Some mystery shoppers just seem to breeze right through their assignments, completing site visits and reports with absolute ease. Others, however, do seem to get caught up in a variety of problems with a significant number of assignments they complete. If you fall into that latter group of mystery shoppers, you no doubt are completely frustrated with the mystery shopping process. There are, however, a few things that you can do to help make mystery shopping easier for you. In fact, here are three things that you may want to watch out for as you complete your mystery shopping reports:
Writing Errors. Who would have thought that you have to be a decent writer to be great at mystery shopping? Yet writing reports is indeed half the job, and the better you can write, the faster and more profitable you will be in this job. Reports that are riddled with grammar, spelling, and punctuation issues are often flagged by mystery shopping providers, and this means they often come back to you for corrections which takes up more of your valuable time. More than that, if you are constantly getting reports sent back to you, providers may ding your “shopper rating,” which can affect your ability to earn more money on better assignments.
Assumptions and Lies. Sometimes as a mystery shopper you are just too busy to write down all of the details about what you really observed at a site visit. Other times, perhaps you forgot to make an observation that was required and have no choice but to guess. These are just a few of the reasons why you may be inclined to enter some false information into your mystery shopping report. Of course, before you do, you want to consider that if you are caught doing this, you may be prohibited from working with that provider again. Plus, the information you provide could also affect other people in negative ways, such as if the corporate offices use the false information you provided in a report to reprimand a store manager, or some other similar situation.
Skimpy Details. Providing scanty details in your report is also a big “no no.” Of course, you don’t want to spend your time writing down copious amounts of information that becomes almost repetitive, but you do need to provide enough details in your report to give the provider and the corporate office that ordered the report with a complete picture of what you observed. The fact is that you are very much paid to be their eyes and ears, so to speak, and so you have to communicate what you observed in written format. When you provide skimpy details, there is very little benefit given to those who ordered the report in the first place.
Often times, you can avoid some of the most common “no no’s” when it comes to writing reports by keeping the big picture of mystery shopping in mind. This means remembering that your site visit and the responses you provide in your report are going to be used by several people for different purposes, and this information is indeed valuable in many ways. So do your best to provide truthful, complete, and grammatically correct responses at all times!