Secret shopping, or mystery shopping, involves visiting a store as an undercover customer and evaluating the overall customer experience and brand presence for a specific product or an array of products. Through this type of reconnaissance, brands are able to get valuable feedback on how their products compare to their competitors. Through secret shopping, you can gain a sense of how your SKUs are presented in-store and what the overall customer experience is when interacting with your products. Mystery shopping also identifies areas of improvement such as revised pricing, improved location, or differentiated displays and enhancers.
Pitfalls of Common Secret Shopper Procedures
Secret shoppers need to be discreet when evaluating a store's services. Properly executed mystery shopping should provide an authentic account of your brand's presence and the overall experience of an everyday consumer.
If a staff member becomes aware that a customer is a secret shopper, they may feel compelled to alter their behavior for that interaction, which means that the shopper's findings will not be a genuine evaluation.
Often mystery shoppers take notes manually with pen and paper, which then get compiled into a more formal email for their report. This can result in a "game of telephone" effect, where insights and feelings can change or errors can accumulate subtly between iterations. Without being able to report in real time, these imperfections can creep in and impact the quality of the shopper's report.
Such free form reporting also has an impact when trying to collate data from many disparate shoppers. Even if guidelines are provided to shoppers, it is unlikely that they will all provide their insights consistently. There will always be natural divergences in both writing and shopping styles, which results in a great deal of manual labor when the reports are aggregated.
Finally, lacking photographic evidence can make it difficult for shoppers to substantiate concerns that they observe in their reports. A picture is worth a thousand words, and without prompting, shoppers may miss details in their written accounts that the brand would have found important. Photos, however, can tell the whole story with a single click.
How Secret Shoppers are Empowered by Mobile Technology
Using a mobile device in retail stores is common, and there's no reason for store staff to find it suspicious. There are many reasons that customers might need to use their phones, including researching a product, price checking, or accessing a shopping list. Looking at another person's phone is generally perceived as a privacy violation, so it's also unlikely that staff will look at a secret shopper's phone screen.
Using dedicated mobile software also provides a framework so that secret shopping data is collected consistently. Because the information collected from shoppers is standardized, it can easily be reported on. It is likely that adverse information received from shoppers will need to be prioritized, and this data can be flagged for immediate action rather than having to scan typed reports to glean this data manually. Because this data is also collected in real time, coaching and feedback can be provided for immediate action rather than becoming stale and being reported weeks or months down the line.
Finally, because photographs can be easily taken and submitted, shoppers will include photos in their geo-tagged and date-stamped reports, and brands can easily track performance.
Make Your Secret Shopper Strategy Shine
Mobile technology has revolutionized the secret shopper process. With a software-based approach, shoppers can now collect data consistently and in real time while also providing photographic evidence of anything they have noted during their visits. This helps to provide a more accurate picture of product performance and allows brands to act quickly on any recommendations that come from these reports. By leveraging this technology, businesses can ensure that customers receive a perfect product experience every single time they visit.
PINATA is used by Fortune 100 and startup CPG and beverage alcohol companies alike to supercharge their secret shopping and mystery shopping strategy. With an industry-tested secret shopping playbook, you can empower your partners with immediate out-of-the-box utility and easy adoption for partners in the field. Schedule a demo to see what PINATA can do for you.