Can You Tell Good Service From Bad; Recognise Value For Money; Compare Prices, Staff Efficiency, Product Range, Customer Service Between Rival Firms?

If so you might easily find work as a ‘Mystery Shopper' and be paid to comment on service in shops, banks and building societies, hotels, cinemas, veterinary surgeries, restaurants, even on long distance flights and holidays.

Poor service is number one reason customers turn their back on a business and start shopping elsewhere. Worse still, one dissatisfied customer tells on average sixteen more people about their experience, meaning even greater loss of customers and profits for business owners.

Even taking too long to answer telephone or replenish shelves, inadequate parking facilities, crowded toilets and poor staff-customer relations can alienate customers quickly.

No company can afford to be complacent or fail to check its own operating standards for long.

Companies need to know how they are perceived by customers and if rival firms are setting higher standards and attracting custom from them. Hence need for regular checks to be made on all aspects of business from product range and quality of choice, to staff attitudes, customer care, after sales service, and so on.

But there's no easy way for firms to investigate themselves.

Staff who know they are being watched work harder, giving a false impression or, worse still, they consider their employers are spying on them, intent on catching them out and threatening dismissal.

So, mystery shoppers go undetected into a business, seeing things as they really are, through eyes of people who really matter - customers! What they see and service they receive will not be affected by who they are and what influence they have over staff!

As one leading mystery shopping agency puts it:

"Mystery shoppers serve as eyes and ears of clients in retail and service outlets."

As competition grows, especially in a recession, and pressure increases on companies to maintain or better still improve their own market share, more and more openings will appear for mystery shoppers in all areas of commerce, including banks and building societies, shops and supermarkets, hotels and garages, and more.