As a mystery shopper, you are being paid via provides by a client to make unbiased observations that have been outlined for you in the mystery shopping requirements. Further, you are being paid to repair back to the client what those observations were by submitting a mystery shopping report. Your report is often used for employee training purposes, managerial development, store improvements and more. It is easy to think that the comments you provide in a report don’t matter, but the fact is that they do. Unfortunately, however, many mystery shoppers often feel the need to blur the truth when writing their reports.
What Happens
Some mystery shoppers believe their truthful responses may cause an employee to get fired or reprimanded. There may be times when you may have observed something that you believed was a one-time event rather than an event that commonly takes place, and you don’t want anyone to get in trouble for it. Other times, a mystery shopping provider may pressure you to make changes to your report or to bias your report, often in a positive light. Of course, by making these changes or by blurring the truth, you are not reporting accurate events.
The Effects of a Report
Before you consider filing a false or misleading report to a mystery shopping provider, consider what may happen as a result of your report. Will an employee get fired based on one bad mystery shopping report? Most likely, that will not happen unless that employee had other marks against him. If anything, the employee may get written up, have to undergo more on-the-job training or development and more. The result is that the employee may actually grow and develop. This is one of the points of mystery shopping reports. In other cases, a company may make decisions about where to allocate money for store improvement projects, staff development and more based in part of your feedback. By reporting everything in a glowing and positive way, you are not providing the store’s owners or management with realistic information that is needed to improve the customer experience.
Should You Do It?
The fact is that if you are experiencing certain things by walking through a store chances are that other customers are, too. It may seem like a safe bet to err on the side of positivity and to keep all negative observations to yourself. However, in the end, you are hurting the employees and the store itself. Other customers may be turned off from visiting the store again if these issues are not corrected, and your report can help upper management to become aware of the issues.
When mystery shoppers blur the truth, the short term and long term effects can be significant for all parties involved. By providing accurate and truthful information on your mystery shopping report, you are simply stating observations. These are not usually opinions, but rather they are factual observations that any other person visiting the store may experience. If you had a bad experience, the store owners want to know about it. Because of this, you need to be truthful and honest when completing a mystery shopping report.
I find this article to be very informative, and factual.
Myself, I agree 100% that a mystery shopper should be completley honest and un biased when reporting on a shop, even if it does cause some one to lose their job.
After all,that is the purpose of mystery shopping is it not?
Good article. Today I did a shop where I was required to ask to buy something that was not in stock. The sales person was suppose to try to sell me a different brand – she didn’t. I felt tugs at my heart strings when I was doing the report. She was a good person, good natured, friendly and pleasant to speak with but she did not try to sell anything to me. She just kept repeating “I’m sorry we don’t have that brand.” But I did the right thing – I’m hired to do a job and she will learn from my report.
I, too, agree that we should report the facts and not let our personal feelings get involved. Although I have never had it happen to me I have read from other mystery shoppers in the forums that when they report a negative experience the editors demand that they change their report to show a more favorable experience. I don’t know why they would do that or why a client would only want a report that said all was well whether it was or not. I do believe it happens though, and when it does the shopper usually has very little recourse if they want to keep working.