Mystery Shopper Job Description, Skills, and Salary
Get to know about the duties, responsibilities, qualifications, and skills requirements of a mystery shopper. Feel free to use our job description template to produce your own. We also provide you with information about the salary you can earn as a mystery shopper.
Who is a Mystery Shopper?
A mystery shopper visits a business or service facility and records their observations to create a report on their visit. They finish duties at a designated area, like buying something or returning something.
Mystery shopping businesses (also known as Mystery Shopping Agencies) identify individuals who fit the intended customer profile, give them a questionnaire to document their experiences, and provide them with some instruction on how to assess certain characteristics. We refer to them as mystery shoppers. Then, while posing as customers, these mystery shoppers visit the establishment and carefully record everything they were instructed to measure. The information is provided to the mystery shopping business, which aggregates and analyses the information to assist its clients in measuring and improving their customer experience.
Each mystery audit is carried out by mystery shoppers, who are frequently independent contractors or people who do this on the side. The mystery shoppers are typically given a full or partial repayment of the money they spent if the audit entails buying or ingesting anything.
For people who enjoy shopping and have outstanding observational abilities, mystery shopping can be a rewarding career. Companies can learn more about the services provided at their sites with the aid of mystery shopping. There are various tricks you may use to obtain legitimate tasks and complete your assignments, regardless of whether you are working as a mystery shopper for extra cash or as a full-time career.
To assess and provide feedback on the caliber of goods, level of customer service, and environment of the establishments to which they are assigned, mystery shoppers adopt the persona of regular consumers. Mystery shoppers are also referred to as secret shoppers.
Numerous service-oriented sectors, like supermarkets, retail stores, banks, and casinos, want to assess the quality of their client service, but they struggle to be objective. A professional and impartial service assessor known as a mystery shopper, who visits a facility pretending to be a regular client, is used by many of these businesses in its place. He or she later sends detailed notes of their experiences to supervisors for rigorous review and staff discussion. The majority of companies advise these customers to be objective and offer both good and negative feedback based on industry standards.
A mystery shopper might just stroll into a restaurant and place an order, or she might be given a specific task to see how adaptable the staff is with customers. He or she might disclose to a restaurant hostess, for instance, that they are allergic to salt. The way the restaurant handles such a strange request could be a part of the test. Additionally, the customer can try to return goods without necessary receipts or appear uncomfortably polite. This can assist managers in revealing security system flaws or identifying staff members who are unpleasant to challenging clients.
Professional mystery shopping firms offer several levels of quality control analysis, from a straightforward sales transaction to a thorough assessment of the location, personnel, and goods. A part-time mystery shopper is frequently requested to buy a specific item, such as a hamburger at a fast food joint, and then complete a thorough form detailing the experience. A person might be repaid for whatever purchases they make after being evaluated or paid an hourly rate to simply browse a store.
Mystery Shopper Job Description
Below are the mystery shopper job description examples you can use to develop your resume or write a mystery shopper job description for your employee. Employers can also use it to sieve out job seekers when choosing candidates for interviews.
- Make trips to the designated store locations.
- Keep quiet while pretending to be a regular customer.
- Have phone and in-person interactions with staff to evaluate their customer service.
- Examine the environment of the store to find any potential issues and potential improvement opportunities.
- Buy both random and particular goods to evaluate the quality of the product
- Keep receipts as evidence of purchases to be reimbursed later.
- Reveal conflicting interests, such as past support for or distaste for specific businesses or goods.
- Record the hours worked
- Keep duplicates of finished assignments.
- Make trips to the designated store locations.
- Keep quiet while pretending to be a regular customer.
- Keep an eye on customer service, staff product knowledge, and store cleanliness to make sure they adhere to company requirements
- Evaluate point of sale systems, search for pricing problems or, check that staff members are adhering to policies including taking security precautions during cash transactions
- Inform management of results so that they can use them to enhance operations or introduce new programs
- Gather data on costs, special offers, available goods, and other aspects that can influence purchasing decisions.
- Keep a journal or other digital record of observations, such as a smartphone
- Test employee responsiveness to various circumstances while acting as a client to assess customer service skills
- Give input on new goods or services by taking part in focus groups or other research activities.
- Contact clients after a sale to check on their happiness with the goods or services.
Qualifications
- Equivalent to a high school diploma.
- Own, dependable transportation
- Outstanding written and verbal communication.
- Extraordinary memory skills.
- A well-organized, adaptable attitude.
- Careful with the details.
- The capacity to do duties impartially and discretely.
Essential Skills
- Management of time: The capacity to organize and complete work on schedule is known as time management. You can have a variety of tasks to perform as a mystery shopper in a limited amount of time. You can stay on task and fulfill deadlines by developing great time management skills. Additionally, it’s crucial to arrive on time for meetings with customers or companies so that they can obtain honest criticism about their services.
- Observation of Details: When completing assignments, mystery shoppers need to be able to pay close attention to detail. This guarantees that they can give an accurate account of their experiences and insightful criticism of the organization or business they are evaluating. For instance, if a mystery shopper is asked to assess a staff member’s customer service abilities, they may need to record information such as how long it took the employee to greet them, what kind of greeting they received, and any body language cues the employee may have displayed during the interaction.
