Measure Consumer Perspectives

Mystery Shopping Revealed: Kimberly Nasief, Measure’s president, discusses how to avoid mystery shopping scams.

takenotedesigns — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:30:56 +0000

By Eric Flack, WAVE3.com

SELLERSBURG, IN (WAVE) - Some see it as an easy way to make a little extra money on their own time. But the popularity of mystery shopping has led to an explosion of scams. And some are costing local families thousands of dollars. So WAVE 3 Troubleshooter Eric Flack did some digging to find out how to cash in without getting burned.

Mystery shopper checks going around these days look so real they actually fool banks. But you can make money by mystery shopping if you know what you’re doing and what to watch out for. Unfortunately Chandra Lewis didn’t.

After Lewis lost her job at a fast food restaurant she still had hungry mouths to feed at home; three children, including a 3 year old daughter named Sam.

“When it came in the mail, it was like the answer to my prayers,” Lewis said.

It was an offer, from a group that called itself the Seagate Company, to make money as a mystery shopper. All Chandra had to do was go to Seagate’s website and enter a code to activate a check for $1,998. The letter that came with it told her to keep $350 for herself and wire the rest to an account in Spain using Western Union, which was the company Chandra was supposedly mystery shopping.

“I pulled that money out and did what the assignment said to do,” Lewis said.

She deposited the official looking check into her ATM. The bank accepted it and the money showed up the next day. But 24 hours later, Lewis got bad news.

“They said it was an altered fictitious check,” she said.

With no check fraud protection on her account the bank took the money right out of her account.

“I had to pawn some of my stuff just to be able to pay the rent,” Chandra said.

Measure Consumer Perspectives is a Louisville company that hires real mystery shoppers to rate customer service and store appearance at businesses nationwide. COO Trevor Howie said mystery shopper scams are a growing problem

“They’re big,” Howie said.

Howie said mystery shopping scams are so common these days someone used Measure’s name and logo to send out a bogus job offer. It was one of many mystery shopping scams uncovered by the WAVE 3 Troubleshooter department in the course of our investigation.

Dan Denston, executive director of the Mystery Shopping Providers Association, now head quartered in Louisville, said scams are an ongoing issue.

“The misperception about what mystery shopping is makes it a little more susceptible,” Denston said.

Mystery shopping has gotten so big some companies now use hidden cameras placed inside of everyday items to see what’s really going on inside stores.

Kimberly Nasief, President of Measure Consumer Perspectives, said those undercover jobs pay between $40 to $80 each. That’s big money in the mystery shopping world, but a far cry from the thousands promised by some scammers. Mystery shops without hidden camera work pay just $10 to $15 and take about an hour a piece when you factor in travel and time spent filling out surveys. Be suspicious of any mystery shopping job that doesn’t fall somewhere in that range.

“There is very real work involved,” Nasief said. “People’s livelihoods depend on these shops. Bonuses, raises, promotions, incentives, the ability to hold your franchise license.”

To find legitimate mystery shopping jobs, go to the MSPA’s website by clicking here. Then click “become a shopper.” The website allows you to search for local companies that are hiring and is also a good resource to learn more about what a mystery shopper is and isn’t.

You can also pay $15 to become an MSPA certified mystery shopper. Being MSPA certified isn’t a requirement to get hired but can keep you from falling for mystery shopper scams, and paying the price Chandra Lewis did.

“Companies like this give the real companies for mystery shoppers and secret shoppers a bad name,” Lewis said.

We contacted Chase Bank and asked if there was anything they could do to help Lewis. But a spokesman said the banks hands were tied.

“It’s unfortunate that this happened to our customer,” the spokesman said. “But we didn’t know the check was counterfeit until we sent it to the issuing bank.”

That’s going to be true of anyone who deposits a counterfeit check from a fake mystery shopping offer which always involve wiring money according to the BBB.

Ziggy Zubric, owner of Marketing Endeavors, another Louisville company that hires and uses mystery shoppers, said scams are always a problem.

“Because they make it harder for legitimate companies to do business,” Zubric said.

