Video Mystery Shopping

Modern technology has dramatically changed the mystery shopping industry. The value of information derived from video mystery shops offers unlimited potential to improve employee professionalism and effectiveness. Traditional mystery shopping services relied upon written reports, completed after a mystery shop, to evaluate businesses, and where limited to the extent that the subjectiveness and memory of the individual shopper could be outcome determinative. Telephone mystery shopping, which originally began as a means to test call centers, raised the bar, by providing clients with direct evidence of employee/customer interactions.

Now, through the advent of miniaturized video and audio recording devices, video mystery shopping provides businesses with the best way to evaluate customer service, employee performance, and integrity. For the first time, operations can be objectively viewed by a business from the vantage point of a customer. Concerns about the credibility of an individual mystery shopper, and reliability of the information gathered, are easily satisfied by viewing the audio/video recording. A client is able to interpret the video mystery shop based upon their own criteria and specific areas of focus. Video mystery shopping also has the added benefit of providing a tape or DVD which can be used for employee training, reward, and incentive programs. In addition, video mystery shops are ideal for integrity tests, and in the rare instance when an employee is found to have engaged in unethical or illegal conduct, provide documentary proof of the same.