What is 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 involves the mystery shopper carrying out several tests while wearing recording equipment to show exactly what happens as they do it. Once they have finished they can then write out their written report whilst watching back the video footage. Choosing people to be a mystery shopper can be a detailed process this is because they may have a certain profile for the kind of person they want to carry out the test and they need to be sure the person will be observant, thorough, discreet and unbias. 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 Mystery Shoppers– This form of mystery shopping for mail order companies is usually to determine the speed of service and delivery. 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.