Mystery Shopper
This undercover customer evaluates services, products, and gets a few perks.

Sunday, April 23, 2006
By Tracy Correa / The Fresno Bee

For several years, Judy Harlan got restaurant meals, coffee at Starbucks and even a few grocery items paid for — along with a little extra money for her time — in exchange for evaluating products and customer service at a host of Fresno-area businesses.

She was a mystery shopper, part of a growing $600million industry in the United States.

Mystery shoppers are undercover customers whom businesses rely on to evaluate everything from customer service to whether a restaurant meal met company standards.

"It's a good way to find out if people are doing their jobs," says Harlan, who worked for Los Gatos-based Infotel Inc., a company that employs mystery shoppers to check on businesses ranging from gas stations to fast-food chains.

National retailers and even banks are increasingly turning to mystery shopping agencies in an effort to improve service.

A 2005 survey by the Mystery Shopping Providers Association, shows that retailers rely on mystery shoppers more than any other industry. Retail was closely followed by banking/financial and then fast food. The same report showed that the mystery shopping industry grew about 11.1% from 2003 to 2004.

About 180 mystery shopping businesses make up the Mystery Shopping Providers Association, which hosts annual industry conventions in the U.S. and in Europe. These are businesses that retain rosters of shoppers they can employ to go undercover for a fee. They often recruit shoppers with newspaper advertisements and on the Internet.

This advertisement recently appeared in The Fresno Bee:

"Mystery shoppers earn up to $150 daily. Undercover shoppers needed to judge retail and dining establishments."

David Rich, president of the association, says services provided by the mystery shopping industry are important to businesses because these provide an in-depth, unbiased gauge for performance. The information then can be used for improvement or to reward employees who get it right.

"It's a lot of work," says Rich, who is also president of a mystery shopping business, ICC Decision Services in Wayne, N.J. "What companies are looking for is someone to go in and objectively measure what their standards are."

He says companies are wanting to know a lot more than whether their employees were courteous and helpful — they want detailed information. Rich says the work goes far beyond making a purchase and jotting down a few notes.

Rich says he works with businesses to draft programs that will best serve them, ones that can help them get the best information possible for the goals they have in mind.

Tony Yorba, executive vice president of National Shopping Service, a mystery shopping company based in Rocklin, near Sacramento, says customer satisfaction surveys give a business only basic information. Mystery shopping provides a more detailed analysis, he says.

"Customer satisfaction measurements will tell you whether a food is too hot or too cold. Mystery shopping results tell you how hot or too cold it was," Yorba says.

"We are there to measure the level of adherence to their [company] standards, whatever their standards may be — a certain greeting, ambience, degree of cleanliness," he says.

Harlan, who co-owned a fundraising business with her husband in Fresno, got involved in mystery shopping to make some extra money. When she got an assignment, she was told where to go and what to purchase with the promise that she would be reimbursed and paid a small fee after she filled out a detailed, online questionnaire with questions specific to the business and the visit. Eventually, her daughter and husband became mystery shoppers, too.

"I remember one of the earlier assignments that was really fun was to go to Bob's Big Boy," she says. The main task was to make sure that employees remembered to offer whatever promotion the restaurant had going on at the time.

She says she liked the assignment because the employees were awarded a prize for doing it correctly.

Harlan also mystery shopped at Sweet Tomatoes, a salad bar and buffet restaurant. She says mystery shoppers were expected to answer very detailed questions about their dining experiences. The questionnaire was so detailed, Harlan often had to take notes while eating at the restaurant.

"I tried to be discreet," she says.

The restaurant was focused on customer service and wanted to know the names of employees who tended to customers, she says.

"If I couldn't get a name and it wasn't obvious and I didn't feel comfortable asking, they wanted a description."

Starbucks was also one of Harlan's assignments.

"That was a kick," but it was a lot of work, too, she says.

The specialty coffee chain, Harlan says, wanted to ensure not only that service was good, but that the product being sold met company standards.

Harlan recalls having to buy latte, than having to run out to her car. "We had to test the temperature of the beverage, and the weight. They gave us a thermometer and a scale."

She says she would sometimes visit up to three Starbucks stores a day. "They tell you the day, time frame. ... Everything was very detailed."

Harlan stopped being a mystery shopper about two years ago because her husband was ill. She also says the work was becoming increasingly demanding and the pay too little.

"I think the biggest check I got was $100. It was a lot of work ... all the things you have to remember," she says.

Starbucks officials couldn't be reached for comment for this story. Attempts to reach other retailers that have relied on mystery shoppers also were unsuccessful. Those who hire mystery shoppers for businesses explain that rarely do the businesses want to publicize the programs.

"Businesses that use them don't always want to talk about it," Rich says. There may not be a benefit to letting the competition know what you are doing, he adds.

Yorba says most shoppers don't get rich being mystery shoppers. But they can make decent money.

"Shopper pay ranges from $5 to $5,000 a month, depending on what you do and what market you live in. The busier ones are in the bigger cities," he says.

His company, launched in 1972, uses from 3,000 to 5,000 mystery shoppers every month and works on behalf of about 85 businesses. "We are in every nook and cranny," he says. "Fresno is one our growing markets."

Stefan Doomanis, vice president of Dynamic Advantage Inc. in Burbank, says his company's mystery shoppers range from students to retired people.

"Some people do it for a living; some people for the merchandise," he says, explaining that retail outlets let mystery shoppers keep what they buy.

Doomanis says that, generally, mystery shoppers will get a service fee ranging from $12 to $50.

Mystery shopping companies generally strive to deploy a mystery shopper whose profile would fit with the type of customer the business would be expected to attract. For example, Doomanis says he probably wouldn't send a 95-year-old woman to buy big truck tires.

"We would want somebody knowledgable and excited about what they are buying," he says.

"We have to match whatever demographic the business site is catering to," Yorba adds. "Like a big and tall [clothing] store is probably going to want someone big and tall."

Mystery shopping companies stress that being a mystery shopper isn't easy. It is involved work that requires the shopper to be observant and detail oriented. In fact, if shoppers aren't good at supplying the precise information the companies are seeking, their work can be rejected and they probably won't be called on additional assignments.

The Mystery Shopping Providers Association also cautions that the increased popularity of mystery shoppers has led to industry scams.

The scams, in the form of advertisements, including e-mails, promise consumers rewards such as shopping trips, dinners and other gifts for a one-time fee that can help consumers get paid to shop. Getting leads on mystery shopping assignments should not cost, those in the industry say.

Rich says the best thing about mystery shopping is that it is good for business, especially competitive industries where trying to measure performance doesn't always come down to dollars and cents.

"We have a measure for profit, for sales, but there isn't any sort of measurement for service," he says. This is where mystery shopping comes in, he adds.