Taking the Mystery out of Mystery Shopping (Grass Roots Group Mystery Shopping)

Member Name: collingwood21

Product:	Grass Roots Group Mystery Shopping
Date:	17/03/06 (2140 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Prompt payment, Helpful staff, Decent money, Requires no prior experience

Disadvantages: Intermittent work, Website problems, May not need shoppers in all areas

The next time you go shopping, queue at a bank or visit a restaurant, it could be that the person standing in line next to you is not a regular customer at all, but rather one of a growing number of mystery shoppers. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a mystery shopper is a person hired to visit a particular business posing as a customer in order to assess levels of service and evaluate the company secretly. The trend for companies to use mystery shoppers has grown quite dramatically over recent years, as many bosses are realising the potential of being able to assess their operation from a customer’s perspective without staff knowing they are being observed. Of course this may seem a bit sneaky (especially if you are one of those members of staff), but is does provide useful feedback if done properly – and a handy source of extra income for the shoppers themselves, of course!

I have been a mystery shopper for about six months now, and I am writing this review based on my direct experiences with my employer (Grass Roots Group) and some more general points about mystery shopping for any of you out there who may be thinking about trying it out. I have been asked many times how you actually get into mystery shopping to start with; the answer for me was that I replied to an advertisement posted in my university’s job shop for mystery shoppers to work in my area. For those of you not lucky enough to find such recruitment ads, then my advice is to turn to the internet and Google for “mystery shopping”, then simply to apply to as many reputable agencies as you can. By “reputable”, I mean that they shouldn’t charge you an initial sign-up fee and they should be listed with the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (http://www.mysteryshop.org/), a professional trade organisation that approves companies worldwide to provide mystery shoppers. The Grass Roots Group is listed with the MSPA.

Grass Roots is a British company founded in 1980; mystery shopping is just one of the many business services they provide, but forms a major department that currently has 35,000 people available as mystery shoppers across the UK. The mystery shopping division of the company can be found at www.grgresearch.com, where you will find a link to “join our panel”. Joining is a straightforward enough process, but you must agree to some important terms first, mainly that all the work you undertake is confidential, and that you are not permitted to discuss the specifics of any assignment you are given with anybody else, regardless of whether they work for the company you are assessing or not – which is why I can write about my experiences in general, but not name companies or premises that I have evaluated. You are also obliged to carry out assignments within the time frame given (which can vary from as little as one afternoon to any time a premises is open during a week) and to return your results straightaway (same day if possible), something to bear to mind before you sign up. Actually registering just requires your personal and bank account details, as you will be paid by money transfer directly to your account. If you are accepted, you will be emailed with your panellist number a couple of days later and you are all ready to go.

When assignments become available, GRG will contact you in one of two ways. The more usual is to email every panellist that fits the required profile within the vicinity of the premises to be assessed, listing the company, branch, and dates when the assignment must be conducted; if you are interested, you phone their freephone line and key in the assignment number and your panellist number. If you are the first respondent, then the assignment will be allocated to you and further details will be emailed out nearer the time it has to be conducted. If you are not first, then you will be marked down as a reserve for the assignment, should the person it was allocated to have to pull out for any reason. Such emails usually go out around 3 to 4 weeks before an assignment has to be done, with the full details arriving around a week in advance. However, in some cases where the assignments need to be done on shorter notice (less than a week, sometimes even the same day), then GRG will phone you to offer the work. I don’t know how they chose the panellist in this instance – probably whoever is nearest and is actually in when they phone – so for this reason I do recommend giving them your mobile number so you can be contacted more easily for these types of assignments.

Prior to undertaking assignments you will be sent briefing notes outlining exactly what you need to do. In my experience the assignments are all pretty straightforward and quite short, but it is important to read the briefing thoroughly to make sure firstly that you are visiting the correct branch of the store in question, and secondly that you collect all the information required whilst there. As you will need to act as naturally as possible during the assignment (they must think you are a genuine customer!), then you cannot take your briefing notes into the premises you are assessing. If you think you may have trouble remembering everything you need to check, then I recommend writing notes on a piece of paper to look like a shopping list to anyone observing you so you don’t get spotted. I would also suggest making a few quick notes as soon as you leave the store, as you are often asked for information such as the names of staff members who served you, which can be quite tricky to remember, especially on a longer assignment. I seem to be sent into banks quite often – to assess how well staff deal with enquiries about current accounts or credit cards – but I have also done retail visits that involved making a purchase (which you can keep or return for a refund later on), checking out the changing rooms, asking staff for stock that wasn’t on display, and looking at how well stocked the shop was. I have not yet been lucky enough to be paid to have my dinner at a restaurant or to stay in a hotel!

