With so much business riding on how a business is managed and run day to day, absent owners and operators turn to skilled mystery shopping services to get answers on how their shop is really performing. But there are as many ways to go about mystery shopping as there are individual business enterprises.

For getting better and more concrete mystery shopping solutions, companies use mystery shopping training to develop in-house capabilities for mystery shopping jobs. Firms that sell training use specific principles and philosophies to get the best mystery shopping services for their clients. Anyone looking to participate in mystery shopping training can find venues and centers for learning mystery shopping skills online. A business manager might look for these kinds of specifics:

1. How to enhance mystery shopping programs to really zero in on one aspect of a business, whether it's staff appearance and interaction, facility maintenance or some other big issue.

2. How to enhance mystery shopping through special techniques that have been proven in the field.

3. Utilizing mystery shopping to evaluate customer service and see exactly what's happening daily between staff and customers.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Find overall mystery shopping training for optimizing a mystery shopping program

So you're looking for general pointers on the specifics of conducting a mystery shopping program? There are a lot of resources from specialized companies that can deliver better results for mystery shoppers. Online mystery shopping training firms use detailed web sites to guide managers and executives through what they can expect from entering into a training enhancement course or program.

I recommend: At MSETS or Mystery Shopping Executive Training Services, experts will show you how to set up and get more value from an in-house mystery shopping venture. Get more real life mystery shopping training programs from business evaluation company Guideline.

Get e-learning or distance mystery shopping training

For businesses that need to get training for mystery shopping on the fly, products from online training services can help get staff savvy about how to go into a mystery shopping activity.

I recommend: Busy retailers or other business individuals can get online training from Mystery Shopping Providers Association of North America including different levels of certification. The audio programs from Service Quality U.S. rely on direct executive testimony, including input from Jeff Kasper and Michael Mendonca, the founding partners of ServiceQuality.us, in getting a good mystery shopping training product out to those involved in this effective business appraisal sector.

Get customer service solutions from mystery shopping companies

Here's where training companies can really show you what happens in your store: companies focusing on customer service take a good look at everything that goes on to identify whether anything is going wrong. As these companies point out, your employees can drive customers away, and a little quality assurance can often go a long way.

I recommend: The mystery shopping site at All-Star Customer Service uses great visuals, snappy lines and helpful resources to show how customer service relates to quality returns, and how good mystery shopping gives businesses a real depiction of their customer service situation. Get quality mystery shopping evaluation including customer service appraisals from Service Intelligence.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Always be mindful of mystery shopping scams. A mystery shopping scam occurs when a firm promises a lot and offers, in reality, something very different. Because the field of mystery shopping involves a lot of abstracts, clients can get taken advantage of. Talk up front about what you can expect from entering into a training agreement.

When customers enter your store, phone your firm or shop your Web site, are you certain that they’re getting the best service possible? If not, it could be hurting your business more than you imagine. The majority of dissatisfied customers never complain; they simply never return to your place of business, and they tell their friends and colleagues about the poor experience.

To test the customer experience in your business, you may want to employ mystery shopping techniques, which can be used to:

1. Evaluate your customer service
2. Evaluate your Web site shopping experience
3. Evaluate your competitors
4. Evaluate employee honesty

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Set your goals and objectives

Do you want to improve customer service, verify that employees aren't stealing from you, see what your competitors are doing that you aren't, improve customer satisfaction with your Web site or something else? Consider what information you want to gather and what you will do with it.

I recommend: The Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA) will show you the many ways mystery shopping can improve your business. Or take an online workshop to help you plan and implement your program.

Recruit a mystery shopping provider

Reputable mystery shopping firms will help you determine how many shoppers you require for your program, the proposed number of shopping visits, the length of each visit and the frequency of repeat visits. They'll provide you with mystery shoppers who are not only savvy shoppers but also outstanding communicators who can share their observations with you.

I recommend: The MSPA offers a look at the factors to consider in choosing mystery shopping providers and lets you search for reputable firms.

Develop an assessment program

How will you assess the shopping experience? Will shoppers complete a survey, submit a summary, or answer open-ended and closed-ended questions?

I recommend: Request a password from mystery shopping firm Quality Assessment Mystery Shoppers to see a demo of how the survey process works.

Analyze your results

Analyzing the data you get from your mystery shoppers is key to getting the most out of the strategy. Determine which team members in your organization, such as managers and key employees, should have access to the results. Review your data to spot weakness and areas that need improvement.

I recommend: Many mystery shopping services, such as Secret Shopper, post your data to a protected Web site where you or your managers can access it in a variety of formats, including HTML, Excel spreadsheet, Adobe PDF and more. See sample reports at MystiqueShopper.com.

Create and implement an action plan

Simply gathering the information serves no purpose; having a plan to act on it does. Your action plan could include strategies, such as offering additional employee training, creating an employee reward program for good customer service, making changes to your Web site or altering your staff's sales techniques.

