Reveal Limitations of Mystery Shoppers

The money and trust devoted to mystery shoppers by finance, telecommunications, travel, hospitality, motor dealership, and other retail organizations is worse than wasted. The results can mislead marketers. Those are the conclusions from studies headquartered at University of Zurich and Reutlingen University, which found that mystery shopper ratings did not predict well either customer satisfaction ratings or sales results.
     While pretending to be typical customers, mystery shoppers visit service points. They use systematic protocols to record their observations, which they summarize and report to the client.
     Some older studies said that the use of mystery shoppers did improve the quality of customer service, but mostly in the short-term. Perhaps this was because store associates were on good behavior, knowing that they could be secretly rated at any time.
     Why don’t mystery shopper programs do better?

• The projects generally include two to four visits. Prior research suggests that at least twenty visits are necessary for valid conclusions. Further, the individual mystery shoppers may not be representative of the actual target populations of customers. Even if they are selected to be demographically similar, they don’t have the same emotional investment in considering purchase options. 
• Professional mystery shoppers make it a point to record separately their assessments of each encounter during each store visit. The greeting upon entering the shop might have been superb, but the wait to get help from a salesperson was excruciating, and the experience when paying for the merchandise was only acceptable. Typical shoppers don’t dissect their judgments in this way. Instead, they remember and talk about salespeople with overall impressions along only two principal dimensions—interpersonal skills and product expertise. Moreover, researchers at University of Texas-San Antonio and University of Virginia find that those overall impressions are influenced by whether the shopper is accompanied by others. A mystery shopper makes their visit by themselves. 
• Based on the behavioral assessments, professional mystery shoppers are expected to answer questions in the format, “What are your opinions of the store?” Researchers at University of California-San Diego and Northwestern University find that building a profitable relationship with customers is more likely when asking questions instead in the format, “What items of advice do you have for our store?” Advice questions lead to purchase intentions. 

     Without you correcting for such problems, a mystery shopper program might yield leads to explore. However, I recommend against you making strategic decisions depending solely on mystery shopper reports.

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