Four Traits of an Effective Mystery Shopper

Kimberly Nasief-Westergren — Tue, 01 May 2012 17:00:22 +0000

A mystery shopper report can be a great asset to a company, and for many people, it is a great way to work from home and still earn money.

However, before you decide to sign up as a mystery shopper, make sure you have these four traits and abilities to make sure you can be an effective one.

Before doing a particular shop, you will need to read all instructions and follow them to the letter. If this is not done or certain questions are skipped, you may not get paid. That’s because we couldn’t submit the shop, so we didn’t get paid. Clients only pay for completed shops. Therefore, be sure you understand all directions that have been handed to you prior to making it.

A mystery shopper will need to have a strong attention to detail. When you write your report after a shop has been completed, it needs to be complete, and it needs to be concise. When writing your report, you will need to maintain objectivity – even if you feel you were personally wronged. No opinions, no emotions. Just answer what was asked.

Dependability is another trait that a successful mystery shopper will usually possess. When you are assigned a mystery shop (or you volunteer for one), you need to show up, do the shop to the best of your ability, and turn your report in on time. It is also important to write the report as soon as the shop is done, so that you can best capture your true experience. The report needs to be professional, free of grammar and spelling errors, and to the point.

While doing the shop, a good mystery shopper must remain anonymous. You cannot give any clues as to your true intent while visiting the establishment. If you are suspected of being a mystery shopper, the employees may treat you differently, thus ruining the entire experiment. So never call attention to yourself, and try to look natural.

Practice Customer Experience Management by Focusing on the Employee Experience

Kimberly Nasief-Westergren — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:00:17 +0000

Customer experience management can be directly linked to how the employees understand and view their workplace. It’s easy to understand that if the employees are unhappy, their performance will be subpar, thus giving the customer a less-than-stellar experience. Customer experience management, therefore, must include management of the employee experience as well.

Business strategy states that the best brands are often built from the inside-out. How well a company stands the test of time hinges on whether the employees — the public face of the company — are happy or not. If they’re unhappy, they may represent the brand in a way that leaves the customer with a bad taste in his mouth. A bad taste means a bad experience, which means an unhappy customer and difficult customer experience management. And unhappy customers tell other potential customers to stay away.

In other words, if your employees ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

Employees, like children, are very observant. When they see their managers say one thing and do another, or not follow through with certain promises, employees become disheartened and resentful of the company. This attitude follows the employee all during his workday, affecting every person he or she touches, employees and customers alike.

Many companies are quick to tout their employee-focused atmosphere, and surely, a few standouts may come to mind. However, the majority of companies who make noise about their employees “being their most important asset” have, in reality, lost the trust of their employees.

When employees are given inferior tools and training, they lose faith in their employer and their ability to do their job. This lack of assurance and backing can lead to poor customer experience management.

The first place to start with customer experience management is with the employees of the company. They will need to be given the tools they need to succeed, and the assurance that the employer values truly them. Happy employees are more likely to stick around in a company, gain tenure, hone their company-specific skills and knowledge – and thus, lead to better customer experience management as well as happier customers.

Headline: Practice Customer Experience Management by Focusing on the Employee Experience • Keywords: customer experience management, customer service, employee training •

Use Mystery shopping for a Medical Practice or Doctor’s Office

Kimberly Nasief-Westergren — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:00:17 +0000

Mystery shopping is a great way to explore how well a medical practice or doctor’s office is really doing when it comes to customer service. Visiting the doctor or other medical practice office can be time consuming, and not many people are exactly thrilled to be going to the doctor.

Oftentimes, the problems can be issues like sour to downright rude office staff, long wait times, crowded waiting rooms, even longer wait times once the patient is in the exam room, and cold hands instead of gentle and caring ones. Surprisingly, there can be a disconnect when it comes to having the patient disclose why he or she will not be coming back to that doctor or recommending that doctor to a friend.

