Hi Shoppers,

I am increasingly uncomfortable with the lies associated with being a mystery shopper. Lying about interest in products to eager salespeople, lying about sick relatives, constantly lying in the faces of sincerely nice people. At first, it was fun creating scenarios and aliases. Now, it just seems like a constant BS game for mediocre clients who waste money spying on their employees rather than hiring good people and paying them well to do good jobs and having good managers who know how to inspire workers to want to give their best.

Have you had any misgivings or ambivalence about the lies associated with being a mystery shopper? As much as we may dislike nitpicking editors, sometimes I feel worse lying to someone about being interested in buying shoes and then marking them down because they did not say the right comment about the "buy-one-get-one-free" offer that was plastered all throughout the store.

Please share your thoughts. I'm on the edge of burnout and I wonder if any of you have experienced the same.

Thank you.

MysteryMojo,

I have seen this question come up a few times and I don't see it the same way as you do. I look at it as acting and playing a role to test customer service. If we do our jobs properly and give a detailed report, it can help a business make improvements.

I have personally seen some improvements after having to report negatives. I re-shopped a few places and noticed the issues I reported were corrected.

It's all about how you look at something.

I look at it as the company doesn't know whether they've hired good, dedicated people, when they hired them. I feel that mystery shopping provides valuable insight to companies. They get unbiased feedback on the true nature of daily operations at their locations, and are able to retrain employees, if needed.

The only parts that I dislike, overall, are some of the unrealistic guidelines set by the clients. The other is when you can tell that your feedback was worthless. If I bent over backwards to get 27 photos of everything wrong/non-compliant with that location, and avoided being detected, then yes, I am a bit disheartened to see that nothing has been fixed, two years later.

I appreciate your reply. You are right. It is all in how you look at it.

I see acting as entertainment and mystery shopping as spying for businesses yet I can see how others see it differently and I appreciate hearing your view.

We agree about noticing changes in some companies. Yet the changes I have noticed are that employees become better at hawking credit cards to customers, remembering to make insincere comments from the script and up selling rather than letting the customer peacefully decline to make a purchase.

About a year ago, I described mystery shopping to a friend and he replied, "Oh, you get paid to buy stuff and tell on people." As the months have passed by, his words feel like an appropriate description.

It is still entertainment, for me, and I definitely view it more as acting, than lying. One day I get to be a gold-digging trophy wife. The next day I am a frugal, careful, detail-oriented librarian shopping for a new car. The next, I'm trying to buy alcohol without an ID, and trying every which way to get them to sell it to me. Some days I am a Pinterest junkie, and am shopping furniture stores trying to get ideas, and deciding what to buy, and what to copy and DIY. Sometimes I'm Angie, a young military wife whose husband was recently sent here as a recruiter at the mall, and am shopping furnished condos to live in for 3-6 months, until our belongings arrive from Japan.

As a mystery shopper, you can accept the jobs you want, and decline the ones you don't. I refuse to do alcohol compliance shops at my local grocery store because I buy beer there all the time.

MM I do view it as lying and have wrestled with it my entire mystery shopping career. I know others see it as acting and I do really like the way that BBird put it but usually when you're acting the other party knows you're acting. Having said all that I really do see the need for mystery shoppers. Companies need to know what's going on from the customers perspective. Anyway, for this reason I prefer audits where they know who you are and why you're there.

I'm like DanteInOH and BBird0701 and look at it as acting. Then I become like a reviewer when I'm doing the report. I just don't give an opinion and only relate exactly what happened.

If you're that close to burnout, it may be better if you don't do any shops for a while. Your negative attitude could affect the outcome and the report.

Thanks cvb42jeb. I appreciate your reply.

I am winding down my services with a lot of the shops I do. My attitude is positive though and no reports have been negatively affected. I am more concerned about the impact the lies have on myself rather than how a company would be affected.

Could you suggest a better way for any company to get objective feedback about their stores and employees? They cannot rely on Yelp or customer surveys on the back of a receipt. Those are usually fueled by emotion.

LisaSTL - Perhaps there is no better way for large companies to evaluate their employees. That does not change the flow of dishonesty that runs through the line of work of mystery shopping. I have no judgment of others who do it and I do not judge myself negatively for being a shopper. I am just running out of energy to create the lies and waste the time and energy of workers who think they are connecting with a real customer.

jpgilham, if it makes you feel better, many actors do method acting or immersive acting, where they go out and immerse themselves into their role, and practice on people who who don't know that they're actors. They then assess whether or not they were believable, and use that info to tweak their character, for their part.

