mystery shoppers

[adrockmelanie]

have any of you had any experience with mystery shopping?

when i worked at the theater, we'd get written up or fired if we were caught not informing every single customer that "your medium is only 45 cents more and twice the size!".. and when my sister worked at mcdonalds, she said it was required for them to suggest an additional item to every person.

being one of those mystery shoppers that is supposed to catch you doing/not doing your job seems pretty rad. the company pays for your food/movie/hotel/whatever and they pay you for your time, too, usually. i've looked at a couple applications on their websites, but i was just wondering if any of you had done anything like that before. let me know, kiddos.

[Knuckles]

sounds like being a hall monitor

[ToucanSpam]

People to check to see if you are doing your job right.....I dunno sounds pretty stupid, but good for the company. I wouldn't want to be the one doing it.

I think I saw one before. They asked 'dont you wanna ask me to super size my fries and drink?'. Yeesh.

[mp-seventythree]

Me and my girlfriend used to do a kind of mystery shopping for a company that owns a lot of nightclubs. We used to go into a club, get three rounds of drinks during the evening, check how clean and undamaged the restrooms were twice in the evening, check the service of staff at the ticket booth, cloakrooms, see how security staff reacted to situations, check the prices of drinks against the tariff, make sure the drinks tariff was somewhere it could be read by customer and so on...

Then the next morning we would write a report and e-mail it to our boss, who would then send it to the company.
We got a fee of £80 (about $150) for three hours in the club plus the time it took to write the report; we also got back money for our fuel, the cost of entry to the club, and food and drinks purchased there (we always screwed them on the fuel and the drinks). We did one or two of these each week, and it used to pay for our trips abroad.

On one job the club had a really bad problem with drug dealers. I ended up getting in a fight with an ecstasy dealer in the toilets, and rammed his face into a urinal.

It was fun work for decent money, alas we're both the wrong side of 30 now and would stand out somewhat in clubs filled with people who are 18-25.

[ToucanSpam]

If I was one for McDonalds, I would throw the food out after I got it...Assuming I don't have to pay for it.
McDonald's is pants......I think I used that right.


But yeah, McDonalds is like the armpit of fast food. That's where I saw that dude order shit and ask them to ask them about upsizing his fries. Psh.

[GetYourWarOn]

have any of you had any experience with mystery shopping?

when i worked at the theater, we'd get written up or fired if we were caught not informing every single customer that "your medium is only 45 cents more and twice the size!".. and when my sister worked at mcdonalds, she said it was required for them to suggest an additional item to every person.

being one of those mystery shoppers that is supposed to catch you doing/not doing your job seems pretty rad. the company pays for your food/movie/hotel/whatever and they pay you for your time, too, usually. i've looked at a couple applications on their websites, but i was just wondering if any of you had done anything like that before. let me know, kiddos.


i used to work in a sporting goods store when i was in college and we had secret shoppers come in all the time. one of the things they did which really pissed me off was stay in the parking lot after closing time and not only mark down the times that we left the store, but also make a note of which employees left together and in which cars.





i gotta say though, it does seem like a pretty rad job.

[enree erzweglle]

Where my son worked this past summer, they'd send in people dressed
as patrons who would intentionally try to rile those employees who had
direct contact with the public. Then, they'd evaluate them, the way they
handled the situation. Based on their performance, the managers would
inform the employee of the evaluation and reward them when appropriate.

I'd absolutely hate that practice, but I also understand the need to do
it because the entire business is based on customer service and they
have a lot of kids <18 working there.

[ms.peachy]

I used to work for a chain of organic food shops, and we would do mystery shops as part of a training scheme for new employees. It wasn't as comprehensive as some of these professional programs seem to be, but I think it was quite a good training tool, because then the new hires would really get to see the shop from a customers perspective, and how a good or bad experience could affect the likelihood of someone deciding to shop there again or not. And of course the feedback helped us a company identify where there might be problems that needed to be addressed.

[Documad]

I telemarketed for a home shopping network back when they first started. When the customer called in to order the thing on TV, we were supposed to talk them into a special of the day as well. Our managers were supposed to listen in to make sure we offered it. But my manager was so high all the time, he rarely did the monitoring, and he was really obvious when he did it. I only sold the extras when it was something I wanted to win (top seller of the shift got the item).

When I worked at Target they said they had secret shoppers but I never believed it. They were all about cheap prices rather than customer service back then. Our store manager was the rudest bastard to customers.