Mystery shopping can give the owners of a medical practice or doctor’s office a patient’s eye view as to how they are treated and what exactly goes on once they arrive at the office. Using a variety of different technologies available to mystery shopping personnel, clients can see the visit through video equipment, or hear what happens through an audio recording – both of which can easily be hidden in the mystery shopper’s clothes or on a bag that the mystery shopper is carrying.

Mystery shopping is done when a shopper makes an appointment as a new patient, and she records the experience to review in depth later, whether it is by video, audio, or just by memorization alone. The shopper will create a detailed report about her experience after the mystery shopping visit has been completed. Medical mystery shopping professionals have special training, however – they know that when a real patient comes in with a medical emergency, to remove themselves from the situation and allow the real patient to be seen and taken care of.

Some of the items that the medical mystery shopper may take note of include:

First impressions of the front desk – cleanliness (when visiting), friendliness of staff, ease of scheduling an appointment, and how well the staff handled the phone call.
How effective check-in procedures were.
How clean the office was.
The bedside manner of the doctor.
How effective and efficient the nurses were during the visit.
Amount of time they spent with the doctor.

Doctors and other medical practitioners are in positions of care with their patients, and if a patient feels they are not being cared for, they will leave, without a word of why. When patients leave, the practice begins to lose money, and could close down. Mystery shopping will help identify the problem areas, so staff can work to improve them and keep patients satisfaction high.

Mystery shopping can help to give everyone a good idea as to what exactly goes on between the practitioner and his patients. Mystery shopping can give a doctor a feeling of being in the patients’ shoes, and better understand their experience.

Avoid Mystery Shopping Scams [VIDEO]

Kimberly Nasief-Westergren — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:00:11 +0000

If you receive a large check (or any check) from Measure Consumer Perspectives, run – because it’s not us. We didn’t send it to you. A scammer is using our company’s name and attempting to get you to wire transfer money to individuals under the auspices of evaluating customer service.

Practicing Customer Experience Management Leads to Positive Customer Satisfaction

Kimberly Nasief-Westergren — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:00:37 +0000

Customer Experience Management is crucial in order to turn first-time customers into repeat customers, and even loyal fans.

When a customer’s experience is poor or marked with mistakes and poor quality, he or she is less likely to recommend the business to his or her friends – and every good marketing student knows that word-of-mouth advertising is some of the most effective advertising a business can get. Destroy that and it will destroy a business’ reputation.

It is not hard to find a business that is mediocre at customer experience management. Many consumers are willing to try a new business, product, or service that offers lower prices than the competition. However, if they have a terrible time, they will not only NOT return, but even warn away everyone they can.

There are plenty of businesses that succeed with positive customer experience management. If a customer is unhappy with one business, there is always another that is willing to try harder with a better product and service. So the secret to a successful business is not only a good product or service, but effective customer experience management.

Good customer experience management will often surprise many customers, which is unfortunate, because one would hope it would be the opposite: people would rather be surprised by a poor experience, not a good one.

Good customer experience management can even save a business money. It is a common business adage that it costs more to attract new customers than it is to keep old ones. It takes advertising and marketing to bring in new customers. It takes specials and coupons. It takes a lot of hard work, all to bring in customers. So it doesn’t make sense to provide poor customer service and turn them away. But many businesses spend a lot of their time and money trying to win new customers, but never pay attention to any customer experience management tactics that can keep those customers coming back.

But by focusing on good customer experience management, loyal customers will return again and again. They do not have to be enticed with coupons and specials, marketing and advertisements, and other things that cost money. By reducing those marketing costs, it increases the business’ sales margins and profits.

Finally, a positive customer experience management focus can increase traffic through word-of-mouth marketing. That is, the happier a customer is, the more likely he or she is to tell friends about the great time they had. Their friends will be more interested in trying out the restaurant or store, and traffic will still increase.

The only cost to the business manager was making sure the customer was happy and had a good time. No expensive newspaper or magazine ads, no radio or TV commercials, and no wasting time and resources putting those things together. By just making sure the business is run well and that people are happy is enough to keep old customers coming back and new people coming in.

