Daily Tip for Thursday June 10th- Debunking the Mystery Shopping Myth

Posted on 10. Jun, 2010 by Inside Hospitality in Daily Tip

Today’s Tip: Mystery Shopping is NOT a magic bullet.

We have talked about this before. Mystery Shopping is not designed to measure  guest satisfaction. Mystery Shopping is designed to measure the technical efficiencies of an operation. In other words, the systems and procedures and how these standards are executed during service.

Sure, if your working with a decent mystery shopping company you will obtain guest insights.  But they are just that, insights. Snapshots in time of a couple guest’s experiences. Having a mystery shopping company come into your restaurant or hotel once a month and that’s the only information you use to determine your guest’s satisfaction level, is a pretty scary place to be.

You need to have a much more aggressive Voice of the Guest program in place. Comment cards, IRV systems, call back programs, etc. need to be part of your menu.

We are now living in a social world. The time has never been easier to really tap into guest insights on the social media landscape.

We feel that every restaurant, bar and hotel operation should have some type of continuous mystery shopping program in the works and should be using it to tighten up systems, standards and procedures.

Mystery Shopping can be a powerful operational audit tool when used correctly. Just don’t go making all your business decisions based on 1 or 2 evaluations per month.

Have questions about Mystery Shopping? We’re here to help.

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Today’s tip is brought to you by Inside Hospitality™, a comprehensive and innovative guest experience management and measurement company whose integrated suite of hospitality business solutions achieves tangible results in the marketplace and is the choice for restaurant and hotels worldwide.

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