How to Become a Successful Mystery Shopper

Tips and Tricks from a Seasoned Shopper

Any time I tell someone that I’m a mystery shopper, I always get the same response: “Oh that’s neat! How do I get started with something like that?” If you’ve ever wondered the same thing, then take a moment to read on.

I work full-time as a support programmer/analyst and make a decent wage. But with personal expenses mounting and a debt load I’m still trying to get under control, I decided about three years ago to seek out a simple way to augment my income. Cooking is one of my passions and I briefly entertained the thought of picking up a part-time job at a local restaurant but I decided against it. I thought it would involve too rigid of a schedule and knowing a bit how restaurants work, I knew I’d end up working far too many hours than I originally bargained for.

No, I wanted something that had a schedule that was flexible and completely determined by how much free time I wanted to devote. Then one day, I decided to research the field of mystery shopping. This was ideal for me - I could select as many or as few assignments as I wanted. It also sounded like it would involve minimal effort on my part.

My research yielded two results that I’d like to share with you, along with a bit of advice I learned, now having done hundreds of assignments. First let’s go over just how mystery shopping works, so you can understand the business side a bit.

Mystery shopping organizations have a list of clients they sell their services to. These clients agree to pay the mystery shopping companies money for business-critical feedback, normally to obtain customer service-related data on their employees. Other assignments may involve pricing audits (to measure a company up against their competition), restaurant shops to evaluate food quality, or age verification assignments where you are to tell them if you or your guest got “carded.” The spectrum of assignments is wide—I even evaluated the bar staff at a strip club once!