Being a Mystery Shopper Has Responsibilities

Kimberly Nasief-Westergren — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:00:48 +0000

A mystery shopper has many responsibilities. Many people may think that this job is a cushy type of job, where they can stay at home, work on the computer for an hour, place a few calls, and have the rest of the day off.

This is not the case.

Measure CP has worked with thousands of mystery shoppers over the years, and every successful mystery shopper is a hard-working individual with a strong work ethic and a need for a flexible schedule.

Your role as a mystery shopper is to evaluate a company’s product, service, or employees. One of your responsibilities as a mystery shopper is to create a report based on your experience and submit it to us, so we can submit it to the clients who hired us.

There are many responsibilities that come with being a mystery shopper. One is maintaining your anonymity. The company that you evaluate must not know you are a mystery shopper. Therefore, it is important to take mental notes while performing your mystery shop and writing the report later. You must also remember details. Companies that hire a mystery shopper always want more information and more details, so gather as much information as you can.

During your mystery shopper assignment, you may be asked to report on the following:

The number of employees in the store upon entering.
The name of the employees.
The cleanliness of the store and its employees.
The amount of time it takes for you to be greeted, and if the greeting is friendly.
The speed of service.
Whether or not the store and its employees were within compliance.

Before a shop, you will receive detailed instructions on how to conduct yourself and what to pay attention to. Be sure to read these instructions fully, and follow them to the letter, otherwise, you may not get paid. You may be instructed to act a certain way (e.g., disgruntled) or to have an unusual request (a vegetarian meal option at a steakhouse restaurant).

Author: Kimberly Nasief • Headline: Being a Mystery Shopper Has Responsibilities • Keywords: mystery shopper, Mystery shopping, mystery shopping service, secret shopping •

Be A Successful Mystery Shopper

Kimberly Nasief-Westergren — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:00:38 +0000

A mystery shopper is a good choice for anyone considering a part-time job or searching for a job that has a lot of flexibility. Mystery shoppers are secret evaluators who observe a company’s products and service, and report those findings back to a mystery shopping firm, like Measure CP.

It’s important that your identity remain unknown to the business being evaluated at all times — it’s called mystery shopping for a reason. The mystery shopper will not receive any special treatment during the mystery shop; quite the contrary. The mystery shopper is there to evaluate the company as if he or she were a typical customer.

To be a successful mystery shopper, there are a few things you should keep in mind.

First off, a mystery shopper must have access to good recording equipment. You can’t get good data if your camera keeps dying, for example, or if you still use old film equipment. Smartphones or digital recording devices are especially helpful to those mystery shoppers, because video shops pay more than non-video shops. Measure CP gets a lot of clients who want video shops, and shoppers with this capability are always in high demand.

A mystery shopper must also keep track of details and receipts. Details are what make or break a report – vague reports do nothing to show your true experience. Additionally, keeping track of details will also help to expedite the payment process to the mystery shopper. Reports need to be fully completed and all answers must be consistent. Then, submit the report within the required timeframe (typically 12-24 hours). A mystery shopper should perform the required edits on reports within 24 hours.

As part of keeping your mystery shopper identity secret, it is important to take mental notes during the assignment, and write those notes down after the assignment. Otherwise, employees will figure out pretty quickly who you are.

How I Got Into Mystery Shopping (measurecp.com)

Keywords: mystery shopper, Mystery shopping, mystery shopping service, secret shopping • Headline: Be A Successful Mystery Shopper • Author: Kimberly Nasief •

Customer Experience Management Benefits With Social Media

Kimberly Nasief-Westergren — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 17:00:42 +0000

Customer experience management, customer service, customer retention. Call it what you want, it’s becoming more and more important as customers are finding they have different choices when it comes to the companies they deal with.

Last May, Nelson Pascua published an article on ReadWriteWeb that talked about five customer experience management ROI benefits, including recovering potentially lost customers, engaging employees and reducing staff turnover, and reducing the cost of “feedback infrastructure.”

But Nelson’s second point, which we talk about the most is that good customer experience management lets you “engage existing customers.”

