Many mystery shoppers stumble into the job in their efforts to find a money-making job that they can do out of their home. Some are looking for part-time work, and others are working for full-time work with flexible hours. Either way, most are indeed working in the field for the income, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to work in a way that contributes positively to society in some way. As a mystery shopper, it’s easy to focus on the income different assignments but provide and lose focus of just how important these assignments are for society as a whole. Here are some different ways that this job does indeed make a difference:
Improving Customer Service
When you shoot off a report to your provider, that report then goes back to corporate headquarters or to the on-site manager at the venue you shopped. Through the various questions that you answer on the report, you provide valuable feedback to higher-ups in this company with regards to customer service. Those higher-ups then take your feedback and use it for training purposes. Some of the feedback will be used to train new hires while other feedback will be used for continuing education with their staff as a whole or even for individual improvement directly with the employee you interacted with.
Improving Food Quality
If you have ever done a mystery shopping assignment at a restaurant or other type of dining establishment, you know first-hand that many of these questions relate not just to customer service but also to the quality of food including taste and flavor, temperature, and more. This feedback likewise is used to improve the service in the kitchen so that future customers who visit that restaurant have a better dining experience than you may have had. .
Cleanliness
Almost every report that you prepare as a mystery shopper will ask you to comment on the cleanliness of the facility. This goes for retail clothing stores, grocery stores, restaurants, and more. Often you will be asked to step into fitting rooms, restrooms, and other more confined or removed areas as well as the main public area of the venue so that you can comment on the entire facility. Your comments are sent back to the site location so they can make improvements that will boost the overall customer experience.
Service-Oriented Businesses
There are some mystery shopping assignment for service-oriented businesses that require you to get a hair cut, open a bank account, get an oil change, or something similar. The feedback you are providing on these assignments allow you help these venues improve the overall service that the customers are paying for. Your feedback is ultimately used to boost customer satisfaction beyond just ensuring that the employees are friendly and prompt with their service but go to improve the actual service itself that the customer is paying for.
Ultimately, your responses on the mystery shopping reports are used in many different ways to improve the customer experience in so many different ways. In the grand scheme of things, these reports help to keep the doors open at these businesses, which in turn serves to employ different people and to keep the wheels of the economy moving.