Make the Most of Mystery Shoppers

Learn how using a digital tool can improve the mystery shopping process

Mystery shopping can be an excellent way to gather unbiased information about your business from the customer’s perspective. For example, a retail store might ask their mystery shoppers to purchase and return a specific product, request a special order, or take other steps that would help provide information about the customer experience. But mystery shopping isn’t limited to retail operations. All kinds of businesses can use mystery guests to gather information about

• processes and procedures
• staff performance
• brand perception
• competitors

However, if you want to make the most of this information, you should not be using old-fashioned mystery shopper reporting methods. These methods require the shopper to make all their notes on paper after completing their site visit. Then the business has to manually compile the notes and analyze them in order to learn how their business performed.

There is a better way:

Digital Mystery Shopper Reporting

Using a digital tool such as MyFieldAudits for mystery shopping will improve the process in several ways:

Better Data

It would look pretty suspicious for a mystery shopper to take a clipboard or notebook with them on a site visit. But they can easily take their smartphone and use it throughout the visit without arousing suspicion. This gives you better data because the shopper can read the questions right on site and enter their responses immediately. Without the delay involved in paper reporting (which requires the shopper to leave the business before recording their impressions), their responses will be fresh and accurate. Another benefit of a digital tool is that smartphone photos can be included along with written responses.

More Flexibility

The processes you want reviewed and the questions you want answered will change over time. This means you need to be able to update your mystery shopping questionnaire and instructions. Using a digital tool allows for easy updating, with any changes instantly communicated to your mystery shoppers.

Instant Results

With a digital tool, mystery shoppers’ responses will be instantly available in the cloud. This means reporting can start immediately and be updated in real time as more shoppers submit their responses. Ideally, you’ll want to choose a tool that includes reporting functions so that both data collection and analysis can be accomplished in one single system.

Actionable Insights

Once data and reports are in the cloud, they can be shared easily between stakeholders. This means that individual store managers, regional managers, and even upper level management can see the metrics that apply to them and have the information they need to take quick and effective action to improve those metrics.

Make MyFieldAudits Your Digital Tool

MyFieldAudits makes an excellent choice of digital reporting tool for mystery shopping. It works on just about any smartphone, allows for simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down ratings as well as written responses and photos, can be updated easily, and runs in the cloud for fast reporting and easy sharing. To learn more about MyFieldAudits, please contact us at info@MyFieldAudits.com.

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