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Mystery Shopper is a bitch

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  • #46
    Quoth blas87 View Post
    Usually, Sylvia, but not always. There are some young guys I see at the bar with some grey spots intertwined in their over-gelled brown or black hair.

    My dad first started going gray when he was about 25.
    I've had grey hair since I was 16. I'm more than double that now.
    ludo ergo sum

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    • #47
      Quoth blas87 View Post
      I got mystery shopped at the gas station once, and got 100%. But this guy was not stealth, at all.

      He asked where the bathrooms were. Normal enough question, but he asked it in a way which made me think he was keeping a mental checklist.

      He asked something about how old the lights outside were, or if any of them were out. Then he went outside to look at them? Ok, dead give away.

      Then he asked if we sold magazines or catalogues. I said no, only local newspapers and the Trading Post. He asked "So you obviously don't sell anything pornographic?" and I said "Nope." (I guess part of BP's secret shops was to make sure we weren't selling Hustler???!)

      There were a few more questions and whatnot, but I got 100%...and it was just that easy.
      Sounds more like an audit than a shop to me. I've done gas station shops before, but not audits. I'm trained though to do audits.

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      • #48
        I still have a huge grudge against the mystery shopper genre. See, one almost got me fired from the evil green coffee empire.

        The store failed a shop. According to the shop, the store was an utter disaster, the garbages were overflowing and both baristas were on cell phones talking to friends as they served customers. The barista on the bar supposedly made the cappuccino as a latte. While on the phone.

        The barista on the phone matched my description perfectly. At the time, I was the only red head working there and the only "skinny" woman working there (back then I was quite thin, every other woman there was very curvy to pretty overweight, no chance that skinny would be the adjective used for anyone else). It HAD to be me from that description.

        Difficulty: My start date for that summer was about two weeks after the shop date.

        That's the only thing that kept me from being fired. I was actually fired, and as I was being fired I demanded to see the report and noticed the date, so the manager took it back. Sadly, it took more than a few minutes to pound into his head the idea that I couldn't possibly have done this since I wasn't even back in state from school, much less working when the shop supposedly happened. And seriously, he only grudgingly unfired me, like he was still really suspicious that I had somehow magically showed up for that one day to mess up a shop. Cause those shopping reports are sacred, damn it!

        Even better, we managed to get a 0 on the shop for the next month. Why? Well, the store was closed during normal business hours! Outrageous!!! Course, the fact that there was a terrible North Eastern storm and a town wide power outage for a few hours that afternoon didn't seem to matter much...

        And we were even letting people in to get out of the rain. We just weren't making drinks. The shopper must have thought that the green empire has some sort of magical fairy powered backup generator system for power outages. Guess ours were on strike.

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        • #49
          We got rid of ours before I started. Some of my CW's had horror stories about them while others said they were vary fair. The worse I heard was a MS who wrote down a CW was not helping her. This was at the Deli, where we help in the order of the numbers pulled. Their number had not come up yet.

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          • #50
            hubby started to go grey in his 20's. the amount has varied from bug streaks al pepe le pew but now it's just peppered

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            • #51
              I don't think I've met a mystery shopper that WASN't a bitch. They all seem to be nasty, vindictive people.

              I mean, think about it. They are being paid to rat a store out. They are gonna look for stuff.

              Fortunately for us, word travelled fast on the Kinko's grapevine, and by the time the MS's made it into our store, we knew who they were.

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              • #52
                Quoth Sliceanddice View Post
                btw evil queen i am not stocking you on purpose i swear...
                (way to easy not to go after)
                so you're stocking her, just how many EQs are you going to be keeping in stock?

