Completing a mystery shopping report is usually an easy task. If you are like most mystery shoppers, you have reviewed the questions before your site visit and can breeze right through the reporting questions. Yet even when you review the questions beforehand, and oftentimes when you don’t, you will run into questions on the report that you need to ask your scheduler about. Since most mystery shoppers look at the reporting questions either right before their site visit or when they are completing the report, questions of the report often arise that need a quick answer. Unfortunately, getting a quick answer from your scheduler can sometimes prove to be difficult.
Solve Your Own Problem. Often a mystery shopper is in a hurry to read the report. This may be due to a pending site visit or a deadline looming for submitting the report. Either way, reading the report questions in a hurry can sometimes lead to questions. You may be stressed out and under a time crunch, but take a deep breath and read through the question again. You may even need to read through it several times, and read the questions before and after this one to get some context of what the report is looking for. Oftentimes, you can answer your own questions by simply calming down and reading through the questions a few more times with a clear mind.
Call The Scheduler. If you have tried to answer your questions on the report on your own with no luck, the next step would be to pick up the phone give your scheduler a call. Too often in this day and age, people turn to email for communications. The problem with email is that you don’t know if someone is sitting there at the computer ready to receive your message, or even when they will be in front of the computer next and able to respond to you. When you pick up the phone and call them, you can typically expect a faster response. Even if you need to leave a voice message, most phones have an indicator light and notification sound when a voice message is waiting for them. If you are in a huge hurry, you can attempt to send an email after leaving a voice message. Trying to hit the scheduler on two fronts may be the best solution if you need to make sure you reach them in a hurry. If you haven’t received a response after a fair amount of time has passed, give the scheduler a second call. However, avoid the temptation to bombard the scheduler with calls every ten minutes and to fill up his or her voice mailbox with multiple messages. One message is often enough, even if you do call multiple times.
Hit The Forum. Your fellow mystery shoppers are a rich source of information. Oftentimes, you can find a mystery shopper who has completed similar reports for that same scheduler, and perhaps has even completed that same assignment in the past. With hundreds of mystery shoppers on the mystery shopping forum on a regular basis, a quick post to the forum often results in multiple answers within a matter of hours.
When The Deadline Approaches. If you have tried everything and still don’t have a clue how to respond to a question with the deadline for submitting the report fast approaching, write the best answer you can in a way that you think answers the question. Then, after submitting the report, send your scheduler an email saying that you attempted to reach them with a question on the report, and be sure to leave them the question number and your exact problem with the question. Offer to revise your answer if the scheduler finds that it doesn’t adequately answer the question.
It is always best to review the report well ahead of your site visit to allow you ample time to get any questions answered before the site visit. Yet even when you do this, questions may arise based on the circumstances of the site visit. Make your best effort of reaching the scheduler, and use your additional resources such as online forums to answer your question and get your report submitted on time.