There is no formal training to be a mystery shopping. Everything you learn is on-the-job training that you do along the way. With every assignment you complete, you gain more experience and become a better mystery shopper. You refine important skills you need to be a great mystery shopper and you learn new strategies for combating issues you may run into on the job site and with your scheduler. Perhaps the biggest and most important lessons come from mistakes you may have made on past assignments.
Sharpen Your Listening Skills. When you are walking through an assignment at the store site, it’s very easy to get bogged down in the details. You are trying to remember a million details, from the layout of displays, to the nit-picky timing requirements, salesperson names, and so much more. With so many details floating around your head, it’s often difficult to communicate intelligently with the sales staff and to pick up on key details of the conversation. When you get back to your desk at home, it can be hard to recall the details of your interactions with the sales staff, which makes completing an accurate report fairly difficult. You may be honest about the details of your assignment on your report by providing the scanty information you remember, or you may fudge the report a bit. Even if you don’t get caught in your mistake, you still know this is an important area to improve.
As you progress through various mystery shopping assignments, you will learn important listening skills to help you with your report-writing. Keep in mind that communication is a two-way street. What you say is infinitely important, as you can steer the conversation in a way that meets the requirements of the mystery shopping assignment. Yet what you hear the salesperson say is just as important, so it’s important to fine-tune your listening skills.
Keep An Eye On Those Details. Mystery shopping is all about the details. You may fly through your first mystery shopping assignment by the skin of your teeth, barely paying attention to assignments requirements before your site visit. And then when you are writing the report, you may have only a vague recollection of some of the answers to the questions. You make a few mistakes, or you may squeak by, knowing full well that your report wasn’t as thorough as it could have been. As you gain more experience, you learn to read the assignment requirements before your site visit so you know what to pay attention at on your site visit.
Yet as you try to improve your eye for detail by reading the assignment requirements, you then get bogged down by all the details. As you progress with various assignments, eventually you learn important strategies for coping with the details, such as memorization strategies, note taking, and so on. You may also learn which assignments aren’t compensated appropriately for the amount of work and detail required of them.
Watch The Clock. Yes, keeping track of the time requirements on a mystery shopping assignment is important. But just as important is showing up to the job site on time. When you are new to mystery shopping, you may not pay attention to the shop requirements for the dates and times of the assignment is to be completed in. Or if you notice this information, you may not understand its importance. That is, of course, until you fail to show up at the job site at the correct time and you don’t get paid for your hard work. Just one of these costly mistakes is enough to whip you right into shape so this never happens again.
It’s important to note why assignments give a date and time to complete the assignment at. Often, the retailer is ordering the mystery shop to be completed to check up on certain sales staff or managers. The date and time of your mystery shopping assignment likely coincides with the work schedule of the employees that the head office wants to check up on.
Mystery shopping is definitely an on-the-job training gig, so be sure to pay attention to the mistakes and flubs you make on each of your assignments so you can improve yourself on your next assignment.
One of my first shops was a McDonalds. The timing requirements were to the second. It was easy to record for the drive-thru portion but inside it was impossible. No sooner had I sat down and took out my pad of paper to write down the times when the sales clerk was over my shoulder delivering my order. I know a stop watch would have helped but all I have is a watch with a second hand. How do you take notes as you go without being revealed?
You have had great articles. This is the first time I offer any input. Listening skills are difficult to master sometime. I am retired, so I can blame some forgetfulness on ‘Senior Moments.’ I found using a small recorder cancelled in my pocket help me recall exactly who said what and when. If I fail to capture exact timings, I can retime them by playing the recording back in real time. I have been shopping for year and found I don’t have to rely on it as much as I did in the beginning. I still use it on every shop just in case I miss something.
Irene, occasionally McDonalds can be tricky to time. To me, timing is easier for 2009 because of requiring only two timings rather than three as they did in 2008. I found an inexpensive stopwatch at Wal-Mart that will capture lap time and hold both timings until you have the opportunity to look at them in private.
