Blog By Akkumahanthi Sowmya

Ever heard of mystery shopping ? What is the first thing that strikes your mind ? Shopping with some kind of weird dresses and not showing your face or identity to the people who run the shop? Thankfully there is nothing as such complications in that. It is a technique used externally by market research companies, watchdog organization or even the companies they themselves to measure the quality of their services that they are providing to its customers. The person who is assigned to do the mystery shopping is known to be mystery consumer or secret shopper, his identity will not be known by the establishment being evaluated.

Mystery consumer basically uses the tools such as the questionnaires or full audio recording or video recording. The usage of this mystery consumers originated long back around 1940’s and from the year 2010 its use has become abundant. Especially in the medical services, it's very important in this industry to have a check on how people the patients are treated and what all kind of prescriptions are being given. There is a life on the line which they cannot take any chance by neglecting any kind of service they provide. One more example is the food industries, the types of ingredients that they use and the place they prepare a particular dish, ambiance, etc. All these are taken into account.

While gathering the information, mystery onsumers should be able to blend with the other consumers and pretend to be just a normal customer who is visiting their store for their needs. But they are required to take some pictures, return purchases, count the number of product, seats, people during the visit. After the information that has been gathered will be sent to the mystery shopping company, which reviews analyses the information that includes quantitative, qualitative and statistical methods and prepares the reports for the client company.

Coming to the bright side of the consumer the benefits he gets by doing the mystery shopping is commendable. Here there won't be any replacement for the current job it's just a fun way to get extra cash or free merchandise, event tickets or food. It may not totally include the typical visits to the shops or stores it can also be done over phone calls, online shopping. There are some top rate mystery shopping companies such as

BestMark, it is the top mystery shipping company having a BBB( Better Business Bureau) rating A+ whose clients are comprised of Global and Fortune 500 companies. They have their hands spread in different types of companies like casinos, financial institutions, hotels, restaurants, and retail stores. BestMark covers almost 10,000 mystery shops in a month.

Perception Strategies, Inc. This company deals with the healthcare marketing and research organization which will be making calls and patient visits to the concerned hospitals. It is also having the A+ rating with BBB. Companies also like Quest for Best, Sinclair Customer Metrics, Intellishop is also having A+ ratings.