Shopping’s great mysteries
Secret video and recorded sound are new weapons for a growing army of retail researchers.
Cruising pubs to see if bar tenders would offer him a new beer was Brian’s* favourite mystery shopping assignment.
‘‘I got paid for the beer and a fee for drinking it, so it was rather nice.’’
As one of New Zealand’s thousands of contract mystery shoppers, the former emergency services worker earns about $30 per job, and has also tried on clothing and feigned interest in buying a sofa in the line of duty.
Although ‘‘secret shoppers’’ are often associated with retail, users of the service include banks, hotels, fast food chains, health providers, pawnbrokers, petrol stations and airlines.
Air New Zealand introduced mystery shoppers in 2014, and on a long haul flight one of its mystery shoppers can expect to answer up to 200 questions on everything from their airport experience to the in-flight food.
The owner of a national homewares chain says investing $1200 in getting all its branches mystery shopped once a month is money well spent.
‘‘If you’re conscious of every person possibly being the mystery shopper, that’s a good thing.
‘‘The real benefit is that you can take that [mystery shopper] report, sit down with the team member that got ‘shopped’ and talk about what they did well, what they missed, and how to do better next time.’’
Retail NZ uses mystery shoppers to judge entrants in its national ‘‘Top Shop’’ awards, and marketing manager Greg Harford says the feedback is very helpful.
‘‘Growth in online shopping is far greater than instore spending, so it’s really important that retailers are providing a top notch customer experience.’’
New Zealand has half a dozen major players offering mystery shopping services that go well beyond reporting on staff or customer interactions.
There’s ‘‘audit’’ shopping to ensure stores are complying with company policies on pricing, advertising promotions, training programmes and staff dress standards.
Scenario shopping checks specific procedures, such as when Brian returned a shirt he bought to see if staff stuck to the store returns process.
‘‘My excuse was going to be that my wife hated it. They never asked, but I had it ready in case.’’
Competitor shopping allows businesses to see how they compare with others in their sector, and Trevor Harrowfield of the Mystery Shop Network says that does not always go down well.
‘‘We used to do a lot of price check work and we had shoppers literally frog marched out of stores and threatened with trespass orders because there’s big money involved, and some of the managers would get very sensitive if they thought someone was snooping on their pricing policy.’’
Secret squirrel stuff
The use of covert video and audio recordings is another controversial area. Some mystery shopping companies regard it as too intrusive and won’t do it.
Richard Potton of Hoed Mystery Shopping, says his contractors only secretly record if a client expressly requests it.
‘‘It’s not common.… It’s a fairly difficult part of the business because you need very good equipment.’’
Employment lawyer Blair Scotland of Dundas Street Employment Lawyers says it’s quite lawful for a mystery shopper to secretly video or audio record a conversation they are party to.
But he would advise telling staff that random recordings could be used for performance assessment or training purposes.
Scotland says employers can get into trouble if they ask a mystery shopper to target a particular employee, pestering them or pressuring them to act inappropriately, and effectively ‘‘setting them up to fail.’’
Harrowfield thinks it is better to be up front with staff even if it does create a ‘spot the mystery shopper’ mentality.
‘‘One smart Alec said ‘we don’t need to do mystery shopping, we just tell them that we’re going to do it; problem solved.’
‘‘You do get an immediate improvement if staff know, but that will diminish over time.’’
Mystery shopping skills
Observant, reliable, tech-savvy, a good memory and an ability to blend in, are some of the attributes companies like Shoppers Anon look for when recruiting.
Managing director Nigel Burrows’ describes it as the ‘‘grey man approach.’’
He has shoppers aged 18 to 70-plus on his books and the ability to support a good back story is an asset.
‘‘We’ve been known to use people from amateur dramatic societies.’’
Harrowfield notes that more new immigrants wanting work experience are applying for mystery shopping jobs.
While the language barrier is a challenge, with the changing demographics in parts of Auckland, businesses that can handle multicultural customers have an advantage, he says.
‘‘We’ve had instances of shoppers going into inner city bars and being treated badly because bar tenders couldn’t understand their order.
‘‘That’s interesting because a reasonable proportion of potential clients is from that sector and [staff] need to be able to handle those situations.’’
Vicki* has nine years mystery shopping under her belt.
She feels a bit uncomfortable about being asked to target problem employees and refused to do secret video recording.
But she was thrilled to be given a bunch of credit cards just before Christmas and told to spend $450 at 25 stores with the goods as payment. ‘‘It was great fun.’’
The rule is to deny being a secret shopper if staff ask. ’’I’ve had a couple of bad experiences. I’ve been sworn at and called a loser, you just ignore it, finish the job and walk away.’’
Face-to-face benefits
Mystery shopping companies are coy about their charges, but payments to shoppers generally range from $20 to $75, depending on how long a job takes.
Philip Merceica, group chief executive of Market Pulse International, says his company does close to 50,000 mystery shops annually throughout New Zealand, Australia, and South East Asia, with about a third occurring here.
Clients pay tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands for the service, and Merceica says it’s a competitive business as more large international organisations go after a share of the New Zealand market.
Despite the ease of online customer surveys, many offering prizes to elicit responses, Merceica believes there will always be a place for the face-to-face element and objectivity of mystery shopping.
Potton agrees, saying that online feedback is often negative and incentives like prizes lead to biased results.
A mystery shopper can pick up little things that can make a big difference to customer service such as feeling unwelcome, or a lack of knowledge about merchandise, warranties, specials and loyalty schemes, he says.
‘‘All that stuff impacts on bottom lines.’’
After a lull about six years ago, Potton says businesses and ‘‘the hard research boys’’ are recognising the value of mystery shopping alongside online surveys.
‘‘I think people have come out the other end now and they’ve realised that you cannot rely on that type of feedback. It’s just not sufficient.’’
*Mystery shoppers’ names have been changed to preserve their anonymity.