Welcome to the Mystery Shopping Learning Center Blog

This third post in the series for tools, tips, and sites that will help you as a mystery shopper will cover items that will help during your shop. If you haven’t yet checked them out, our first post in this series discussed basic office supplies you may need as a shopper, and the second post discussed items that are helpful when preparing for shops.

In your car
While you can never take shop reports or instructions into the location with you, or take notes while you’re doing the shop, it is a good idea to keep your car equipped with some organizational tools, such as a clipboard and pens, a notebook for recording notes after your shop (and once you’re away from the location!), and even a coupon file folder or other similar holder to store receipts and business cards.

Some shoppers will even purchase an inexpensive voice recorder so they can “dictate” shop details as they are driving home. Most are hands free, so you can lay it on the seat next to you to talk while you’re driving. This way details are fresh in your mind and you will have something to refer back to afterwards.

If you plan on taking notes in your car after your shop, it is highly recommended that you drive out of the location’s parking lot – you don’t want to be caught taking notes!

During the shop
Cell phones are a great tool! Most have a timer or stopwatch that will run and allow you to “record” certain timings. If you keep it in your coat pocket while you’re waiting in line, you can easily record timings in a covert manner.

For example, if a quick serve restaurant wants you to time how long you waited in line, how long the transaction took, and how long it took to receive your order, you can start the stopwatch once you get in line. Hit the record button once you reach the register, again when the transaction is complete, and a last time when you receive your order. This will be stored on your phone for reference.

Cell phones have other great tools, such as the texting/memo feature – it will look like you are texting someone – but don’t overuse this one so you don’t stand out! A couple of quick words to jog your memory will be helpful.

You can even call your home and leave a voice mail with some key details. Just remember to talk softly and make sure employees aren’t within earshot!

A great service along these lines is Jott. You can register for a basic free service in which you register your cell phone number. You can call and leave a message (up to 15 seconds) and it will transcribe your message and then send it to your email. There are other packages for a fee, but for short messages, the free service should suffice.

Finally, if you have to evaluate the restroom during your shop, take advantage of that few minutes! Make some quick notes on paper that is in your purse or wallet to refer to later.

Writing the report
A few tips for report writing may save you time and frustrating. If you are entering the report into an online system, be aware of any time limits – I’ve heard from shoppers over the years who draft a narrative and then the system shuts them out, losing their work!

The best piece of advice is to write up the narrative in a Word document. Once you are finished, then you have that as a reference while you’re answering the report questions. This will help you make sure you’ve included all of the needed information, justified any low ratings, and covered all of your bases. This will also help ensure that your responses match what you say in the narrative. Finally, you can copy and paste your narrative onto the report. Not only does this save you time, but it will save the mystery shopping company time as well – there will likely be less follow up needed, and your ratings will be higher!

Hopefully the tips and sites we’ve shared help you in your work. We always strive to give you as much information as possible to make your work easier and more enjoyable! If you have any sites, tips, or tricks to share, your comments are always welcome!

Until next time…happy shopping!