- Entry of data: Entering information into a computer system is known as data entry. As a mystery shopper, you can be asked to provide information about your shopping trip, such as what you bought and how long it took an employee to assist you. To effectively enter this information so that businesses can use it to enhance customer service, data entry skills are required.
- Solving issues: Having the capacity to recognize and address problems is problem-solving. You can run into difficulties as a secret shopper while working on your assignments. For instance, you can experience a problem acquiring your meal or your bill if you’re testing a restaurant’s customer service. By speaking with managers and staff members directly, you can use your problem-solving abilities to address these problems and come up with solutions.
- Fulfilling deadlines: Setting and keeping deadlines is a crucial ability for mystery shoppers. You must understand how long the task will take and make plans to do it on time because you might be obliged to do it within a specific amount of time. Make sure you allow enough time to complete all of your responsibilities before the conclusion of the shift, for instance, if you are requested to shop at a store for two hours.
- Flexibility: Being flexible is having the capacity to change course when necessary. You might have to quickly reschedule or adjust your plans as a mystery shopper to complete an assignment. When performing an evaluation, flexibility can also help you adapt to various settings and circumstances. If a restaurant is closed when you go there for lunch, for instance, you might have to try again the next day.
- Communication: The capacity for clear and succinct information transfer is referred to as communication. You might have to speak on the phone or in person as a mystery shopper with company personnel or clients. You can transmit information about your experience more properly and effectively if you have strong communication skills. This can assist companies in providing better customer service and implementing client-friendly initiatives.
- Writing Reports: Report writing is the process of putting your observations and experiences from an assignment into written form. Writing thorough reports is vital since you could utilize this information to give the firm you’re working with feedback. All pertinent details regarding your event, including what happened, when it happened, where it happened, and why it happened, should be included in your report.
- Consumer Assistance: It’s crucial to have good customer service skills if you want to deal with clients in a friendly and helpful way as a mystery shopper. Providing exceptional customer service helps businesses improve their goods and services by ensuring that customers have a positive experience. To make sure you comprehend how the good or service works, you might need to ask questions about it. Additionally, you have the chance to provide your thoughts about the experience.
- Discretion: Having discretion is being able to keep information private. As a mystery shopper, you can be required to examine confidential information on the processes or goods of an organization. You must uphold confidentiality and safeguard any personal information you may come into contact with while working on your assignments. By doing this, you make sure that businesses can rely on your comments and provide them with the information they need to develop.
- Organization: The capacity of the organization is the capacity to monitor several duties and obligations. As a mystery shopper, you might need to complete numerous tasks at once or keep a detailed log of your interactions with various goods and services. You can keep on top of your work and make sure that you produce correct reports by having great organizing abilities.
How to Become a Mystery Shopper
- Acquire the necessary skills: Here are some skills or traits you may apply to perform well at secret shopping:
- Integrity: A secret shopper may typically be willing to report every detail, no matter its impact on the business or a certain employee. Businesses may often choose to work with secret shoppers because they may be looking for an honest opinion on their business. Honest reviews can also allow companies to make improvements that make the customer experience better
- Resilience: You may need to put in long hours as part of your mystery shopping duties to compile enough data about firms. This could be a result of assignments that demand you to stand while observing particular procedures or people, sit for extended periods, or wander around a huge facility. To completely do the work and engage with new people, resilience is necessary.
- Join a variety of companies: It might be required for you to interact with numerous businesses simultaneously to earn more money as a secret shopper. This gives you access to a wide range of jobs and can guarantee that you never run out of things to do to make money. Through online research and participation in secret shopper forums, groups, and meetups, you can find reliable businesses.
- Obtain useful equipment: By purchasing the appropriate equipment, you could be able to carry out your job without drawing the attention of the other workers. The right equipment also enables you to collect all relevant information.
- Plan your work: Learning how to organize each activity to prevent confusion may be crucial given that you may manage multiple assignments at once. Make sure to separate your work into multiple notebooks if you’re taking notes to prevent blending important information. To make sure you submit the appropriate report to each company, it can be useful for you to organize the task requirements for each organization.
- Complete your assignments thoroughly: Once you’ve chosen a task, it’s important to make sure you complete it by the client’s instructions. It could be crucial that you show up if your employment demands you to be at a store at a specific hour. Additionally, certain occupations may call for you to carry out complicated duties, such as making specified purchases at particular times or corresponding with particular salespeople. Paying close attention to such minute details could get you top ratings from businesses.
Take care to thoroughly edit your work to reduce spelling and grammar mistakes. It can also be crucial for you to deliver your report on time, along with any supporting materials like images and videos. To verify correctness, you can cross-check all pertinent names and timeframes. You might be able to land more employment in the future by being meticulous and keeping track of your experience.
Where to Work as a Mystery Shopper
- Marketing research company
- Private business operator
Mystery Shopper Salary Scale
In the USA, the typical mystery shopper’s income is $16 per hour or $31,200 per year. Most experienced workers can earn up to $67,762 per year, while entry-level occupations start at $29,250 annually.
In the UK, a mystery shopper makes an average income of £39,000 per year or £20 per hour. Most experienced workers earn up to £68,250 per year, while entry-level roles start at £23,790.