Your mystery shopping job is secret in order to protect the confidentiality of the business you are investigating.  You never know if the person you tell knows someone who works there and might blab about how they know the mystery shopper who just was at their place of business.  The business management that arranges for secret shopper jobs does not want confidential information about their business performance to be leaked out to their employees or customers.  They are paying you to fill out a confidential report so that they can take steps to fix the weaknesses that you might discover or reward employees for doing a good job.

You must not be detected as a mystery shopper when you visit the place of business.  So carrying around a notebook and writing in it would be a big give-away.  So would being obvious about checking the time or carrying a stopwatch.  If the employees of the business suspect that you are a secret shopper, they will go out of their way to make sure that they serve you well and follow every procedure that they have been taught.  If they don’t know you are a secret shopper, they will treat you in the same way they treat all their customers.  And that’s what you are there to evaluate.

Most of the secret shopper jobs that I have done have shown that the businesses are living up to about 85% of the expectations that the shopper report lists.  However some do better, and some do worse.  On the last shopper job I did, the service was considerably worse.  I’m sure that the business management will use the observations that I made to correct the wrong practices of their employees.

So remember that when you do a shopper job, you are not doing it so you can gossip about the business you investigated or about what a good deal you got.  You want to be a trusted mystery shopper who will be eligible to take on many more shopping jobs.

One of the first questions asked by potential secret shoppers is how to begin. It’s pretty simple.

1. Read through websites of mystery shopper job provider companies to find those who offer the type of jobs you want in your area.  If you don’t know how to find these websites, take out a membership in a directory of mystery shopping provider companies.

2. Register as a secret shopper on those websites. In some cases you may need to take a test, but most of the mystery shopper companies do not require this. The more companies you join, the more shopper jobs will be available to you.

3. Sign up to get emails of job openings from the companies that you register with.

4. View the “job boards” of the websites of those companies.

5. Sign up for the jobs you want to accept.

6. Wait for confirmation that you have been assigned to the jobs.

7. Study the requirements for the job so that when you do the shopping job you will know what to observe. Make sure you thoroughly understand every aspect of the assignment. You won’t get paid if you don’t give all the required information.

8. Do the shopping job within the time frame of the assignment.

9. Log onto the website of the assigning company to fill out the online report about your shopping experience. Be thorough and clear in your descriptions of your shopping job experience.  You will probably have to scan and upload a receipt for your purchase or fax a copy to the company.

10. Wait for your pay!  (And while you’re waiting, do some more shopper jobs!)