I recommend: Visit market research and mystery shopping firm IpsosLoyalty.com to download a PDF that includes information on developing measures of improvement as a result of the feedback you get from the mystery shopping experience.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Select mystery shoppers from the geographic region you're surveying to best understand the expectations of local shoppers.
• •  Most mystery shoppers are independent contractors and not employees.
• •  Your shoppers will only be as good as the training you provide them. Explain in detail their shopping role, the goal of the assessment tool and your expectations for communicating this information to the company or organization.

Across many industries, business owners and managers have found out that mystery shopping can be a great way to evaluate their business from the outside in order to get a true picture of what's happening: but what about maximizing a mystery shop to make it effective? And what are others doing on the vanguard of mystery shopping research?

For this and more, business operators can get informed by online groups that have done the work to recognize tried and true strategies, as well as pinpointing what's emerging within the industry as common practice. Managers can look for:

1. Overall mystery shopping tips and strategies according to concrete, realistic data based on customer surveys and other hard information.

2. News about what is the next big thing for mystery shopping, as well as what doesn't work, such as mystery shopping scams.

3. Details about what mystery shopping services that are most highly rated and how the bulk of managers and owners choose use a secret shopper.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Find mystery shopping news from provider groups

One place to get the latest in what's going on within this growing industry is at the sites of organizations made up of mystery shopping firms or agents. These kinds of resources can give you a window into best current practices and what is generally considered effective.

I recommend: The Mystery Shopping Providers Association of North America has compiled a lot of archived materials on trends and industry research on their accessible site. You can get more in-depth industry news from the newsletter of the International Association of Service Evaluators, where groups involved in mystery shopping detail trends and common practice.

Get news on video mystery shopping

As an emerging trend in mystery shopping, video mystery shopping is something a lot of experienced shops can give you detailed information on. Find out all about video mystery shopping and think about whether it's right for your evaluation goals.

I recommend: With Cliff Lindquist's Mystery Shopping for Private Investigators, business types can learn from recognized practices in the PI industry that lend to marketing and evaluation solutions. Find out more about the ins and outs of using video mystery shopping jobs with the easy to read publications at Market Viewpoint.

Look for more news and trends on mystery shopping

Other online groups demonstrate a wealth of other presentations on the realm of mystery shopping and how to maximize services to really get what you want from a mystery shopping program.

I recommend: The E-Tailing group showcases annual work on mystery shopping research on their site to give managers an idea of what can be done in this sector. Find more on mystery shopping news and ideas at Customer Perspectives.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Go make the most of news for mystery shoppers, think about how data on completed projects interact with the scope and goals of your own business. Successful mystery shopping programs require customization to the strengths of a specific project, and knowing exactly what your business needs is a bug plus.

So many businesses use mystery shopping to help control a site environment for a store or other location that it's almost impossible to boil mystery shopping down to one conforming process. Each mystery shopping campaign should be uniquely geared to the needs of business as well as the field of operation, size and scale, and specific goals for using the results in market research or customer retention. Knowing about some key terms for mystery shopping will help top brass brainstorm about results and how to get the best campaign running for their shops.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Mystery shopping survey

A mystery shopping survey is a tool to guide mystery shoppers through the process with details about questions and observations. Some also use the term for the actual store visit. Either way, it refers to the nuts and bolts of the process and how a business will use the results.

I recommend: See more on the use of the mystery shopping survey at this Secret Shopping Blog.

Mystery Shopper Providers Association

The Mystery Shopper Providers Association or MSPA is an organization that promotes recruiting and other aspects of mystery shopping. Use this resource to distinguish credible agencies from scams.

I recommend: See more on the MSPA at Consumer Affairs.

Up-selling

Up-selling is the idea of getting a customer to buy more at one visit, or suggesting helpful additional purchases. Businesses often use mystery shoppers to check on a corporate up-selling policy.

I recommend: See more on up-selling and other aspects of mystery shopping at this Mystery Shopper's Manual.

Mystery shopping objectives

Mystery shopping objectives are the overall goals that will help to shape the questions and details on a mystery shopping survey. Mystery shopping services try to get details on mystery shopping objectives from clients.

I recommend: See more on mystery shopping objectives and a lot more at this MSPA page.

Mystery shopping questionnaire

A mystery shopping questionnaire is a set of questions printed out for mystery shoppers to read to store employees.

I recommend: See more on the mystery shopping questionnaire and a lot more for mystery shopping at this Mystery Shopper Business site.

Reimbursement versus fee compensation

Reimbursement compensation is when a company pays shoppers in terms of product. Fee compensation is when the company pays a fee or amount of money to a mystery shopper. Figuring out payment is a big part of a successful mystery shopping campaign.

I recommend: See more on compensation and other aspects of mystery shopping at ShadowShopper.