Mystery Shopping Is HOT Again! How to Get in on the Action
Customer service and customer satisfaction has become extremely important for businesses wishing to retain and gain all the customers that they can in a lagging economy. As a result, the demand for “mystery shoppers”, people who pose as customers and evaluate their customer service, is at an all time high. Many Mystery Shopping Companies are actively recruiting shoppers. But what exactly is a “mystery shopper”?A mystery shopper, sometimes called a “secret shopper”, is a person posing as a customer who goes to a place of business with a prearranged goal, or assignment. Their identity, the fact they are there on assignment, is usually kept a secret from the business that they are sent to evaluate. In essence, they are undercover and posing as a regular patron. The place of business has contracted with a Mystery Shopping Company to assess their service to the public by sending in prehired shoppers to objectively report their interactions and findings. This helps the business evaluate their customer service and helps them plan how to improve it. The contracted shopper is paid for the evaluation. Sound interesting?Being a mystery shopper can be fun, flexible, and profitable. With mystery shopping, you will be working from home which allows you to set your own schedule and hours. It is perfect for stay at home mothers, retired people, and others that need extra income. It is possible to become a full time professional mystery shopper, it only takes some extra time and effort to develop the contacts needed to fill a full time schedule. If this sounds good, your next question may be, “Where do I find the jobs”?There are two main ways to find jobs as a mystery shopper. The first is to find a forum where mystery shopping members, those that are in the field right now, will often have lists of companies that are hiring. When you find such a list, apply to all of the companies on that list. I know shoppers that are signed up with over 200 mystery shopping companies. This line of thought is that the more companies that you apply for, the more mystery shopping jobs you will be offered.The second way to find mystery shopping jobs is to go to a job board where the jobs are posted by “schedulers”. Schedulers are people that are hired by Mystery Shopping Companies to fill the mystery shopping jobs that they have vacant. Once at the job board, do a search for your zip code and how far you are willing to travel from it. Looking at these postings will tell you which companies, what types of jobs, and what range of pay is offered in your area. I live in an area that has several small towns and cities, and this has been a very helpful method of finding companies with jobs in my location. One of the best job boards for this type of search is Jobslinger.com.
