Advice for New Mystery Shoppers

The Brandt Group welcomes you to the exciting and rewarding world of mystery shopping! Your participation will help improve the customer service, products, and services offered by businesses in your community. Take satisfaction in knowing that your opinions really do matter. Client businesses don’t contract with mystery shopping companies to simply ignore your feedback—they’re paying for it, after all! While many businesses monitor reviews on Yelp, Facebook, and Google, the information you provide them is what really matters: your feedback will influence everything from merchandising to employee training because, as a contracted professional, your input carries far more weight than the average review!

Whether you’ve already got a couple shops under your belt, or if you’re just about to begin, here is some advice to help you develop into the best mystery shopper possible:

• Make sure you take notes. Even if you have a great memory, take the time to put your thoughts into writing right after your experience so that you have access to those raw, unfiltered impressions for when it’s time to complete your survey. Detail is crucial, so make sure you make explicit notes about everything you observed.
• Along those lines, make sure you complete that survey without delay. The Brandt Group requires that you submit your shop no more than 24-hours after your visit, but you should really aim to finish the same day, so you ensure you forget nothing! * Always read the shop documents carefully, even if you’ve already performed this exact shop before. (Instructions can and do change!) The Brandt Group provides a set of guidelines to help put you in the right mindset and to point out any specific details the client wants you to keep an eye out for. We also make the survey questions available to you so that there are no surprises.
• Be mindful of any-date-and time restrictions. Mystery-shop assignments sometimes have specific windows of time the client wants you to target—perhaps the mid-shift is slow, so they want to get a sense of how their employees are staying busy; or maybe the newer employees are assigned the late shift, so they want to specifically evaluate them. * Be thorough in your descriptions. More detail is usually better, so don’t be shy about setting the scene for how your experience unfolded. We want to be right there with you, in your shoes, as we read your summaries. You don’t have to be a creative writer: just tell us what happened, what you saw, and how you felt.
• Be careful with autocorrect. If you use a mobile device, like a phone or tablet, or if your computer does in-line autocorrection, remember to review everything you’ve typed out to make sure there aren’t any strange word substitutions. (This is especially true if you use dictation software!) In general, you should always reread your comments to ensure you haven’t made spelling or grammar mistakes, but these automated tools can introduce unexpected words into your writing.
• Take on a professional mindset and even strive for a reasonable measure of objectivity, but we do want to hear your opinions too. When you describe your experience, the facts are like the lines in a drawing, but your opinions are how you color everything in. But do keep those thoughts constructive, as our goal is to help clients and their employees improve.
• The Brandt Group never assigns you a shop without you expressly requesting it, so keep a close eye on the shop board. Because opportunities come and go throughout each month, make sure you apply for anything that catches your eye!
• Don’t be afraid to seek out unfamiliar experiences. If you see a mystery shop for a kind of cuisine you’re unfamiliar with, or perhaps for a retail store you’ve never shopped in, consider applying anyway. Clients want to hear from neophytes so they can get a sense of how well they appeal to people outside of their typical client base.

And the last, perhaps most important piece of advice that we can give you is to never be afraid to ask questions. Our editors are available help make sure you have an enjoyable and productive shopping experience.

If you are interested in signing up with The Brandt Group, head over to our sign-up page to get started right away. As soon as you have completed your registration, you’ll be able to log in to view the Shop Board and see what opportunities await you. And don’t forget to keep checking back, as we add new assignments all the time!