Category: Mystery Shopping

As 2010 came to a close, Elaine Buxton completed her term as President of the Mystery Shopping Providers’ Association (MSPA), North America.    Elaine has been involved with MSPA since its beginning in 1998. Confero was a charter member of the organization.

Nations Restaurant News recently reported in the article, "Restaurants put Marketing Muscle behind Kids' menus," that families are returning to restaurants.  This is good news for restaurants that focus on attracting the family dining segment. Whether they use an e-mail blast, radio ads, table tents or a combination of communication methods, restaurants benefit from a family strategy that allows them to bring in more customers and deliver a dining experience that encourages families to return.

A:  Allow time for consideration of mystery shop goals, survey question details and possible scenarios during the set up of a new mystery shopping program .

B:  Build on the information that you gain from your mystery shops so that you can improve and redirect your program periodically.

C:  Customize your mystery shopper survey to reflect your firm’s unique service and sales priorities.
 

Mystery shop results help you understand, in detail, how your locations perform in terms of appearance, timeliness, and customer engagement through greeting, customer service and sales behaviors, product knowledge, friendliness and other factors.   The results also provide invaluable information through mystery shopper comments. Open-ended comments reflect mystery shopper observations about what they saw and heard during the mystery shop visit.  They include details that explain a low-scored area or in-depth comments on overall impressions about the visit.
 

Many people, both shoppers and clients alike, tend to make assumptions about the mystery shopping industry. We are not sure how some of these myths began, but we hope to clarify some of them. In this issue, we expose the following three myths: