You can be an amazing mystery shopper during your site visits, but your efforts will be almost meaningless if you can convert those efforts into an amazing mystery shopping report. You may sail through your site visits with ease, laying low in the stores when necessary but quickly yet casually having conversations with employees when needed. You may remember all of the details of your site visits with ease, and you may find the process of completing site visits to be enjoyable. However, when it comes to writing your reports, you may run into a huge roadblock.
Why Reports Matter
The fact is that if you cannot translate your observations from the site visit into an amazing report, your mystery shopper rating will be dinged. This can affect your ability to work on better, higher paying assignments in the future. Your poor report writing skills may also mean that you have more requests for revisions to your reports, and this can be frustrating and time-consuming to hassle with. It also can delay your ability to get your paychecks for completed assignments. Your reports are one of the main ways that your efforts at your site visits are judged. When you write a bad report after doing a great site visit, it is similar to sitting in class and paying attention every day in school, then bombing the test.
What’s Your Problem?
Mystery shopping reports can be challenging for a number of reasons. In some cases, the issue isn’t with the mystery shopper at all. Rather, the issue lies with confusing report questions, and this is an issue related to your specific provider. In some cases, the provider may be nitpicky about your answers. Similar answers may be sufficient for other providers, but you may be working with a provider who is rather nitpicky about word choices, sentence structure or even the content of your reports. Of course, not all issues are related to the providers. Some have to do with mystery shoppers who just don’t enjoy writing and who may have struggled with English back in school.
Correcting The Issues
Identifying what your issues with your reports are is the first step toward correcting the issues. If you believe the issue lies with your provider rather than you, it may be a good idea to move on to a new provider. If the issue lies with you, take time to narrow down what it is about your reports that is causing you to have so many reporting issues. You can then work to address those issues. For example, if grammar and spelling are your issues, consider writing your responses in a word process that can catch these issues first. Then, copy and paste them into the provider’s online report submission form.
Every mystery shopper who wants to take their career to the next level and who wants to work on the best assignments available should strive to be a great report writer. By following these tips, you can take your reports to the next level.
The most common issue for me is grammer. I may get a 9 for a rating, but could have gotten a 10 if my grammer was spot on. I am going to try the word processor procedure on my future reports. Thank you.