                *ducks*

                Oh and Mystery Shoppers usually are good, but I've had my horror stories... one mystery shopper actually ended up costing a company a few thousand dollars... why you may ask, because that company's contract did not allow for mystery shoppers... and most definitely not mystery shoppers that revealed themselves... guess what that company did, not only did they attempt to mystery shop the 800 number, the person who did the test call was a royal bitch and revealed herself as a mystery shop... the call center reported this to the hotel and the hotel informed them that there upcoming group would be the last one to be held at the hotel on a negotiated rate, due to their failure to follow contract the rate would no longer be offered

                say it with me PWNED

                though I did also have a few good MSs when I worked in the call center... all they were doing was calling to check if you were offering priority club... and they would book so it didn't screw up your stats (obviously they later cancelled, but they did it own their own system so it wouldn't screw up any one person's stats).
                If you wish to find meaning, listen to the music not the song

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                • #53
                  My employer has an interesting approach.

                  We have "The Customer Snapshot" or TCS, which is where someone from corp drops in, tours the store as a mystery shopper, then makes themselves known afterwards. After making themselves known and showing proper ID, they get to see the back of the house - kitchens, storage, etc - to see how well we keep it organized, clean, etc. Everything from the type of music being played to our receiving logs is gone over, and we get scored accordingly, by department.

                  Then we have real mystery shoppers - who thankfully are also directly employed by corporate. Unless you REALLY screw up, you can't get hammered over a mystery shop much beyond a "Hey, you screwed up here, this is what the shopper said" (unless it keeps happening over and over).

                  Seeing as we're one of the busiest grocery stores (besides Wal-Mart) in the entire Dallas metro area, it's impossible to keep up with the mystery shoppers (both TCS and regular) - we run $1M a week on a slow week. In nearly 2 years, I still have no idea who our TCS or mystery shoppers are.

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                  • #54
                    I never knew who the mystery shoppers were, if anything they acted like regular customers instead of SC's. The managers did recognize them right away, but most of us employees didn't unless we interacted with them directly. The store usually passed, so they weren't too hard on us.

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                    • #55
                      Quoth sld72382 View Post

                      Oh, and I noticed one thing about the mystery shoppers: They never seem to come in when you're slow or dead. They always seem to come in when you're swamped.
                      According to a manager, they want to see if you're going to perform the same when you're busy as when you're slow, when you're more than likely going to spend extra time with the customer and make sure everything is covered on your end.
                      Well of course. All the better to flunk you.

                      Reminds me of our mystery shoppers, who used to approach people doing carryouts and ask them for help, which they had to provide according to the company's service standards EVERY TIME:
                      • Approach the Customer
                      • Offer to help the Customer is a sincere manner
                      • Walk the Customer to the product
                      • Offer any further advice
                      • Thank the Customer


                      If you missed any one of these things, you failed that part of the shop and so did the store. And our scores on the mystery shops were commonly among the lowest in the company, so corporate was always demanding answers and demanding we raise our scores.

                      The secret shoppers would also approach people who were clearly busy with other customers. And they were pretty good ones too, from what I could tell. None of the "tells" such as checking their watch frequently, taking notes, using jargon they otherwise shouldn't know ("Is this your only Home Decor endcap? Where are the softlines?" etc)

                      The way I see it, if I have to choose between helping somebody who might spend money with us and somebody who already has spent money with us, I'm going with the person who already spent money every single time. Fortunately, we're not using secret shoppers at the moment, but I suspect before too long corporate will roll out another customer service initiative and have secret shoppers come in to see how well we're doing it.
                      Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard. Be evil.

                      "I never said I wasn't a horrible person."--Me, almost daily

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                      • #56
                        Mystery shops are a big thing at the cinema. We get one every month, we are compared to other cinemas in the region and in the chain. We frequently score 90%+, and so score loads of cash for the team fund - which means parties, days out at the races, a TV for the team room and so on.

                        This month we score 70%, our worst result ever. We went form third in the country to middle of the table. The GM was furious, and disciplinary action was threatened.

                        Still the CCTV tapes were reviewed as usual, and it turns out the shopper had been lying about the staff being unfriendly - the girl on the kiosk had actually spend quite a bit of time chatting to her.
                        "I can tell her you're all tied up in the projection room." Sunset Boulevard.

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