I was on the floor in my flats, my purple streaks pinned away from customer eyes, when my manager approached me and handed me 2 stapled pieces of paper. It was in that moment that my life of consumer insights and fashion intersected for the second time. This moment gave me a closer look at mystery shopping and reshaped how I thought about customer experience and research. 76. 76? Excuse me?
This was the second time I was mystery shopped. The paper had an ugly red chart on it with the number 76, followed by a series of responses and scores around different measurable service attributes. How I went from a score of 100 last time to 76 was wild. I read the report and tried to visualize the customer, but failed. It looked like a short visit with me, but I usually spent a lot of time with my clients. I had no recollection of this experience.
Our memory is flawed, and the way that we perceive ourselves and the world around us is limited and circumstantial. We base the decisions we make as consumers on subconscious triggers and fleeting perceptions. These are still essential to measure, but working in loyalty research and measuring customer experiences I already knew recollections were shaky at best. And now it was happening to me. Little did I know that my life of consumer insights was going to transition deeply into mystery shopping, but my understanding of it began on that floor.
I couldn’t remember this customer or this experience at all, and I had two pages describing every element of it in my hands. This same way, I wouldn’t be able to tell you what ads I saw at the gas station I visited yesterday or if the promotion for poultry was going on at QFC when I was there last night or even how much I spent on each fruit or vegetable last week, let alone last month. So how can we accurately understand what consumers see, read, hear, and experience with products and brands? I guess it is traditionally called mystery shopping.
But is mystery shopping a bunch of ugly charts and numbers on printed pieces of paper that are handed to sales associates in stores? Absolutely not. This outdated term doesn’t fully describe the possibilities of in-the-moment research. Having spent time in this methodology I learned quickly that we could test almost anything. From going undercover to test recommendations sales associates make, to buying and breaking phones to test customer service, to calling and emailing law firms to understand response rate and quality of content, to taking luxury watches to get fixed and measuring the time in service. That’s how mystery shopping works when done right. It’s about uncovering truth, not tracking scores.
In-the-moment research allows you to test and score any part of the consumer experience or buyers journey.
- Research: test channels of information to understand where and how marketing shows up. This approach can also measure channel performance to ensure all marketing materials, merchandising, and displays are working properly. This can also test what sorts of recommendations and WOM moments consumers may experience as part of searching or shopping for products or services. These can occur virtually or in-person.
- Purchase: test the effectiveness of sales channels as well as the service received as a part of them. These can be online, phone, email, in-person and more. Recruited shoppers can buy, return, or just consult on products and services to accurately measure each experience.
- Post-purchase: in-the-moment research can measure after service on purchases or post-purchase effectiveness. From frequency of expected potential touchpoints, to duration of touchpoints, to even customer service when things go wrong. All elements of the post-purchase experience can be evaluated for accuracy and against expectations.
In the end, what began as a red score on a stapled report became my way of seeing the consumer experience from a fresh perspective. In-the-moment research isn’t about catching sales people off guard or turning human interactions into numbers on a chart. When we can observe, measure, and understand experiences as they actually happen, we get closer to the truth of how people encounter brands, make decisions, and build loyalty. Taking a closer look at mystery shopping reframes it entirely—turning old scoring systems into meaningful insight.