Mystery Shopping, the term is reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes snooping around with his magnifying glass. Well, a mystery shopper does not really snoop around like investigators but carefully analyses, collects, and documents the demonstration of employees of a particular organization.

The practice of mystery shopping dates back decades ago and has been prevalent in the western countries. Considering customer service and satisfaction has been of utmost importance to growing business, it is no wonder that mystery shopping, loyalty checks, customer retention analysis have to mapped, studied and researched extensively. So much so that an entire vertical in the service industry is dedicated to mystery shopping and allied activities. Typically, a company evaluates itself on various parameters, including internal clients and external customers. Internal clients of a company mean the employees of the company. Employees are brand ambassadors or the face of the organisation, through which the world at large forms perceptions of the company.

How to Become a Mystery Shopper

You can be a mystery shopper in your spare time, and make a difference to the service you get. What is more, you will actually get paid to do it, besides getting your little shopping bouts sponsored. In the Indian mystery shopping area, where a few market research companies provided service, organized players are making an entry.

Mystery shoppers are employed by companies to understand how they are perceived by their customers. The purpose of this tool is to gauge the standards of the services provided, and to attract potential and aspiring customers. Such companies hire the services of a third party organization to appraise them overall, depending on what the client company wishes to review. This is where I came into picture as a mystery shopper. I have worked for a giant, premier real estate and construction company in southern Mumbai in the sales team. One can imagine the elite crowd I would interact with on a daily basis. That called for my inherent powers of dressing and being presentable at any and every given point of client interaction.

How This Works – My Experience

It happened like this, I had come across a job alert which looked authentic on the face of it. It stated that there was a part time requirement in the fashion segment in South Mumbai. I was to register at the website, which asked for age, occupation, income, my eye-sight details, the gadgets which I owned, like recording devices and so on. Pretty soon I was taking a certification test which qualifies me as a mystery shopper. I had only three attempts and was given no further chance to take part in individual test certifications. I cruised through the test in the first go. No sooner than I thought, I was mystery shopping at a leading designer outlet and doing what I was instructed. I was reimbursed the expenditure in a period of 45 days after sending in my observations in a recorded format. I have been mystery shopping ever since. The best part is, I got to keep those expensive, designer outfits which I would not have otherwise bought only because of the price tag.