Mystery Shopping: a Tool for Excellence in Service Delivery; Mystery Searching: a Tool for Excellence in Business Management

A mystery shopper is a person employed by an organization, often temporarily, to buy goods and services from it with the aim of ascertaining the quality of service delivery by staffs within the organization.  The mystery shopper is often times unknown to the staff that will be attending to him/her. This distinct advantage allows the mystery shopper to obtain facts about the conditions of service given to him/her and obtainable within the organization without bias. For instance, if a mystery shopper is hired to observe the conditions of service obtainable in a mall, he may be required by the employer to obtain facts such as:
* the length of time spent on queues,
* the service approach of the front line staff,
* how much product knowledge the staff had,
* the look and ambiance of the service store,
* the ability of the staff and manager to handle difficult situations or handle an irate customer (this
   the mystery shopper can achieve by pretending to be difficult or even unreasonable),
* the type of products that may appeal to customers by observing the preference of multiple mystery shoppers etc.

Mystery shopping has become a perfect tool for achieving excellence in service delivery as organizations now use this to improve on areas that impact negatively on service delivery. But mystery shopping only helps us improve the quality of service delivery by front line staff. How about the quality of service delivered by back room staffs, departments, senior managers, human resource personnel, sales personnel, finance personnel and research personnel. These groups of people also deliver service to the organization even though not at the front line. Whilst it may be argued that control personnel are there to monitor the quality of their service delivery, we must not forget that control personnel also monitor the performances of front line staffs. In essence, the mystery searcher is there to provide a third eye that is usually missed out by internal staffs. The ability of these groups of staff to deliver business excellence will affect the growth of the organization. This is where I encourage the use of people I call mystery searchers to perform what I call mystery searching.

A mystery searcher is a person employed by an organization temporarily or otherwise to ascertain and observe the conditions and quality of service delivered by back room staffs, senior managers, human resource personnel etc. For instance, an organization may employ the use of a mystery searcher as a candidate in a recruitment exercise to observe the quality of the recruitment and quality of service delivery of staffs assigned to attend to potential employees. Also mystery searchers can be included as vendors to search out the activities of staffs in purchasing unit. A mystery searcher may be assigned as an employee in a department or unit or to observe the controllers assigned to units. 

There is no limit to where a mystery searcher may be deployed as long as it is employed to achieve excellence in service delivery. Whilst it is crucial to ensure that front line staffs deliver excellent service, it is also crucial for organizations to ensure that the managers and back office staffs they employ deliver excellent service to the organization.

Valentine Okolo

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