Whether you’re looking for an easy way to improve your mystery shopper rating with your providers or simply want to avoid the headache of a series of back and forth questions and answers with your provider after you submit your report, you likely want to take some time to improve your report writing skills.
What Does That Say? There’s no doubt that spell check can catch a lot of typos. Some providers have a spell check feature on their report submittal pages. For other providers, you will need to type your answers into a word processing doc (such as MS Word), and then paste it back into the provider’s submittal page after you’ve run spell check.
Yet spell check doesn’t catch all typos. Even if you are a master speller, when you are flying through the report entering your information, there is a very real possibility that you can miss a letter here or there. Take for instance the sentence, “As I was hopping around the store, I noticed rash lying all over the floor.” These are all words that spell check would not pick up on because they are all spelled correctly. Yet obviously what was meant was “As I was shopping around the store, I noticed trash lying all over the floor.” These small typos can happen with a sticky key on the keyboard or a mis-hit by fingers flying over the keyboard. Spend a few extra minutes before you hit the “Submit” button on your report to read over your work and make sure it makes sense.
Answer The Question, Nothing Else. The retailer is asking for a mystery shopper to visit their site to check for certain things. These may be customer service, sales technique of the staff, quality of food or merchandise, and others. The questions in the report have been specifically designed to cover the areas the retailer is most concerned about. Be sure that you answer the questions specifically asked, and with as much detail as you can on that specific topic. Avoid providing information on items that were not asked for, as it opens up a greater possibility for confusion and questions by the provider.
Typically at the end of the report, there is a section where you can rate your overall experience and provide details on anything else that was not specifically asked for in the report that you feel are important. This is essentially your “free” section to really go into detail on why your experience was the best, worst, and so forth.
There’s No Me in ‘Mystery Shopping’. Mystery shopping by its very definition is an unbiased reporting of factual events and observations. The report is the only way to convey your observations to the provider and retailer. When answering the questions, keep your personal feelings and impressions aside. Rather than saying, “The bathroom was filthy,” you need to actually explain what you saw. “There were paper towels scattered on the sink and toilet paper in various locations on the floor. Three of the four toilets had dirty bowls and seats.” The second sentence provides factual observations of your visit, and clearly convey your overall impression of a dirty bathroom rather than simply stating an opinion that the bathroom was dirty. To take the “me” of your report, you need to write out step by step the events and observations.
With these simple changes to your report-writing, you will be able to create the clear, concise, and factual reports that your providers are looking for!
I discovered a free download on one the numerous mystery shopping companies I work with. The program is called IE Spell. You could google it and find the download. It has been an invaluable tool for me. You can literally spellcheck anything you type on the computer and anywhere. It checks e-mails, forms, reports, narration and even this post. IE Spell especially helps when the company does not offer a spellcheck on their reports. I have enjoyed reading information on this sight. I always look forward to reading the replys from everyone. Thanks!
I agree…IeSpell saves a lot of copying and pasting if its a short narrative. If it is a long one, I type in Word but I will IeSpell check it again before posting. Sometimes it will catch stuff that Word spellcheck doesn’t.
Also I have found in completing reports its helpful for both you and the company you are reporting to is to ask questions…find out exactly what they want. When you complete several jobs for the same company you start to get a feel for what it is they are looking for, listen to their questions so they don’t have to re-ask those same questions the next time you submit a report.Ask up front what part of the report is most important to make sure you get exactly what they are looking for.Reporting does get boring espically when you feel you are repeating yourself, to help w/ this I keep a note file of different ways to describe different situations.
Thank-you for providing mystery shoppers with so much valuable information.
I wish that all companies would provide a section at the end that allows input or suggestions on the forms that we use to report the shops. I too frequently find errors in the forms themselves, such as rejecting submission where no reply should have been necessary or two questions in one line, such as did they say this and that, when maybe they only said one of the two statements.
Thanks for the tip about IE Spell. I will check it out. When I encounter an error on a report form, I try to make note of it somewhere near the end. If it will not allow it, I will send an explanatory email to the scheduler. In one case, there were so many spelling and grammatical errors that I suggested they re-edit the whole form.
Initially it takes particular effort to leave the ‘me’ out of it. Facts, facts, and more facts. I find what helps is avoiding the use of “I” as much as possible. Simply state what you heard, observed, tasted, smelled. In the end, how you felt and your impressions can be mentioned briefly along with the reason why.
I open an e-mail and cut/paste to the e-mail to do a quick spell check. For me, anyhow, it is quick and accurate. If it is ok, then I just delete it from the e-mail. If it has corrections, I make them in the e-mail and then delete the information in my report and cut/paste from the e-mail to the report.
I guess I find this easier than opening a word program which is time consuming on my computer.
I don’t know any program that doesn’t have spell check, but I’m inclined to open up a word document any time I have to fill out a report. I find it easier to write and edit my essays there, then copy and paste them. But I also occasionally open an email for that like Bona. It’s quick and easy.
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I agree with littlebirdie. Lack of opportunity for comments, particularly by editors who are really picky and often arrogant, is irritating. Yeah I know, that’s a personal emotional problem I have.
One always uses “there,” even when they should use “their.” But more importantly, may have questions that when answered “yes” want to know why you said “no,” and ya gotta explain ya said yes and tell them the program is mixed up and oughta be fixed in the comments section and they tell ya not to make criticisms just tell them ya said yes.
Then in their comments say “You need to be more careful, we had to correct a number of grammatical mistakes.” Never explaining of course.
Tedious, often repetitive form filling, becomes irritating.
Sorry about the whining, but I’m hoping maybe some “editor” will see this and take interest.