Yes it is lying. I try to pick shops that I have a real interest in. Home Improvement stores are a favorite...

If you have anproblem with the scenarios that require you to lie, why not focus on those that don't? Between revealed audits, meals, and some retail you could stay pretty busy in many places.

Great suggestion bgriffin.

Sometimes your acquaintances say, "I'm fine" or something similar in order to deflect your questions. We lie to each other all the time to save feelings. Yes, we think of ourselves as honest people but sometimes people ask nosy questions, such as asking if a woman is wearing a wig (rude to begin with) when she doesn't want to tell virtual strangers that she has cancer. Saying you want to buy something and then not buying it might be a real scenario to save the feelings of the employee whom you think would feel bad because you really don't like the product. Sometimes something happens in life to prevent you from going back to the store or you decide while you are there that you really don't have enough money because you remembered an occasional expense. Deflecting someone's curiosity is a daily activity in public. Sometimes it deters gossip.

Thank you Sandra Sue. I understand small social lying. Yet in my opinion, lying combined with telling someone's boss about their behavior takes it to a different level that I am growing uncomfortable with. Telling their boss, "No, the employee did not ask if I wanted to try the newest flavor of iced tea that you are selling," just seems petty to me. It seems as though I am helping a company force a product that is probably not healthy or necessary in a customer's life. It is that aspect of mystery shopping that I am growing weary of - lying by faking interest in a product and then snitching back that the employee is not a pawn for the company.

I agree with all that quality customer service is important. I find that many/most of the surveys I complete go beyond asking about customer service. They aim to make sure that the employee memorizes a script that is full of details designed to sell more product rather than have a sincere and personable experience with the customer.

I do not feel bad at all. I window shop all the time, and do not see it much different than that for retail shops when I am acting interested in something. When you are an employee at a location, you are working for someone else. They should have the right, in my opinion, to see how their employees treat customers. The only thing about mystery shopping that upsets me is the type of mystery shoppers who are looking to get the employees in trouble. That is one reason I rarely refer friends/relatives to mystery shop because most of them do no understand the concept like most of us do on here. I met a woman a few years back who mystery shopped, and she took great joy in telling me how many employees she caught doing something wrong. I tried to tell her different but some people you just cannot convince.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/13/2014 01:18PM by sugarcookie429.

A video shopping company says the idea is to catch employees doing it right.

Focus on the ones where you are just yourself. Many gas stations, and retail shops really don't require a scenario. Revealed audits don't require any lying.

Sometimes I do buy something even though I don't have to, sometimes I just look around and make my observations and do my interactions. But when doing my own shopping, I don't always buy something.

Sometimes I go back to a shop where I had mystery shopped and make a purchase because I saw something I liked while on a mystery shop. So the store does get the sale.

I changed my cell phone service due to a mystery shop for one example.

I felt this way yesterday after doing a test drive shop. I asked for a business card and the salesman tells me he's only been on the floor for 2 weeks and they haven't come in yet.

More companies could do "The Under Cover Boss" thing. I feel that this would be the ideal scenario. Let the higher ups learn ALL the facets that might be making an employee go south.

I've been management and the few shops that I have completed presented all sorts of variables that would also impact business. NOTHING was within the reports, to bring up horrible store front visibility, workers having to be, beyond bored to tears, if there are no customers wandering in. Boredom and not having anything to do saps energy quicker than being up to your eyeballs in work.

The economy isn't so great either, and regardless of a sales rep's stellar performance, there are things that have been put back burner.

I sell on one of the online venues, and anytime that I've gotten off the wall questions or requests, I DO wonder if these sites hire shoppers.

I can totally understand how you feel Mojo, and I respect your choice to step away from those shops that make you feel uncomfortable. I'm with Lisa on this one, tho! I like to think of what I do as a way to catch employees doing the right thing. To show companies that they've hired someone that--as a consumer-- would adequately or even more impressively handle the scenario thrown at them. =)) I like to think that in my as-emotionless-as-possible review that I'm really highlighting the positives and that the negatives, if there are any, are only there to help the situation get better (be it a training issue or a motivation issue, etc.).

