Secret Spender: Mystery Shopping Has Made Big Returns
By Jeanne
Sturiale
JOURNAL REPORTER
As names go,
Don Clark's is pretty common. If it wasn't, Clark might
not be as willing to identify himself through his
not-so-common work as a mystery shopper - posing secretly
in Triad stores to report on customer service and other
processes.
In the
close-knit Triad, mystery shoppers tend to shield their
identities like PricewaterhouseCoopers has guarded the
names of tonight's Oscar winners.
As one
seasoned shopper, "Jean," said recently, "It could blow my
anonymity."
Being front
and center doesn't bother Clark, however. He's been
mystery shopping in North Carolina, on and off, since the
early 1990s. He works it around his full-time job with a
packaging-goods company.
Clark, 58,
likes variety. Mystery shopping has sent him undercover to
dozens of businesses.
"I've done
Hardee's, McDonald's," Clark said. "I've done banks. I've
done drug stores, grocery stores, home-improvement stores.
I've done video stores."
Mystery
shoppers go for detail, and lots of it. They check the
temperature of food at restaurants. Or the demeanor of
grocery-store clerks. Or the way aisles are set up in
hardware stores.
"Dawn," a
mystery shopper in Winston-Salem, said: "You pretend you
are a camera, just like a camera. You just tell it the
same way."
These days,
more people - whether working professionals, retirees or
stay-at-home moms - are trying their hand at mystery
shopping.
Technology,
and a tough economy, have helped bring it out of
obscurity.
Other than
store visits, most mystery shopping today occurs online.
The Internet has streamlined data collection and
management. It has also produced a flood of third-party,
mystery-shopping companies that link shoppers and clients'
job requests.
Clark is
registered with 15 such companies, including Beyond
Marketing Group Inc. in Winston-Salem. It's one of Triad's
few mystery-shopping specialty companies.
Lynette
Hawkins, the owner, devotes about 60 percent of her
consulting business to mystery shopping. She serves client
companies, and she screens, trains, assigns and pays
mystery shoppers. Hawkins does business in 42 states and
has access to a database of more than 77,000 shoppers.
Since the
economy's downturn, Hawkins said, applications have poured
in, from the Triad and elsewhere.
"Former
employees of major companies in the area, such as banks,
airlines and packaged-goods companies, have been a part of
our mix," Hawkins said. "People that have been downsized
or out-placed have looked to mystery shopping as another
means of supplementing their income."
The returns
on mystery shopping vary, Clark said. Bank "shops," for
instance, can pay anywhere from $8 for a five-minute stint
at a drive-through teller to $25 or more for complex jobs.
On a recent afternoon, Clark did back-to-back jobs at four
banks, netting about $80, he said.
At one bank,
Clark's task was to scrutinize the drive-through teller:
Was her greeting cheery? Was she chewing gum? How quickly
did she deliver his roll of quarters? (Clark always has a
stopwatch or digital watch close by.)
After each
job, Clark fills out a questionnaire. Later, he will send
the information from his home PC to the mystery-shopping
company. From there, it goes to the client.
Businesses
find mystery-shopping programs helpful, experts said,
because competitive advantage can hinge on customer
service. Harris Teeter, Lowe's Cos. Inc., BB&T Corp. and
Oakwood Homes are a few of the N.C. companies with
programs. National chains have them, too.
Carl
Phillips of Customer First, a mystery-shopping company in
Greensboro, said that in recent years he has seen more
diverse industries enter mystery shopping. He's also seen
a bigger demand for competitive shopping, where clients
receive evaluations on their competitors.
One of
Phillips' clients, Village Tavern restaurants in
Winston-Salem, is in mystery shopping for the long haul.
Mark Rine, the chief financial officer, said that the
results help the company identify its strengths and
opportunities.
"It
encourages our service staff to perform at the highest
level," Rine said.
Employees
learn in training that they will be mystery shopped, and
they react well to it, he said.
John
Swinburn of the Mystery Shoppers Providers Association in
Dallas, Texas, said that the financial impact of mystery
shopping is hard to pin down.
"Some of the
numbers being thrown around are in the many hundreds of
millions, one-and-a-half billion," Swinburn said. "All
signs suggest that it will continue to grow."
The
association sets standards and helps prevent unethical
practices. It has also created shopper-certification
programs.
With mystery
shopping more widespread, shoppers need to be on their
toes. E-mail scams and deceptive claims abound. Sometimes,
Web sites require a fee to access job lists that are free
on other sites.
David
Dalrymple, of the Better Business Bureau of Northwest
North Carolina, said that he gets at least one call a day
from consumers checking on mystery-shopping offers.
Also,
competition among shoppers can be intense, Clark said. "If
you don't get to the Web site in time, the other people
that are doing mystery shopping are going to get the
shop," he said.
Elaine
Buxton of Confero Inc., a mystery-shopping company in
Cary, pointed out that mystery-shopping companies don't
like to send the same shoppers to the same places.
"We always
have to have fresh blood for each project," Buxton said.
"Consequently, it's not reliable work."
Big cities
usually offer more opportunities. Meredith Koeval, who
moved from Miami to Winston-Salem more than a year ago,
said that she has been disappointed in offerings here.
Still, to
some local people, the flexibility - and the intrigue - of
mystery shopping can't be beat.
"Jean," a
housewife in Yadkin County with 14 years of
mystery-shopping experience, said that newcomers should
think small.
"You have to
start at the very bottom. Do the little $5 shop," Jean
said.
"It's tough,
but if you're diligent and you treat it as a job, you can
really make, part-time at least, a couple of hundred extra
a month," she said.
Hawkins
believes that, with more exposure to mystery shopping, the
local market will grow, for both mystery shoppers and
companies using it.
"Whenever
there are businesses that deal with the public, there's an
opportunity for someone to do a mystery shop," she said.
BE MYSTERIOUS
Want to work as a mystery shopper? The Better Business
Bureau has some tips:
DO:
• Carefully research and scrutinize any "mystery
shopper" business.
• Look for reputable companies that qualify and train
shoppers and enjoy a good reputation with clients and
other shoppers.
• Check the business out with the Better Business Bureau.
AVOID:
• Claims of easy, big profits, or ones that guarantee a
position without training.
• Unsolicited e-mails offering "work from home."
• Paying money up front. A legitimate mystery-shopping
service won't charge for materials, training or
recruiting. Source: The Better Business Bureau of
Northwest North Carolina
Reprinted from
http://www.journalnow.com
Yours
in success,
Jennifer Callahan
admin@mysteryshopnow.com
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