Mystery Shopping

What is the point of mystery analyses?

We recommend mystery shopping, shadowing and scavenger hunts for questions concerning the quality of advice and experiences at touchpoints or along several customer journey steps.

How good is the advice given in your stores in comparison to your competitors? Do the hotline employees adhere to the guidelines given in your training? Are customers’ e-mail enquiries, which are often treated as a lower priority, answered quickly, straightforwardly and competently by your service centre? All these questions can be answered in simulated customer situations in personal contact (mystery shopping), on the phone (mystery calling) or in a written exchange (mystery mailing).

Mystery analyses supply objective facts about your own company and, where required, also about the competition. This makes it an incorruptible tool in measuring whether, for example, service levels and other instructions are being adhered to and whether your company is better or worse placed than the competition.

Mystery analyses do not replace customer satisfaction analyses solutions, but are a tool that ideally supplements the subjective customer view with standardised measured services.

Procedure of a mystery shopping project

The first step is to define the requirements and goals. For example, service standards must be defined in advance before they can be checked via mystery shopping. Then a catalogue of observations is formulated and the type of implementation is determined. The training of the testers is coordinated and the time schedule is planned. After this preparatory phase, the survey is carried out. Afterwards, the data is evaluated and actions are derived.

What possibilities for mystery analyses does intervista offer?

Mystery analyses can be designed differently depending on the particular research questions. intervista works with you to develop a concept in order to answer the important and the right questions. Where appropriate, we can also integrate a mystery analysis into a comprehensive market research concept for the purposes of quality improvement, for example by combining it with customer satisfaction analyses solutions, or by integrating the mystery analysis into a comprehensive customer experience design study.

But let’s stick with mystery analyses: First, it must be clarified which contact channel should be the focus of the analysis at all – the store, the hotline or the e-mail support? Then there are other questions to be answered in advance: