A mystery shopping investigation is an assessment of the quality of services and/or products provided by a business to its customers. A mystery shop typically evaluates things such as employee performance, quality of customer service and quality of delivered product. The employer or business owner uses the information from a mystery shop to improve the service and/or products of their business.
Mystery Shopping In-Depth
At its core, a mystery shopping investigation is primarily about what the customer experiences. It can also be used to document and verify activities by employees that are against company policy. The goal is to deliver a realistic overall perspective of the customer’s experience. A mystery shopper relies on facts and data rather than personal feelings and documents every part of their experience. When a PI is your mystery shopper, they’ll also be able to gather evidence while performing their mystery shop that you can use to discuss issues with underperforming employees or address more serious issues within your staff.
Why Hire a PI for Your Mystery Shopping Investigation?
There are several reasons why a PI is the best choice for a mystery shopping investigation over an agency or other resource. Here are a few of those reasons.
Unbiased – Professional PIs are trained to avoid bias in any investigation. When you have a PI do your mystery shop, you can trust that the data and evidence provided was collected in a professional and unbiased way.
Evidence – PIs know how to collect or gather evidence. This is especially important in cases of potential employee fraud. Surveillance might be needed and other methodologies for gathering evidence that are best handled by a trained professional.
Legality – PIs know the law inside and out. Because PIs have such a deep understanding of the laws, they can better assess if any laws are being broken and also document any legal risks to your business that they witness during their mystery shop.
Tools – PIs have the tools needed to gather the evidence you need and to do so in a way that will hold up in court, if you should need to pursue a court case. PIs use a number of tools in their line of work to record interactions such as hidden microphones or discretely provide video surveillance via hidden video recorders, among others.
Hiring a PI for your mystery shopping investigation just makes sense. They can gather evidence and document issues using a variety of tools and devices. Even more, the evidence they gather is from an independent third party so it is admissible in court should you need to take that step. If you need to get to the bottom of issues with your business, give Bulldog PI a call.
