Secret Shoppers.. ever encounter one??

effinhaute

effinhaute

Member
Sep 18, 2006
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#1
So I was listening to the radio adn they were talking about secret shoppers. They are basically sales people hired to just act like a customer shopping. They will look for people who are deciding on whether or not they should get like a shirt or pants. Once they spot someone, they will pretend to talk on the phone with someone and say, "I need this shirt! This is so cute.." and then they will ask you, "Were you goign to take this".. and being girls, if we know someone else who wants the same thing, it will make us want it even more and nab it.

So any of you girls out there experience that before??

It was relaly interesting to listen to, only because I have never ever heard of that before. Now I am more aware and look for those secret shoppers.
 
#2
Secret shoppers are a huge pain. I used to work at a video store when I was going through university and they would come in about once a month and submit these huge reports. More than half the time they wouldn't even tell the truth on the service they received.

The thing is that they get paid to not only write a report, but also for everything they buy. Wish I had that job!
 
#3
The secret shopper means a different thing in the UK. One of my daughters is a Manager in a large music chain store and they are sent in stores at various times over the course of a month to test their employees on knowledge of the products they sell, courtesy, helpfulness, etc. They never know who the person is but the manager gets feedback on whether the member of staff was male or female who the secret shopper questioned.
 
#4
I've done it myself before a few times. DH and I had to go to a restaurant and a couple locations of a jewelry chain. It was OK, the money I made really only covered my time and my meal ... there was so much paperwork involved in completing the report, in the end it was too much of a pain.
 
#5
Yeah, that's basically the same thing as in Canada/US. The downfall is that a lot of secret shoppers (at least from my experience) don't represent their experience(s) fairly. I know for a fact that I served a secret shopper with the best service I could give and she wrote our store up with a 5/10. Nothing she wrote was accurate and there was nothing we could do about it.

I think the concept is good, but sometimes it just doesn't work out the way it was planned.
 
#6
i've never heard about secret shoppers like the one you described, but we have secret shoppers that visit every department in our store once a month to make sure we give the schpiel that we're trained to say. it's a giant pain because half the time they don't even let you get in the stuff that you're supposed to say, and then you get in trouble for it.
 
#8
I thought those were called Mystery Shoppers!
I've heard of them, it's so fake! Instead of hiring those the company should just improve their products or something.
 
#9
haha maybe they are called mystery shoppers. I knew it was something that was secretive so I assumd it was called secret shoppers.

On the radio some of the girls that called in talked about their experiences as the mystery shopper..

One girl who worked at NORDSTROM was hired to walk around the store look for girls trying to decide on whether or not to buy something.. and hse would just go up to them act like she was gonna buy it. In teh end it worked, it had the customer go and buy it before the mystery shopper came back.

I am just surprised companies really do this.
Especially a big department store like Nordstrom.
 
#10
amanda said:
i've never heard about secret shoppers like the one you described, but we have secret shoppers that visit every department in our store once a month to make sure we give the schpiel that we're trained to say. it's a giant pain because half the time they don't even let you get in the stuff that you're supposed to say, and then you get in trouble for it.
Click to expand...


Ohh yeaaahhhh, tell me about it. Sometimes they dont give you credit for the good things you do but the things you forgot to mention. I had a few very good experiences and I remember one day I was sooo busy at work with no one to help me, my coworker came to grab some food to go on her day off and the phone kept ringing so she took a few phone orders and there was a mistery or secret shopper and we got in trouble, she was wearing a baby pink tee and jeans and the shooper said she was wearing a strapples hot pink shirt, minny skirt and her belly was showing, OMG, I was laughing so bad, not was such a lie, seriously.:tdown:
 
#11
I've been mystery shopped where I work, and I got a really good score from it! I spent ages trying to work out which customer it was, but we didn't get the report til about a month after, so I'd completely forgotten! My manager was really happy about it at the time, so it worked out well for me!
 
#13
gtomad said:
The secret shopper means a different thing in the UK. One of my daughters is a Manager in a large music chain store and they are sent in stores at various times over the course of a month to test their employees on knowledge of the products they sell, courtesy, helpfulness, etc. They never know who the person is but the manager gets feedback on whether the member of staff was male or female who the secret shopper questioned.
Click to expand...

Yeah. That's what I thought they were. OMG I WANT TO BE ONE.
I've came upon sites that supposedly sell training guides on how to be a secret shopper and provide the steps in order to get hired. I think half of those sites are scams though. It's just too good to be true.
 
#14
I was amystery shopper for about a year during college. SOme of the shops were really easy to do (McDonalds, etc.) but others were really time consuming (home shops, apartment shops, car dealerships)! In the end it wasn't worth the money.

Oh and anyone who is considering it...don't pay for any informaiton. It's all available on the internet, you just have to take your time and find the information!
 
#15
I work at an Auto Parts store as my other job and I was just mystery shopped over the phone. My boss just handed me a "Certificate" that I recieved an 100% score for providing "legendary customer phone service". I don't even remember taking the call but whatever I answer the phone all day so who knows. That's the second one I passed apparently. My coworkers say listen for typing in the background when you take the call, I haven't been able to distinguish the mystery calls but I just treat every call with good customer service. Apparently we get hit every week with them. So obviously there are phone mystery shoppers also. I had no idea before I started working at my job.
 
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