When I started out, assignment findings were written out on paper and returned through the post in a pre-paid envelope or emailed back as an attachment, but now GRG have gone fully electronic and will give you a link to a website in your briefing notes where you can answer a questionnaire about your experiences. These questionnaires are easy to answer, although you will often be asked to explain your findings, so be prepared to write specifically and in detail using the guidelines that GRG provide. Most assignments pay £10, which involves about 10 minutes of going through the briefing notes to prepare, usually 5 to 15 minutes in-store, and a further 10 to 15 minutes of filling in your results on the GRG website, although occasionally you do get longer ones (20 to 25 minutes in-store and about the same keying in your results) that pay £20. Payment comes through quite promptly, usually 1 to 2 weeks after the assignment has been done. How often you get assignments is very variable – I have done 3 in one day, but at other times got just 1 in a four week period – but on average I get 2 or 3 offers a month.

My advice for any aspiring mystery shoppers is:
1) Carefully check the location of the premises you are to visit when being offered the assignment. Can you get to it easily? Will it be expensive or very time consuming to get there? If it will, ask about the possibility of travel expenses being paid before you accept.
2) Write the key points of your assignments to look like a shopping list, so you can consult it if need be during your visit without raising the suspicion of staff members.
3) Keep a record of the assignments done, along with your notes, for about a month afterwards. This means you can check you have been paid correctly and will be able to answer any questions if your agency phones up about assignments.
4) Check your email regularly for assignments and phone in as quickly as possible when you are offered one to increase the chance of getting the work. Equally, make sure the agency has your home and mobile numbers so they can contact you more easily.
5) Don’t just treat it as a chore or easy money. Take the work seriously and try to provide the best feedback you can – good quality work will only boost your chances of being offered further assignments.
6) Remember than as a dooyooer you are used to seeing things from a customer’s perspective and discussing the pros and cons of companies/shops/services…so use this to your advantage!

The positive aspect of this work are easy to see: the assignments are easy, local, quite well paid for the time spent on them, and GRG send out the money promptly. All well and good, but I have found some problems (other than the intermittent nature of the work) in working for this company. The major problem I have found is that there new website for collecting data seems to have glitches in it. It seems to work fine when I use it, but I regularly get called back by GRG asking me to provide information over the phone as some of the data I entered has got “lost”. I don’t mind doing this, but when you are asked about an assignment you completed 3 weeks ago, then it can be quite difficult to remember the specific details that make the feedback helpful to the company. Furthermore, I have found that sometimes the information you are told to collect in the briefing notes doesn’t always match up well the questions you are asked when providing your findings. Sometimes I am asked to collect information which isn’t then asked for, or worse, I am asked for information that I wasn’t told to collect. As you build up more experience in mystery shopping, you do learn to collect a range of information automatically (such as noticing if all cashier points are open when there is a queue or if the opening hours are clearly displayed) so this becomes less of a problem, but I still do find it annoying!

Overall, I certainly do recommend mystery shopping as a source of money to anyone without a full time steady income (such as students or stay at home parents); you need no prior experience, can fit assignments in around your other commitments (even turn them down if you are too busy), and in my experience you don’t even need a car as most premises you will be asked to go to are easily accessible. All you need is access to an internet connection – and if you are reading this, you already have that! Would I recommend Grass Roots Group as an agency to work for? Well, I have nothing to compare them to as I have worked for no other agencies, but I get regular work, reliable pay and the people I have had contact with have been very pleasant and helpful…despite the problems I have outlined above. I would certainly suggest trying them out, and if it doesn’t work for you, then there are plenty of other agencies out there.



Useful Links:
www.grgresearch.com
www.mysteryshop.org/
http://ct.monster.com/articles/mystery/

Summary: Reputable UK mystery shopping agency