Here at Confero, we get lots of questions from mystery shoppers asking how they can improve their shop ratings.  One easy way to improve your shop rating is to make sure you are providing a clean, concise mystery shop report every time.  Here is a list of the Top Six Mistakes to Avoid When Completing a Mystery Shop Report:

1. Copying and pasting shop information.   Each mystery shop is unique, so each mystery shop report should be unique to each individual shop.  Our clients do not accept reports with copied or “canned”comments, as they expect each unique mystery shop/audit visit’s conversation to be reported individually. That’s what they are paying for. Copied or canned comments imply that the mystery shopper did not make the required observations or give them full attention.  For more details about this, see Cathy Stucker’s blog about all the “Dangers of Copy and Paste.”
2. Writing your report in ALL CAPITAL letters.  Confero cannot submit a report to our clients if it is not written using correct sentence case, using both capital and lower case letters. 
3. Not using a spell check.  Our software program provides a spell check feature to help mystery shoppers spell check their narratives.  But, use caution; spell check will not catch words that are spelled correctly but used incorrectly.  For example, their, they’re and there are all spelled correctly and sound the same, but have very different meanings.
4. One word answers.  If there is a text box after a question, be sure to answer in a complete sentence. 
5. Avoiding the question.  Be sure you are answering the question asked.  Make sure you do not get off topic.  
6. Not submitting your validation documents on time or legibly. Confero cannot accept any mystery shop reports without the proper validation documents.  Be sure to submit a clean copy of these documents, blurry photos cannot be accepted.