George in NM
As for McD shops, the first timing is when you get in line. I write that down immediately in my purse, as though I am fumbling for my wallet. I also write down only the last three digits in the time. So if I stop in line at 12:32:51, I write down 251. Then I only have two sets of three digit numbers to remember.
I have not had any mystery shopping jobs in a very long time when I first started I had several jobs, and I enjoyed them very much. They paid pretty good for this area because I live nine miles from where they were located at, and I got them done, and I got paid but they like died off and and I haven’t had any jobs since then I check all of the time to see what is in this Area but to no avail. I am hoping that I Get a chance to do some again. I really did enjoy working for Gap buster, they are very nice, and they tell you different things that you should watch for, and I do not have a problem with learning from the pro’s. It really does help you become a better mystery shopper it really does, and you will be able to see it as you do other jobs for them, and they will tell you that it was a good job or they will tell you your mistakes so don’t get angry with the Scheduler’s or Editor’s because they are really trying to help you and you will get better and better. Good luck to all of you and another thing please, please trust Cathy Stucker when she gives us advice because she is right on the money, and it is wonderful for her to take the time to Help all of us. You can’t get it no better than that so please welcome her when she comes to your web site with anything she has to say and hang on to it. I know I use to say when I was going to mystery shop “come on Cathy and let’s go do the best we can” it sounds silly, but I do it.
Especially when I do more than one shop in a day, I also use a recorder with a split timer feature. If the scenario allows, I will discreetly make notes, on paper or on my hand. I have also talked on the phone, using the record feature to capture details while in store.
Learning as I go, when I make a mistake, or hear of another’s mistakes, it is an occassion to fine tune my techniques. Share! Share! Share! That is how we learn too!
I have been mystery shopping for close to 3 years now. I totally agree that it is the shops where I have made mistakes that have taught me the most. I have to say that I am human, and that I did/do make mistakes. The first time that I lost a receipt, I felt absolutely awful, but the company allowed me to reshop the location. I had to come up with different ways to hold onto receipts. I have a stapler on the passenger seat of my car, and sometimes I use a little metal tin that was designed to give someone a gift card. I picked up a digital watch with a stopwatch feature for only $10 at Target. Before going into a location, I stick a DVR in my bra. I only picked up a DVR last fall after reading about it here. I don’t want to make things up when completing the reports, and now I don’t have to. I do what George mentioned, and get help with some timing aspects when I play back the recording. I can glance at my watch as I am entering a location and say the time into the DVR. When I am in the location, the DVR captures the conversation and I can focus on the details. I can even talk to myself as I travel through the store and note certain details into the DVR. As I exit the location, I glance at my watch again and record the exit time. When I first started mystery shopping, I knew that I would have a problem with all of the details, so I decided to use cheat sheets to help me with summarizing the details of an assignment. I usually read through the assignment and underline the pertinent details. Then I sit down and type the key points/details of a shop into a word document. I head the document with the name of the company being shopped, and then I put the MSP name. Each time I sign on for a shop with the same company, I review the assignment requirements and change my cheat/summary sheets accordingly. I never assume that an assignment is the same, so I will always review the assignment. I can carry the cheat sheet with me and review it several times before completing the assignment. I even type the questionnaire questions/responses in a chart format so the I will know what is required. So now lengthy assignment requirements/instructions are in a form that is easier for me to manage. I now have close to 400 cheat cheats that I can just pull up when I sign on for a particular shop.
I have yet, to shop the wrong day, because I utilize Excel to keep track of my mystery shopping assignments.
The consequences of not completing a shop correctly does provide a great motivation to come up with ways to pay closer attention to the requirements. There is nothing like not getting paid for work that has been completed to motivate one to pay closer attention the next time.
Absolutely, I have learned that some shops require more then they are worth. I have those flagged in my brain, and I will only do them if I am desperate.