo el mundo siguen apostando por ella: el mystery shopping, una fórmula que tiene como objetivo mejorar las estrategias comerciales de las marcas.

In the last century, around the 1940s–1950s, a method known as the Mystery Guest was introduced in the United States. It was used to detect employees who were stealing from cash registers, believe it or not. Over the years, it evolved and by the late 1990s and early 2000s became what it is today: a tool used to analyze the quality of service provided and/or the quality of products sold.

It is common to see job offers where HR consultancies recruit people to act as mystery shoppers, but… do we really understand how it works and what benefits it brings to companies that adopt it in their methodologies and systems?

What is Mystery Shopping and how does it work?

The mystery shopping technique can be defined as a research strategy aimed at objectively analyzing the quality of customer service, whether in sales, after-sales,

or the products themselves that are offered for testing… Its applications are varied, and its main advantage is the effectiveness and valuable information it allows companies to collect.

How does mystery shopping work? As the name suggests, it involves introducing the mystery customer into the process. Who is this person? Here are the key steps of how this strategy works:

1. The company selects or outsources individuals to act as mystery shoppers, who will perform the role of these anonymous customers.
2. These individuals must carry out specific tasks previously defined by the company: visiting a store, having a drink at a bar, calling customer service, etc. The objectives of the campaign must be clearly defined, as well as what will be evaluated and which aspects will be taken into account.
3. Once the activity has been completed, the responsible department and coordinator must record the results and then analyze the collected information.
4. Reports resulting from the mystery shopping process may lead to proposed improvements regarding the evaluated aspects.

It is essential to clearly define what will be evaluated and how, otherwise this technique makes no sense. It is equally important that the people carrying it out understand and master it in depth, as factors that may seem insignificant to others can be highly revealing for this type of analysis.

Benefits of mystery shoppers

This methodology is highly useful. Brands across all sectors especially retail, fashion, telecommunications, and others—can benefit from mystery shoppers. The benefits of mystery shopping are significant:

• Identify positive aspects of the current system: what is working well, so it can be maintained and, where possible, improved.
• Identify areas for improvement: detect failures, understand why a product or service is not performing well, or why certain employees achieve better or worse results in a sales point, or why some restaurants in a chain perform better than others.
• Better understand the target customer. By analyzing interactions between the mystery shopper and staff, companies can improve their value proposition. Observing situations from an external perspective makes it easier to identify key improvement areas.

Cost-effective method. Profitability is achieved in relation to the cost of implementation and the value of the insights it provides. The amount of valuable information generated through the application of mystery shopping often makes it highly beneficial for companies.

What information does a mystery shopper collect?

As can be seen, one of the greatest strengths of mystery shopping lies in the information it allows companies to gather. Without a doubt, this is one of the main benefits of mystery shopping, if not the most important.

These are the most relevant data points collected through this internationally used commercial technique:

• Quality of service provided: how customers are treated, from the vocabulary used to the way employees address clients.
• Compliance with employee guidelines: whether staff follow instructions such as offering promotions, adhering to safety or hygiene rules, etc.
• User experience: overall feelings and impressions reported by mystery shoppers.

These are general terms. Ultimately, each company must customize what it wants to evaluate, how it will do so, the parameters to be measured, and any other relevant aspects.

Mystery shopping is, at its core, a methodology used for commercial purposes. It is important to note that the better the service provided, the better the results will be, which directly impacts business performance. That is why the mystery shopper technique is commonly applied in marketing and sales departments.

To learn its key principles and how to apply it, proper training is required. At EAE Barcelona, it is included in specialized programs such as the Master in Marketing and Sales Management and the Master in Consumer Behavior and Marketing Insights. Students learn firsthand how it works and how to apply it to businesses depending on their characteristics and needs.