Job Tips
You may have heard that old saying:“When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping!” A lot of people live to shop -- they love it! And this reminds us of another saying, this one from the ancient Chinese philosopher Confusious: “He who find a job he loves will never work another day.” What the old Chinese guy meant was that people who really love their work, and who love what they do to make money, feel like they are not working at all -- they’re having fun and making money at the same time!
So now imagine how great it would be if you could combine that most enjoyable activity -- shopping -- with a steady paycheck. Yes, what if someone would PAY YOU to shop, instead of you going out and running up charges on your own credit cards! Is it possible? Is it too good to be true? Why on earth would anyone pay you to shop? Well, the fact is, it is true.
You can get paid to shop, and get paid very well. There is a tremendous and growing need right now for thousands of people just like you to help all kinds of businesses by shopping for them. That’s what this book is going to be about. It’s going to show you how you can become a self-employed and well-paid professional shopper, or more specifically, a “Mystery Shopper.” We’ll explain what that term means in the first chapter. Even though this is the kind of job that sounds too good to be true, it’s not a scam, and it’s not a get-rich-quick scheme.
You can get paid to shop, and do it on a part-time basis, in your spare time, on weekends, or make it your full-time occupation, allowing you to quite your current job and go into business for yourself.
This book is based on the real-life experiences of people who have already done it. We will show you step-by-step how you can follow in the footsteps of successful people who get paid, and get paid very well to be Mystery Shoppers. This is a job that takes no special skills, no formal education, and requires almost no start-up cash. All you need is a good load of common sense, the discriminating eye of a smart shopper, and the ability to tell others in plain and simple language about your shopping experience.
Sound like something you’d like to do? Who wouldn’t! You can spend hours per week doing what you already love to do most -- shop -- and get paid for it! So let’s get going right now and find out exactly how you can get started! In chapter One, we are going to explain what a Mystery Shopper is and how you can become just that! How To Make Money As A Mystery Shopper So what’s this all about? What exactly is Mystery Shopping? Simply this: a Mystery Shopper is hired by a company to be a kind of shopping spy. But “spy” is a perhaps too negative a word. A more accurate way to describe a Mystery Shopper would be to call him or her an“under cover marketing consultant.” That’s because what a Mystery Shopper does is visit a store, shop, restaurant, or some other place, and do everything a normal customer does -- look around, ask questions, make a purchase -- and then go home with the goods. But now the important part:
The Mystery Shopper does all this so that he or she can make a report which evaluates what the shopping experience was like. Was the service good? Were they waited on in a timely and efficient manner? Was the sales person polite, helpful and well qualified to get the job of selling done? Was the store atmosphere clean, friendly and customer oriented? Were they sold a tasty meal or a high quality product? And more. Once the shopping experience is completed, the Mystery Shopper then reports back to his or her client, telling them how well it all went. Much of the time, the Mystery Shopper is hired by a particular business to visit one of its own stores for the purpose of checking up on how well that store is being run, and to check up on its own employees. Other times, the Mystery Shopper is hired to go scope out the competition to evaluate how well they are doing, and to see if the competition is better or worse than the company which hired the Mystery Shopper. It’s all about quality control. The use of a Mystery Shopper is about finding out how customers perceive the business being evaluated.
Businesses have a great need for this kind of information. They use this information to improve their own service and methods of operation, and they also use it to keep tabs on the competition. By finding out what the competition is doing right or wrong, a business can take actions to do the same thing better, or capitalize on what the competitor is doing wrong. The first thing you might be wondering is: “Why can’t a company simply evaluate themselves?” Well, they do evaluate themselves a lot, and all the time. But the fact is, it can be very difficult to be objective, unbiased and impartial about your own operation. Business owners are in a great need of a disinterested third party to take a good look at them with the perspective of an outsider. A Mystery Shopper helps a business see them in the same way a new customer sees them.
A person coming in from the outside brings a fresh point of view, and will notice things others will not. This is the kind of information smart business owners hunger for because they can use that information to get better -- to improve their products, services, shopping atmosphere, employee skills, and a lot more.
A MYSTERY SHOPPER EVALUATES
As a Mystery Shopper, you may be asked to evaluate a wide variety of business practices. Some of these include:
• Are employees handling cash properly?
• Is the store or shop clean and pleasant to be in?
• Are the employees polite and helpful?
• Is there enough selection to fill customer needs? How To Make Money As A Mystery Shopper
• Did the employee say “Thank You” and ask the customer to“Come again?”
• Are government and professional standards being followed and are they up to snuff?
• What are employees doing well? What don’t they do well?
• Was the business easy to find?
• How well do employees answer the phone and communicate with customers?
• Were the rest rooms clean and well supplied with tissue and soap?
• Are safety and security standards being met?
• And much, much more.