You'd mentioned how we're lying to "good people" and, if I'm reading it right, I think your biggest issue is that most of these people are really nice and really don't deserve negativity thrown at them. I try to treat it the opposite. I focus on what's done right (I'll mention the bad too, but I really try to remember the stuff the employee has done right), so the store sees the value they have in the employee.

I don't know, I'm not really writing this without sounding like a skew my results (I really don't...), I'm just not doing a good enough job of saying I try to get the positives just as much as the negatives, and that I hope these small lies not only help the company, but the employee too! =)

Sending the best,

Jen

More Undercover Bosses is a brilliant idea. Let the bosses see what the job is like, what customer interaction is like and how employees flow through various situations rather than hiring someone to find out if they recited the sales script perfectly and made eye contact when they smiled. A worker might have a rapport with customers that goes beyond what the questionnaire reveals.

jentodd I appreciate your sentiments. I look for the positives too and will occasionally give very nice and helpful employees credit even if they didn't do whatever upsell or exact farewell greeting the company tries to program them to do. It just seems like as much as some companies claim they want to catch employees doing things right, they have extensive scripts and are seeking to nitpick employees who don't offer the company credit card the right way or some other cheesy offer that has less to do with customer service and more to do with lining the pockets of greedy corporations.

I have not felt like I am lying or acting when I am mystery shopping. Perhaps it is because I do this part time and there are thousands of shops I have never done. Maybe those are the ones you are talking about. When I have a scenario I usually can pull from my life experience and pose as myself from a different time or place in my life. As to "lying" in the sense that you are really not going to purchase anything I have to say that in my non mystery shopping shopping experience I notice that only a small percentage of people who are browsing and asking questions in retail stores actually purchase something. I see lots of people walk out without a purchase, especially with car dealers. Perhaps my city is different.
My favorite reports are those that ask me at the end for my opinion or feelings. If there are missed "opportunities" that I am required to grade the sales person down for I almost always mention to them that although the sales person missed x, y and/or z I really enjoyed the encounter as the staff person was friendly or nice or personable or whatever and that I prefer not to be upsold when I am the customer.

Thanks sandy. I'm OK with just browsing with no intention to buy. The concept of judging someone while lying to them about my purpose for being into the store is different than just browsing.

I'm with you about enjoying the opportunities to state our opinion of the overall experience. I also try to use those words to add positive feedback for my overall experience regardless of the way the company wanted the salesperson to follow a script. I have had some mystery shopping companies tell me that I should not say things like "I prefer not to be uphold when I am the customer," in my reports.

MysteryMojo Wrote:
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I'm with you about enjoying the opportunities to state our opinion of the overall experience. I
> also try to use those words to add positive feedback for my overall experience regardless of
> the way the company wanted the salesperson to follow a script. I have had some mystery shopping companies tell me that I should not say things like "I prefer not to be uphold when I am the customer," in my reports.

I completely agree with adding positive feedback. Even a negative experience can have something positive and I try to see good a well as bad, which is why I believe none of my negative reports have been refused. But I try to stick to observations rather than opinions, unless the report specifically asks for my opinion. Saying "I prefer not to be upsold" is an opinion, and most MSC/clients want to know what happened and how. If an employee has "lost points" by not up selling, she does not regain them because the MS gives an opinion about disliking up selling. Instead, she might gain points because you state something she DID do, like make eye contact, smile in a welcoming way, make an additional offer of help, do/say something above and beyond her job, do additional duties, but to give her positive feedback it must be something the client WANTS her to do - and, clearly, most clients want employees to up sell - and they don't want to hear whether we like it or not.

I did a shop burger shop where there were 3 customers in the store. There were 3 young employees. When not serving customers each employee was bent over the counter with their cell phone. Bored? Maybe they could have cleaned the dirty tables or swept the floor. Or refilled the TP in the restroom. I did not have to make up scenarios for this shop, but I see where the value of mystery shopping is to the corporations.

MysteryMojo, perhaps you should read this article from a past issue of Mystery Shopper Magazine.

[www.mysteryshoppermagazine.com]

Although, if you are indeed having questions, perhaps it may be time to seek a career change.

All great points. Perhaps I am at a point of fatigue in prioritizing what corporations want at the expense of seeing why certain individuals may not have been behaving like the drone they were trained to be during the random moment of my visit.