This information is provided to help you in your search for a mystery shopping provider that will perform as expected and will meet your measurement needs.

Experience - A company's experience in conducting mystery shopping programs should weigh heavy in deciding which service provider to use. A veteran mystery shopping company can quickly develop an effective and efficient program for you, as well as help you avoid costly mistakes before they happen.

There is a surprising amount of work that goes into a mystery shopping program. There is an art to developing a good questionnaire; it must be designed with the appropriate scaling and weighting, and the results must fall into your measurement objectives. This skill and knowledge only comes from many years of experience learning what works and what doesn't.

Shopper Access and Shopper Management - Many mystery shopping companies claim they have very high numbers of mystery shoppers in their database. This is good to know, but what really matters is the number of shoppers who are trained and actively shopping for them. This, along with the company's shopper scheduling and shopper management resources, has an impact on how quickly a new program can be implemented, an existing program expanded, and how well every area of a national program is managed.

Scalable Services - If your company needs customer service measurement, customer satisfaction web surveys, IVR surveys, employee measurement programs, or other programs, look for one source that can provide it all. You may need just one service now, but it would be wise to choose a provider that can provide all the services to suit your company's growing needs in the future. Additionally, correlation or linkage analysis using all metrics provided by one company will ensure the results are valid.

Quality Control - With all other things being equal, your mystery shopping program is only as good as the data it provides. Most mystery shopping companies will say they have some kind of quality control process in place; some may even boast they have "the best quality control process in the industry". Look beyond the marketing hype and ask the company to demonstrate the specific steps they take in providing data you can trust. No company can promise their data is 100% accurate, not even Sinclair, but no company goes to the lengths we do to ensure you get the best quality data possible.

Commitment to Integrity - Every industry has companies that do not behave with integrity and the mystery shopping industry is no exception. There are companies that will behave unethically, making promises they cannot keep, or simply set unrealistic expectations of what they will deliver. Be wary of promises to show correlations or linkages. There is no problem in producing these type of reports, but it IS a problem when they promise to show a connection or predict results of an analysis that is not accurate or does not exist. Also be wary of service providers that offer just one type of measurement and say this will serve all of your company's measurement needs.

The fact is, there is not one type of measurement that will serve every company's needs. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses. Working with a company that provides a variety of measurement programs makes it more likely you will get the program or combination of programs most appropriate for your measurement needs.