Please note: Mystery Shoppers are not only trying to find what is wrong with a particular business -- but also what is right. Employees want to know as much about their strengths as their weaknesses. When they find out what they are doing right, they can do more of it, and increase business and profits even more. And when they find something wrong, they can correct the problem and make their business a better place for customers, and thus increasing chances for profits.
In effect, Mystery Shoppers serve as the eyes and ears of their employers, going where they cannot to find out how things are running. You know what it’s like when the boss walks into the office -- suddenly, everybody looks busy! But as soon as he leaves, well, you get the picture. This is precisely why Mystery Shoppers are needed.
They must “catch” or observe the employees at work as they would be when the real boss is not around. Mystery Shoppers must seem to be totally anonymous people -- just another customer -- but a customer who is actually on the look out for a number of key elements business owners must know to make their operations the best they can be.
HOW YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE
How To Make Money As A Mystery Shopper Armed with the information you provide your clients from your Mystery Shopping excursions, business owners can do a lot of things. They can choose which employees most deserve to receive awards for service excellence. And to be honest, the information a Mystery shopper provides can cause other employees to get fired!
Most of the time, however, a Mystery Shopper finds employee behavior and service problems that can be corrected. Your clients can also use the information you provide them to compare one of their branch stores to another to see which is performing best, and why. It may be because of the manager, the location, or a host of other factors.
But the data provided by a Mystery Shopper means the business owner does not have to work blind and can make informed decisions on how to improve a location that may be lagging behind the rest. Many business owners let their employees know they will be monitored by Mystery Shoppers -- but those employees will never know who it is. Why would a business owner forewarn his employees that they may be monitored in this way? Because it tends to improve performance. If employees know that any customer they are dealing with at the moment has the potential to be a Mystery Shopper who is evaluating them, they are going to be on their toes all the time and give each customer a high quality of service. Also, when it comes time for employee evaluations, Mystery Shopper data can be used, and can help the employer prove to his employee that he knows what he’s talking about when he makes certain judgments about work performance.
TODAY, CUSTOMER SERVICE RULES
In the old days, people didn’t have a lot of choices when it came to buying things. For example, Henry Ford is famous for having said of his Model T: “Customers can have any color they want, as long as it’s black.” Ford could afford to have this attitude because everybody wanted a car, and a Ford was about the only model on the market which most people could How To Make Money As A Mystery Shopper afford.
At the time, Ford had very little competition. Thus, Ford didn’t have to worry much about what customers wanted -- as long as they wanted the one thing he was selling. Also in days gone by, there was a lot less competition than there is today. People only had one or two choices of sellers for just about anything they wanted to buy, from hardware and automobiles, to food and clothing. But today, just look around.
There are so many makes and models of cars, they’re difficult to tell one from the other. You neighborhood most likely has dozens of different grocery stores and clothing stores, and lots of everything else. All this means that customers now have choices -- they can shop where they want to shop. Furthermore, customers can expect more or less the same quality of product at a reasonable price from any one of a few dozen sellers of whatever it is they want to buy. So what is the big factor which makes a customer choose one seller over another? The answer is customer service.
Those businesses who treat people the best are generally those who enjoy the greatest customer loyalty and repeat business. Today, we live in the era of Service, with a capital“S!” Imagine if a car dealer today tried to say what old Henry Ford did years ago. Customers would say: “What, I get no choice of color for my car! I’m going someplace else!” So how customers are treated, how well they enjoy their shopping experience, how many choices they have, how well they are treated by employees -- all of these factors and more are of extreme importance in running a successful business.
One of the best way to ensure a company is providing superior and excellent customer service is to monitor how things are going through the use of Mystery Shoppers. That’s where you come in -- that’s where you can take advantage of and cash in on one of today’s most vital business needs -- customer service quality control!
WHY THIS IS A GOOD JOB FOR YOU
How To Make Money As A Mystery Shopper What makes a good Mystery Shopper? Well, first of all, a good Mystery Shopper should be an average, ordinary “anyone.” What you need to look like is just another person coming off the street to shop in a particular store. As you know, all kinds of people shop -- young, old, fat, thin, welldressed, dressed-down, male, female, white, black, Hispanic, Oriental and any and all other races.
No matter who you are or what you look like, you represent a public sample of one -- you are “Joe or Jane Anybody,” and as such, you fit the bill to be a Mystery Shopper. The only way you are different is on the inside.
As a Mystery Shopper, you have a specific agenda to accomplish when you shop. You must have a desire to help your client be the best he or she can be. You must have the good common sense to recognize certain facets of what is good service, and what is not. You must have the ability to clearly and fairly evaluate the businesses you will be visiting, and you must have the ability to clearly report and communicate what you find on each shopping trip.
This latter task is often made easier because you will be given a specific set of factors and criteria to look for -- often making your report means checking off a list of items you will be asked to look for on a pre-prepared sheet of questions.
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