Weaknesses of Mystery Shoppers

In the last article, we looked at some of the benefits of mystery shopping to companies hoping to gain more insight into customer service and the customer experience. Mystery shopping does have many benefits, especially as a complement to other research tactics. But mystery shopping has weaknesses as well, causing the service – and how it's interpreted – to not be ideal for all companies.

Small Sample We've discussed at length how important it is to have a sample size that's meaningful, and mystery shopping is the smallest of the small samples – a single customer's experience at your company with your employees. Even the best employees can have a moment where they provide poor customer service, or something they do is interpreted poorly and seen as something it's not by the person reviewing them. While bad customer service should be punished, it's the interpretation you get form that data (that an employee does not provide good customer service) that may be incorrect.

This is true of any of the judgments you make about someone or something based on the single experience. Not Ideal for Many Companies Your company needs to be one that not only can benefit from mystery shopping, but can also train the mystery shopper to understand what they should be looking for. If you want a mystery shopper to go through the sales process at your B2B company, you need them to fully understand how to talk about the products.

Similarly, you need them to actually have enough to discuss for it to be worth the visit. A small coffee shop with a single employee may not gain as much through the mystery shopping experience. Further Research Needed As always, basing any company-wide changes on a single customer experience is a poor idea, and so while mystery shopping can stimulate further research, it shouldn't be expected to promote any changes to your company on its own.

Mystery shopping has an interesting tool that can help you get insight into the customer experience that is difficult to get in any other way. It also makes a good motivation tool for employees and helps to spot problem areas in customer service. It's not a great standalone tool and isn't useful for all businesses, but if you can afford to add mystery shopping to your current evaluation practices it may easily be worthwhile.