Mystery shopping is a
long-established research technique used by a wide variety of commercial,
governmental and other organisations. Its purpose is to help such bodies to
assess and improve the standards of service they provide to their customers, by
comparing their achieved performance against their own organisation's targets
and against the standards provided by competitors and other organisations.
The approach involves the use of
evaluators who are specially trained to observe and measure the nature and
quality of the services being offered to customers. They collect the required
information by calling upon or contacting the organsation's outlets or other
points of contact with the public, acting as if they are actual or potential customers
for such services and carrying out a series of pre-determined tests involving
observation and/or interviewing. Similar calls may be made on competitors and
other comparable outlets in order to provide yardsticks against which to assess
the client's own quality of service.
Although some assessment of
service quality can sometimes be obtained by directly interviewing customers
themselves there are very many situations where the relevant information can
only be obtained by using Mystery Shopping techniques. With the growing
importance of services of all kinds in modern society such research is
therefore also becoming increasingly important for both economic and social
reasons.
For all information about this service please contact:
e-mail: info@mib.ba
