Mystery Shopping is the practice of using trained shoppers to anonymously evaluate customer service, operations, employee integrity, merchandising, and product quality.

Mystery Shopping goes by many names:

• Secret Shopping
• Mystery Customers
• Spotters
• Anonymous Audits
• Virtual Customers
• Employee Evaluations
• Performance Audits
• Telephone Checks

When location, pricing, and product assortment are no longer unique, service becomes the key to success or failure. According to our studies, it is found that it costs about 10 times more to get a new customer than to keep an existing one. Also unhappy customers will tell 5 other people of their bad experiences.

Why customers leave:

• 69% Poor customer service
• 13% Poor product quality
• 9% Competitive reasons
• 5% Other
• 3% Move away
• 1% Die

“What gets measured gets done.”

• Monitors and measures service performance
• Improves customer retention
• Makes employees aware of what is important in serving customers
• Reinforces positive employee/management actions with incentive-based reward systems
• Provides feedback from front line operations
• Monitors facility conditions - asset protection
• Ensures product/service delivery quality
• Supports promotional programs
• Audits pricing & merchandising compliance
• Allows for competitive analysis
• Compliments market research data
• Identifies training needs and sales opportunities
• Educational tool for training & development
• Ensures positive customer relationships on the front line
• Enforces employee integrity

Any business/organization that needs to monitor its operations, facilities, product delivery and service performance

• Banks
• Hotels
• Retailers
• Restaurants
• Manufacturers
• Movie Theatres
• Call Centres
• Recreation parks
• E-Commerce services
• Transportation systems
• Government agencies
• Fitness/health centres
• Hospitals
• Property management firms
• Associations
• Freight/courier services
• Franchise operations
• Promotions agencies
• And many more

Mystery shopping is related to market research, but they are not the same. Mystery shopping is typically more operational in nature than market research. It is most often used for training and incentive purposes. Whereas, market research involves determining real customer and prospect opinions, perceptions, needs and wants. Under these circumstances, mystery shopping fills the information gap between operations and marketing.

Mystery shoppers are not real customers, as they know what to evaluate before entering the store. However, they may not typically visit the store they are evaluating. Mystery shopping should not be used alone to determine customer satisfaction. It can compliment but not replace traditional satisfaction research. Mystery shopping is not predictive of every customer’s experience unless sufficient samples are taken and data analyzed in aggregate.

The MSPA is the largest professional trade association that is dedicated to improving service quality using anonymous resources. With over 150 member companies worldwide, its diverse membership includes market research and merchandising companies, private investigation firms, training organizations and companies that specialise in providing mystery shopping services. Member companies work with their clients to establish mechanisms to measure and improve service levels.

As one of the members of MSPA, JCR has participated in several events held by MSPA during many years. JCR’s Managing Director Mr. Hamish Liu has been selected to be a board member for MSPA.