5 Key Steps to Launching a Mystery Shopping Program

Over decades of managing mystery shopping programs, we've seen time and time again that the overall success of a program hinges on the initial design.

We've worked with brands across countless industries, and while specifics vary, the initial steps to launching a mystery shopping program are the same.

Whether you're building a program yourself or evaluating potential third party vendors, we want to walk you through the main 5 steps we follow so you can approach your next program like a pro.

1. Clearly define the "why?"
2. Identify the metrics that matter
3. Design the mystery shopping program
4. Ensure optimal reporting
5. Select the right mystery shopping partner

Step 1: Clearly define the "why?"

The objective of any mystery shopping program is to obtain an unbiased analysis of your business from the consumer’s perspective using metrics designed for measuring customer experience.

But the more you can focus your individual programs - that's right, you can run more than one - the easier it will be to drive actionable insights.

Organizations today evaluate multiple customer touchpoints, including in-store, phone, online, or digital interactions, depending on where customers engage with the brand.

With that in mind, this step involves asking: What is the goal? How will you be using the results to improve your business? What will you do with the data? The answers to these questions are crucial to determining what data you need to collect and how your reporting should be organized.

For example, your objective might be to evaluate customer service consistency, employee product knowledge, compliance with brand standards, or how customers perceive newly introduced experiences such as self-service technology or digital ordering.

Step 2: Identify key metrics

Once you’ve determined your program's overall goal, the next step is to identify what key metrics will allow you to measure change over time.

In practice, these become your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and help you track whether the experience you expect is consistently being delivered.

These could be anything from elements of the sales process, employee availability, how customers are greeted, aspects of a promotion, service speed, order accuracy, staff product knowledge, or any other metric that is critical to your customer experience.

Keep your key metrics centered around the “why” to avoid analysis paralysis, getting stuck overthinking extensive data rather than taking action on important insights.

It’s also important to remember that the mystery shoppers collecting data in the field are only human. They need to enter a location and behave the same way any other customer would while collecting the data you require.

Keep your key metrics simple, focused, and discreet. This approach minimizes the chances of human error, ensures the data collected is objective, and helps maintain the shopper's anonymity, protecting the overall integrity of your program.

Step 3: Design the mystery shopping program

Once you’ve defined your goals and KPIs, the next step is determining how the mystery shopping program will run.

Start by designing the questionnaire your shoppers will use to capture their observations. Focus on clear, observable behaviors tied to your KPIs. Simple yes/no or clearly defined responses, paired with short comment fields, make results easier to compare while still capturing unique insights over time.

You can even structure questions hierarchically to get more insights out of a specific scenario. For example:
Q1: Did an employee greet you at checkout?
Q2: Was there an upsell, or did they mention the promotion?

Next, define the who and the how of the program. How many shops will you run? Which locations should be included? What times of day should be covered? Will the experience be evaluated in person, by phone, through video, or online?

You’ll also need to recruit a reliable, unbiased, and qualified pool of shoppers. Depending on the program, this could include specific demographic groups, existing customers, or shoppers with experience in more specialized scenarios such as loan applications or other complex interactions. Each program should match the right shoppers to the right type of visit. The shoppers will then be briefed, and the visits will be underway.

Finally, set expectations internally with the staff. The goal of the program isn’t to catch employees doing something wrong, but to coach teams and improve the customer experience. When employees understand that mystery shopping supports their learning and development, the program becomes far more effective.

Here’s a tip: Industry reports, market studies, and consumer surveys are great for seeing how your brand stacks up against the competition. We always share new consumer data, so check out our Customer Experience Trends page! 

Step 4: Ensure optimal reporting

Speaking of analysis paralysis, the reporting platform your program data feeds into will be crucial to its long-term success.

Look for a reporting platform that is flexible and allows you to visualize changes to your key metrics over time easily.

The platform should also support hierarchical reporting so large multi-location businesses can analyze results in ways that reflect how their operations are structured. Some teams may want to compare performance across regions, while others may only need to see the locations they manage. Flexible reporting makes it easy to view results by region, franchise group, brand banner, or individual location without mixing together parts of the business that don’t need to be compared.

Consider who needs to see the data as well. Do all stakeholders need access to everything? For example, you may not want to share data from every location with individual location managers. A platform that supports permissions settings based on your business hierarchy will help protect sensitive information.

It's also important to have a plan in place for how you want to act on your results and use them to your advantage, whether good or bad.

Ensure that no matter what kind of results your locations are getting, they will be used to add value to your business. Processes for dealing with both positive and negative results should be established and communicated to staff.

Here's more on how you can evaluate the Return on Investment (ROI) of your mystery shopping programs.

Step 5: Select the right mystery shopping partner

Making this choice is essential to the accuracy and reliability of the data you collect. So when selecting a mystery shopping partner, consider the following:

• Industry Experience: Look for a partner with a proven track record in your industry. They should understand the specific challenges and nuances of your business.
• Quality Assurance: Ensure they have a robust shoppers database so they can perform assessments even in hard-to-reach locations. They should also maintain rigorous quality checks to ensure shopper observations are accurate, consistent, and reliable. 
• Flexibility and Customization: Your partner should be able to tailor the program to your specific needs, adapting to your unique goals and key metrics.
• Technology capabilities: To get the most out of your program, it is essential to find a partner who can help you drive action without manual intervention. Having a partner who also has a technology solution can ensure you do more with your data.

Regardless of your industry or company size, following these steps will help set your mystery shopping program up for success.

If you're planning to launch or refine your mystery shopping program, our experts can help you get started with IntouchShop^® and explore what we could achieve together.