What is a "mystery shopper"?

[hoyaguru]

I always see ads like this in the help wanted section of the newspaper:

MYSTERY SHOPPERS NEEDED - Pose as customers for store evaluations. Local stores, restaurants & theaters., Training provided. Flexible hours. Email required. Call Now!

I'm guessing it's a scam of some kind, has anyone ever called or applied to something like this?

 

[Heisenberg]

They're basically hired by the company (or some firm the company contracts with) to pose as regular customers and evaluate the service without the employees being aware of it.

 

[meltdown75]

Hmm, sounds fun.

 

[Ryan]

Most companies have mystery shoppers for service oriented industries. My Pizza shop gets 4-5 mystery shoppers calling each week to make sure we are promoting our current promotions, using certain phone scripts, and upselling items to customers.

 

[DeadByDawn]

scam

 

[Tremulant]

Originally posted by: Ryan
Most companies have mystery shoppers for service oriented industries. My Pizza shop gets 4-5 mystery shoppers calling each week to make sure we are promoting our current promotions, using certain phone scripts, and upselling items to customers.

Can you tell when it's a mystery shopper calling?

I could see employees behaving differently if they knew it was a mystery shopper calling them.

 

[PinmasterJay]

Yeah mystery shoppers help making sure departments are following company policy with regards customer service. When I worked front end they would usually try to steal something or make sure you are promoting the stores credit card, etc.

 

[BobDaMenkey]

Exactly what Heisenberg said.

Being management at a retail store, I call in friends that don't know my employees to do that for me. Helps me know if there are any issues with my employees when I'm not around.

 

[daveymark]

I made good money when I did it. about $40 to do the shop, which took a half hour, then another half hour to write up the review. also got tons of free food/reimbursement. I still do it for Target, I get reimbursed for each $50 purchase I make, just to see if they offer me the credit card

As a general rule, you should never have to pay for the applications. If you're paying to learn where to mystery shop, it's a scam.

 

[PinmasterJay]

Originally posted by: DeadByDawn
scam

Yeah I don't know why they would be looking in the paper for those. In my experience they were actually managers from other stores (ones not too near so that we might recognize them) and if they were able to get away with stealing something, that merchandise was brought to their store and counted towards profit sharing

 

[Ryan]

Originally posted by: Tremulant

Originally posted by: Ryan
Most companies have mystery shoppers for service oriented industries. My Pizza shop gets 4-5 mystery shoppers calling each week to make sure we are promoting our current promotions, using certain phone scripts, and upselling items to customers.

Can you tell when it's a mystery shopper calling?

I could see employees behaving differently if they knew it was a mystery shopper calling them.

Or course they don't know - where's the mystery in that Our mystery shoppers go through the whole phone call - after we tell them the price and delivery time, they usually inform us that we've been mystery shopped, tell us to cancel the order, and they inform us of our score on a 0-100 scale.

But we do have some who evaluate the product quality of our pizzas - we only recieve pictures of the pies that have been delivered, never any names or addresses.