Most mystery shopping agencies offer unbiased, objective feedback to their clients. After all, that’s what they’re hired for — to give clients a clear look at how their staff perform when management isn’t watching.
But be careful: some mystery shopping agencies may have a vested interest in skewing their shopping results. That’s because these agencies also offer customer service training and employee training programs. Some of these mystery shopping agencies may skew their shopping results in a way that their training is also a good fit for the client. They won’t out-and-out lie about their data, but they could “put their thumb on the scale” a little bit to tip things in their favor.
It’s actually dishonest and even harmful. People’s salaries, bonuses, and even their very jobs depend on shopping results being accurate and unbiased. It’s the responsibility of the mystery shopping firm to provide that accuracy — they shouldn’t downgrade results to lead to more training, or upgrade results to hide a problem they can’t train for.
Whether it’s the person at the cash register, the manager, or even the district manager, someone may get unnecessarily blamed or praised because of the skewed results. Real problems may go unaddressed, while small, less important problems are made bigger. Ultimately, the client spends money on training they don’t need, while losing money to problems they didn’t know about.
At Measure CP, we don’t have a vested interest in getting hired to do training. We don’t offer training services as part of our services. We focus strictly on providing pure, unbiased, untainted mystery shopping feedback. If training is necessary or recommended, we can provide referrals to several qualified training companies.
When you’re looking for a mystery shopping agency, be careful of the ones that provide training, especially when the results they present to you match up the training programs they provide. You’re better off working with an agency that does not do any training at all, and can instead recommend you to a separate, unassociated training company.
The Mystery Shopping Experience 