Invisible hands of the mystery shopper

They are among us: asking ‘dumb’ questions at the bank counter, demanding fifteen packs of salami of the same batch, or passing invisibly through routine transactions every day.

You couldn’t, for instance, tell Sheha Kumar* apart from the rest at a cell phone outlet. Even before she sets foot in the shop, she marks the store on parameters like “does the window display make her want to enter the shop and does it attractively display Nokia models, one of the brands the store has taken dealership for”. Once in, she exhausts a list of questions on the salesperson to see whether she knows enough about the phone she is employed to sell. And does she push for brand Nokia over, say, Sony Ericsson?

All this, the salesperson must do with minimum fuss.  
Kumar, and thousands like her, are a brand’s final line of control. Their job is to leave no randomness in user experience and, therefore, in making a sale. A study tells us that they can single-handedly save Indian IT and consumer electronic majors up to Rs84 lakh per store annually. That they’ve managed to slink out of most store managers’ peripheral vision may explain why we don’t hear of mystery shoppers often -- having competed with them for the salesperson’s attention for over ten years.

Mystery shoppers are discerning buyers who raid retail outlets, on a brand’s behalf, to gauge a salesperson’s response time, product knowledge and attempts to close a sale. They are hired by companies like Grass Roots, Bare International, AQ, Kaiz Hospitality and others, to ensure that the brands they represent are being sold and serviced by outlets that stock them.

First-time mystery shoppers, who’ve been briefed to gauge multiple parameters, admit to getting worked up with the finer points initially. Making it look effortless can take a few stealthy visits to the trial room to decant the observation overload. “If you ask too many questions that are not very obvious, it could lead to suspicion. I have seen some of them suddenly become very pleasant, and that’s when I know that they know,” says Ashish Sen*, who mystery shops for three companies, and runs a business while he pursues a college degree.

“I started doing this for a free meal reviewing fast food joints. You are given Rs500 or so, part of which is spent on the food order and the rest is your earning. But now I am picky; unless I make a decent profit of it, I don’t bother,” says Sen. Samina Tapia, client servicing executive, Bare International, explains, “An assignment should not be for money’s sake, but for the experience. We look for people who are passionate about shopping.”

Landing a lucrative assignment can take a while, unless you have special skills in your profile that match a certain assignment. The rarer those skills, the higher the earnings you can expect. The average mystery shopper is most likely to be a student or a homemaker, who likes flexibility and proximity to the outlet in question. “About 40% are professionals who mystery-shop on weekends,” says Deepali Jetley, assistant vice president, sales and marketing, Grass Roots India, that has a network of 6,000 mystery shoppers spread across Tier 1,2 and 3 Indian cities.

Matching the reviewer’s profile to the brand vision is important. “If there is a telecom company whose target audience is a person with aspiration, then we have to interview and select mystery shoppers who fit the bill,” says Jetley. Grass Roots also lists a number of Delhi’s and Mumbai’s Page 3 on their database.  “They generally review elite, international cosmetic brands, which are very specific about customer service. They generally offer a very different experience. Only someone who has visited their stores abroad can rate them,” she says.

Others start with simple assignments like opening a bank account or getting a pair of jeans altered. “But if you are observant, have a low error rate and low processing time, you can expect to build up to a wider portfolio,” says Delhi-based shopper Varuna Jain, whose reviews electronics stores, fast food outlets, fine dine restaurants, service hotels, airlines and bags a few international assignments off and on. Jain takes up about 20 assignments a month and makes a hefty 20-25 thousand a month off them. 
Some firms also take on investigative assignments to check for malpractice and corruptibility of staff. 

“We are asked to flunk certain online tests, and then to bribe the staff to help us pass the next one, by either bringing in a proxy or by paying them to tell us a few short cuts,” says Sen.
*Name changed on request