Pascua says a good customer experience management program will let you find your biggest customer fans and give them additional loyalty rewards and promotional offers, because it leads to more visits and sales.

Social Media is Customer Experience Management On Steroids

But we want to take it one step further: we think you should have your customer experience management program on social media — Twitter, Facebook, a blog, even YouTube. These tools “reduce the cost of the feedback infrastructure,” because they’re all free to use and don’t have to be staffed every minute of the day, like the customer service department.

We’re seeing social media increase in usage with clients who come to us wanting help with their customer experience management issues: we always try to find a way to keep negative experiences from “going social” — hitting social media before you have a chance to fix it — but how do you use social media when people do complain or compliment?

On social media, people are going to talk about you. They’re going to talk about their experience with you, good or bad. But social media gives you a chance to engage with your customers. You can thank them profusely when they say good things about you, and you can apologize and fix the problem when they say bad things about you.

But something pretty cool will happen when you do this. The happy customers will tell their friends about how you just thanked them, and they’ll pledge to return (and their friends will want to come with them, or come themselves).

And the unhappy customers will tell their friends about how you just fixed their problems. And they’ll pledge to return too. And their friends will see how you helped them, and they’ll want to come themselves, because you managed a bad experience and made it good again.

Customer experience management via social media can really make a difference to customer retention just by engaging your existing customers and listening to what they have to say. Measure CP is a mystery shopping service that specializes in social media and customer experience management. We have worked with small and large clients around the country on their customer service issues, and show them how to use social media to help their customers be satisfied.

Author: Kimberly Nasief • Headline: Customer Experience Management Benefits With Social Media • Keywords: customer loyalty, Customer satisfaction, Customer Service, mystery shopper, Mystery shopping •

How Mystery Shopping Benefits My Auto Service Center

Kimberly Nasief-Westergren — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 17:00:56 +0000

People think mystery shopping is usually reserved for restaurants, clothing stores, and the occasional cell phone store or doctor’s office. But they don’t always think about how it can help their auto service center.

As a service center manager, you know how hard it is to keep up with everything: are your customers happy? Are you employees doing the job right? Are you getting repairs and jobs done on time? Are your employees upselling new oil filters and air filters, and other service? And — we’ll say it again because it’s that important — are your customers happy?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mystery shopping can help you figure out what sorts of issues you’re having at your auto service center, where you’re exceeding all expectations, and where your customers would like you to do better.

In a mystery shopping visit, the shopper — who poses as a regular customer and does not announce himself or herself — will have service performed on their car. They will check the cleanliness of the waiting area and the restrooms. They will measure the speed at which their car was fixed. They’ll even report whether they were upsold, offered complimentary coffee, or anything else the national marketing manager wants to assess.

After the service has been completed, they’ll drive home and file their mystery shopping report. In some cases, the mystery shopping visit will include a video or audio recording, and they’ll send that along as well. At Measure CP, our shoppers use audio and video technology during their mystery shops, and clients have found it to be one of the most effective mystery shopping tools they have access to.

From there, the marketing manager, customer service manager, and anyone else involved in customer satisfaction will watch the video, read the report, and react accordingly. It may be a thank you note to your staff, it could be a checkmark on a report, or it could even result in more training for your employees.

If there are any areas of improvement for your auto service center, mystery shopping is going to be the best way to determine whether all your training and company policies are being followed, and if it’s making a positive difference to your customers’ happiness. We’ve worked with several clients in the service center and gas station industry, and found that mystery shopping to be one of the most effective tools in finding strengths and weaknesses in an auto service center’s customer satisfaction.

Adding Product Offerings to Meet Customer Demands (greaseralley.com)
Who Cares About Brand Loyalty? (customerthink.com)
A few stations still provide full service gasoline (mysanantonio.com)
Why Is Consumer Engagement So Hard? (adage.com)

Author: Kimberly Nasief • Headline: How Mystery Shopping Benefits My Auto Service Center • Keywords: mystery shopper, Mystery shopping, mystery shopping service, secret shopping, auto service center •