I was talking to a manager the other day about mystery shopping, and he was lamenting that the budgets were tight, and they were considering eliminating their secret shopping program because the usually got a 90% or better score.  He wanted to use the money to send employees off to training programs at their corporate office out of state. The questions I posed to him were simple, considering I was almost ready to jump out of my skin!  Have you revised your mystery shopping program to reflect the current state of your business? Do you share the results of each secret shopping report, and pass out accolades to those with the 100% scores?  Are all your employees being shopped? His answer to each was no. What a waste of time and money.  His secret shopping observation outline is probably outdated, and doesn't come close to helping the employees get "to the next level" or even improve their skills.  Each of these 100% reports is a free opportunity to build employee satisfaction and loyalty.  More loyalty equals better employees.  Happy employees equals less turnover.  Less turnover means less money spent training new hires.  You get the picture. Perhaps the most important key is to ensure that all employees are being shopped!  When he looked at the reports, sure enough, about 30% of the employees had actually encountered a mystery shopper in the past year.  We see this happen time and time again.  Good employee actively engage customers.  Those who may not be as good, may not engage customers as frequently. Taking these three steps could make the secret shopper program work for him.  He would see immediate results, much more cost effectively than sending one or two people out of state for a few days to the corporate headquarters. Be sure to stop by our other web sites for additional information and ideas about building customer loyalty: The Service Quality Department ServiceQuality.US ServiceQuality.CA ServiceQuality.co.UK ServiceQuality.CN High Definition Mystery Shopping