Client: “We’ve put a lot into customer experience, but it’s hard to know what’s really happening across all our locations. We’ve been looking at mystery shopping and thought Intouch Insight might be a good fit.”
Sarah: “That makes sense. Brands that focus on CX the way you’re aiming to see 60% higher profits than those that don’t. The key is having clear visibility into what customers actually experience.”
Sarah: “Mystery shopping gives you that. It shows an unbiased view of how your teams and systems perform across locations, through the lens of your customer.”
Client: “That’s exactly what we’re looking for. But tell me, what’s the ROI of a mystery shopping program?”
Sarah: “ROI comes from how you use that insight. When you connect what mystery shopping reveals to behaviors, revenue, retention, efficiency, and competitive performance, the return becomes clear.”
If you want to understand the full ROI of your mystery shopping program, these indicators will help you see the true value it delivers.
Imagine customers experience poor frontline behavior at one of your locations. They immediately see it as a reflection of your brand, and they decide not to choose you again. Now scale that. If you operate 500 locations, that translates to a massive amount of business lost across multiple locations throughout the year.
The goal is not to label a visit as “pass” or “fail”. It is to understand whether frontline behaviors are strong enough to support the outcomes you care about, including sales, satisfaction, retention, and operational efficiency.
Here is what you should be looking at:
When your mystery shopping program shows that key behaviors are executed consistently across visits, including those reinforced through training or coaching, it provides early evidence that the program is influencing day-to-day performance in ways that support more predictable business results.
86% of buyers say they are willing to spend more when the experience is excellent, which directly increases average order value. When your teams greet customers promptly, recommend the right upsells, deliver accurate orders, and move efficiently during peak times, you create the conditions for those higher spending behaviors to occur frequently.
For instance, when your mystery shopping program shows that suggestive selling is happening steadily, it highlights how even a 20% increase in upsells can create a meaningful dollar impact and, in some cases, generate enough additional revenue to exceed the cost of the mystery shopping program itself.
Review your shop results alongside indicators such as:
Explore the 6 Mystery Shopping Programs Every Retailer Needs.
Retention has a direct financial impact. Returning customers spend 67% more than new ones, which means improvements in a coherent experience results in long-term value. When mystery shopping strengthens reliability across locations, those gains become easier to sustain and track.
For example, cleanliness is one part of that service experience. Research by Bradley Company shows that 71% of customers are more likely to return and spend more at businesses with clean, well-maintained restrooms, while 75% say they would think twice about returning after a bad restroom experience. Recent convenience store trends reinforces this link, with 70% of customers saying store cleanliness influences whether they believe the food is fresh. Together, these signals show how consistency in basic service standards directly shapes customer confidence and repeat behavior.
As reliability improves, your mystery shopping program helps reduce the service issues that cause customers to stop returning, making the impact on retention easier to quantify.
This includes identifying patterns that help reduce:
In our recent Drive-Thru report, mystery shoppers examined the operational factors that influence service time across QSRs. The data showed that when speaker clarity was good, drive-thru wait times were 54 seconds faster on average, and when customers did not need to repeat their order, they saved an additional 1 minute and 25 seconds.
These gains identified through mystery shopping programs point to two factors of drive-thru efficiency: employee attentiveness and functional technology. When staff can clearly hear and focus on the customer, or when speaker systems work as intended, orders move faster and drive-thru throughput increases.
Cost control also shows up elsewhere. Audit programs focus on compliance with prep, portioning, and inventory standards that directly affect waste. For example, the QSR industry has been put under immense pressure with beef prices rising by 14.7%. When audits surface over-portioning or process breakdowns tied to waste, operators can correct them quickly, reducing ingredient loss and protecting margins at scale.
Review operational efficiency across areas such as:
As these issues decline, operations run more smoothly across locations. Teams move customers through the line faster, waste decreases, and labor is used more effectively.
Here are 7 ideal Mystery Shopping Programs for Quick Service Restaurants.
In one of our IntouchShop® programs for a financial services brand, shoppers applied for personal loans across nine competing lenders. The results showed where the client stood in the market and how they could best position themselves competitively.
From an ROI perspective, this strategic visibility through competitive mystery shopping helps you prioritize improvements that strengthen your market position and focus resources on the areas most likely to influence customer choice and long-term revenue.
When reviewed over time, competitive insight allows you to assess:
A single mystery shop tells you what happened once. Trendlines tell you what is actually changing.
For example, our annual Drive-Thru report is based on the analysis of 2,000+ mystery shops across multiple QSR brands. The findings show that the average total time customers spent in the drive-thru was 5 minutes and 35 seconds in 2025, continuing a steady decline from 6 minutes and 22 seconds in 2021, suggesting operators have made meaningful improvements in how drive-thru operations are managed and executed over time.
Analyzing performance patterns helps you identify:
This kind of ongoing visibility shifts your mystery shopping program from a reaction tool to a performance management system. You are no longer responding to isolated issues. You are watching trending patterns form, strengthen, and settle. And when those trending patterns move in the right direction across multiple locations, you gain one of the clearest indicators that your program is generating measurable ROI.
To fully understand the ROI of your mystery shopping program, you also need to see whether customers are noticing the improvements you make. Comparing your results with customer feedback, such as satisfaction scores, loyalty indicators, effort ratings, and review sentiment, shows whether stronger execution is reflected in how people feel about their experience. When customer feedback improves alongside your performance results, you gain more explicit confirmation that your program is creating value that you can include in your overall ROI evaluation.
At Intouch Insight, we design mystery shopping programs that show how improvements translate into real financial and operational impact.
If you are looking for clarity, accountability, and measurable results, we are ready to help you achieve them.