Mystery Shopping
With customer services becoming a bigger issue than ever for most companies more are employing the services of mystery shoppers to secretly test the attitude and work performance of their employees. There are different types of mystery 
shopper all specialising in various types of business there are certain mystery shopper companies that work in specific areas of business as they have expertise in that particular area. for example there are companies that will specialise in places such as supermarkets and others that work mainly with online companies both of these need to have good customer service skills and how efficiently the staff serve the customer will also come into the final assessment, here are some examples of how the mystery shopper system works in different working environments;
- Video mystery shopper – This is a process where the mystery shopper will be required to carry out a selection of tests in various situations whilst filming exactly what happens while the tests are being carried out. After they have completed the various tests they are required to write a written report whilst looking back at the video footage they filmed through out. The process for choosing people to be the mystery shoppers is just as careful as the actual testing carried out, this is because they need to make sure that the person will be reliable, unbiased and discreet. This is because although the people being tested may well know they are going to be visited by a mystery shopper they aren’t to know who the mystery shopper is, otherwise this will defeat the whole point of the process.
- Postal monitoring – This is where the company being tested is a mail order company either online or written postal order. The main object of these kind of tests are to determine the speed at which the company processes an 
order and the delivery arrives at the persons home. All that is required of the person carrying out the tests is to place an order with the company through the normal process and then to time the delivery and also comment on the customer service if they are required to use the service at any point.
- Home addressee testing – This is different to the normal high street testing in the way that it is the testing of home representatives of companies such as insurance or energy suppliers. It involves members of the public because the person carrying out the tests will have to use the house of a possible customer to film and report on the representative’s attitude and service. The person carrying out the testing will have to arrange with people in the area being covered by representatives for them to use their home for the testing.