Mystery Shoppers: An Evaluation of their use as Service Performance Monitors

Mystery Shoppers are used worldwide by services to evaluate the performance of their front-line people and processes but are their evaluations valid and relia ble? This paper examines what mystery shopping is, why it is used and how mystery customers are trained an d how the information collected is fed back to the client organisation. An on-line survey of mystery shoppers compares the reality of the situation with the bes t practice identified from the extant literature. Res ults identify good and bad practices in all areas o f the process and guidelines for the recruitment, trainin g and monitoring of mystery shoppers are proposed including in-depth training in all aspects of the j ob.