Functions of a secret shopper you should know

Time and again, demystifying customer experience is a must for companies that are in service industries. For instance, a pizza brand might want to check how efficient its team is in answering all calls and taking orders at the right pace. It can only be done when the company is hiring a service for telephone mystery shopping.

The term might sound like a thriller serial. Jokes apart! It is a unique marketing technique that leads to the discovery of how a customer experience strategy is designed and how it is fulfilled by a company’s front force.

How does secret shopping work?

To understand the different aspects of mystery shopping or secret shopping, we need to decode this process. A company hires a mystery shopping service provider. The service provider understands the assignment and hires a team of secret or mystery shoppers.

These shoppers wield the right questionnaire covering the predetermined parameters of a service provided by the hirer. These professionals then pretend as customers and visit the designated locations to find out how customer service is being provided.

As the example suggested above, a telephone call is made to order a pizza from a business point. In some cases, both phone calls and physical visits may be required for proper evaluation of predetermined aspects of customer experience. This type of process is adopted for hotel mystery shopping.

Functions of a secret shopper

Now that we have understood what the best hotel mystery shopping companies conduct to explain the hidden issues and pain points of customer experience, let us learn what a secret shopper does.

1. Elaborate understanding of the process

The prime function of the shopper is to understand the program well and to provide the right service to meet all aspects of it. His experience in understanding the program and delivering the same will decide the results.

2.   Time efficiency

There are thousands of services that customers avail from different companies working in different industries. Not all programs are the same. For instance, ordering food via phone takes just a few minutes of a call. Within this short span, a mystery shopper will have to touch all the points of a program. So, a secret shopper has to be very efficient in terms of observation and must have excellent listening skills, questioning skills, analytical skills, etc.

3. Use of digital tools

Secret shoppers must also be highly efficient in using digital tools to make the programs more efficient. They are the ones who will visit the designated locations and generate data. This data will then be analysed to make reports. Such reports will then be used to design actionable insights and a profound customer experience strategy.

Choosing the right service provider

As we can see, these three main functions of a secret shopper determine the outcome of a secret shopping program. This is why you must choose the right service provider who owns a brilliant team of secret shoppers. It is then you will gain exceptional insights from the shoppers and design better strategies in the future.