Advantages and Disadvantages of Mystery Shopping

Many people may be interested in using Mystery Shopping services for their own business but aren't sure if the service will be worth it or not. Today, we're going to summarize the pros and cons of Mystery Shopping so you can see if it's right for your business.

Advantages of Mystery Shopping

Evaluate the brand's compliance with standards

Every business has a set of work standards for employees to follow. But we can't always keep an eye on whether employees are always up to the standard. Mystery Shopping can help solve this problem because the shopper can be sent for examination anonymously, revealing the real working conditions of employees and whether they comply with the brand's standards.

Improve customer service

By doing Mystery Shopping, we can see some areas of service that can be improved, such as having employees always speak politely, serving food without making any noise, or increasing the speed of service. In addition to the service from the staff, Kiosk services, applications, or after-sales service contacts can also be improved.

Evaluate customer experience

Even if the employees follow the brand's standards or have good service, that doesn't mean the customer experience is good. Because there may be something that can make customers dissatisfied, for example, the product claim process has too many steps, the shop space is cramped and walking is not convenient, or taking too long to apply for membership. Mystery shopping can help identify areas where customers have had a bad experience while entering the service.

Keep employees alert at all time

If we notify employees that Mystery Shopping is used to monitor employee performance, they will be alert and more enthusiastic. Because they don't know which customer is a shopper which makes employees always perform at a high level.

Identify employees with inappropriate behavior

If there is a problem during the inspection, Shopper can tell exactly what's going on and identify which employees are behaving inappropriately. You can notify that employee to improve their behavior quickly.

Get feedback from quality customers

With Mystery Shopping, the shopper will summarize all service access across the board and point out where it did well or create a good impression. Also, the points that should be improved to make the service better and pleasing to customers.

Check Competitors

Mystery Shopping is not limited to checking our own business alone, it can also check the work and services of competitors. The examination of competitors will allow us to compare what strengths and weaknesses our business has with competitors in the same industry, where we are better than competitors, and where the competitors are superior. This allows us to use this information to develop our business to be comparable or superior to competitors.

Disadvantages of Mystery Shopping

Service Expenses

There is a cost to doing Mystery Shopping. Because it requires preparation time to select and train a qualified shopper that meets the target customer group of a certain business, a charge for products or services, and a quality control process with a summarized report.

Business owners or those involved in the quality of service may misunderstand that Mystery Shopping is free and not prepare a budget.

Employees may become anxious or dissatisfied

When we notify employees of the use of Mystery Shopping services, some may have concerns or dissatisfaction because it may be seen that the company does not trust their work, or feel uncomfortable. After all, they’re constantly being watched by the company. These conflicts often arise in companies that already have trust issues in the organization. And it often occurs in organizations where management or quality supervisors want to use Mystery Shopping to catch employees' mistakes.

Mystery Shopping is a great opportunity to rethink the thought paradigm of executives and improve communication within the organization. If we do not communicate well enough with employees on this matter or use this service to cavil them mainly, it may result in a decrease in the performance of employees.

Information provided by Shoppers may be biased

Since each Shopper has a different background, whether gender, age, occupation, society, or attitude, if they are not trained to understand Shopper's work, it may cause the information that Shopper gives to be misleading or biased. For example, Shoppers may find that the staff did something wrong but feel sympathetic towards them, so they provide information to help that employee.

Companies that specialize in Mystery Shopping recognize the importance of Shopper training and can also advise the brand on what types of questions should not be included in the review.

With all that said, you can see that Mystery Shopping has many advantages that are worth using and some downsides are worth considering too. Now you can decide if Mystery Shopping is right for your business.