Many people had an excellent memory in their younger years. They may have enjoyed instant recall on everything from names and telephone numbers to historical events and more. However, the combined effects of age, stress and other factors all can take a toll on a person’s memory. If you are like many other adults, you may struggle to remember things that you just read or details that you just took note of. With many things in your life, you may rely on taking notes and scheduling reminders in your cell phone of PDA. With mystery shopping, however, you are generally required to go into a site location without any assistance from notes. Remembering everything you are supposed to from the assignment requirements as well as remembering the details that you observed on-site can be challenging. Many mystery shoppers struggle through their site visits trying to recall what they were supposed to be doing, and they struggle further at home while reading report questions and trying to figure out how to answer the questions. With some hot note-taking strategies, you can make mystery shopping easier and less stressful.
Use Your Phone
Many people today have a smart phone that has text messaging, email or note taking capabilities. Many phones today provide you with all of these functions. The reason why mystery shopping providers don’t want you to take your assignment requirements into a site location is because carrying a stack of paperwork into a venue and jotting notes down onto those papers is not exactly discrete. A salesperson or employee will almost definitely walk up to you to see what you are doing in their store with all of that paperwork. This is a surefire way to tell store staff that you aren’t an ordinary shopper. However, most people today regularly tote around their cell phone, and many people commonly look at their cell phone while strolling through stores, sitting at a restaurant and more. Send yourself a text or email, or jot down a few notes into your phone.
Head to the Bathroom
Almost every location that you perform a mystery shopping assignment at will have a public bathroom, and these bathrooms provide you with privacy from nosy store staff. You can easily pull a piece of paper out of your pocket or purse to jot down notes in your own penmanship in the privacy of a bathroom. Consequently, a dressing room or changing room may also provide you with the same level of privacy.
Sit In Your Car
You can take down a few notes with paper and pen on-site, and you can send yourself notes on your cell phone. However, it may be difficult to jot down as many notes as necessary using these methods. They can be helpful, but you may need additional assistance from your notes. You may find it helpful to bring your assignment requirements in the car and read through them before you walk into the location. Then, immediately after you are done with your site visit, spend a few minutes writing notes from your site visit onto your print-out of the assignment requirements.
These note-taking tips can assist you in making your assignments faster and easier to complete. Start putting these tips to use immediately on your next assignments.
I love the recorder on my iPhone. I walk around ‘talking’ to someone on the phone. Not a rare sight these days. You can hide the app by opening another…only a red strip shows on the top of the screen to indicate the recorder is working. One problem – the recorder stops if you get a phone call.
The recorder helps with the timings also!
A pesar de mi edad no he perdido nada de mi memoria, puedo recordar detalles de todo lo que leo, oigo y veo tambien pienso que el comprador secreto debe ser muy cuidadoso y observador cuando hace una visita a alguna tienda para no cometer o hacer malas evaluaciones puede apoyarse en todos los medios modernos existentes, pero la capacidad de observar y hacer juicios correctos es solo de los humanos, por lo que yo siempre recomiendo ser muy observador
I use the recorder feature on my iPhone just like Sally F. I put the phone in airplane mode so calls get routed to voicemail while I’m on site. The recorder does not stop that way.
I love my iPhone! I can record the whole evaluation, and then using a audio client I can upload the evaluation and be precise about timings using a marker for each event. It tells me how many minutes, to the second of an event, and I can save that recording for future reference on a CD or external hard drive!
I love my iPhone, too, and used to send myself texts etc…
I fumbled switching from the camera, to text screen, to the stop watch. I looked for an app that would do all this discreetly, couldn’t find it, so designed one myself (hired a good programmer, of course…). It’s in the App store now – “Shop It!” for Mystery Shoppers. I’m honestly not associated with a company; I’m a 40-something part-time mystery shopper who had an idea… But I must say, it works very well 🙂