Who has heard of Mystery Shoppers?

What is the definition of a "mystery shopper"? Here is the definition from the dictionary.....

Someone hired by a company to pose as a customer in order to evaluate the quality of its service.

I don't know if any of you are aware of this, but companies hire "mystery shoppers" on a regular basis as a tool to help them see how their employees are performing. I have been lucky enough to be on both sides of this topic. I worked in a place of business where I was "secretly" "shopped" by a mystery shopper on a regular basis, AND I have worked AS a mystery shopper. So, I feel like I have a bunch of experience on this topic.

So, when I worked at Lowe's, they were constantly trying to evaluate the performance of their employees by using mystery shoppers. It is actually kind-of freaky if you are the employee, because you don't have any idea when this is going to happen, or if the customer you just helped was "under cover" or just a regular everyday customer. The secret shopper will act like a normal customer, but they are paying attention to every single detail of their shopping experience with you. Kinda intimidating. So, after you have been "shopped", your employer will normally take you up to their office, and explain how it went. And every time they did this I was completely surprised, I had NO IDEA I was "shopped". So, I always passed with flying colors when it came to my attitude. I have always known that if I wanted to keep my job at Lowe's, I needed to make it a pleasant experience for my customer so that they would keep coming back!!! The only bad remarks I ever got by being secretly "shopped", was that I didn't do enough adding on to my sale. Which means, I sold them a lawn mower, and let them be on their happy way, instead of doing what the retailers want you to do....which is, sell them lawn bags, engine oil, a rake, fertilizer, a hose, EVERY single thing you can think of that will go along with a lawn mower. I always had trouble doing this. If my customer wanted just a lawn mower, so be it. So, as a salesman, I kinda failed on that end. Oops.

So, when I WAS the mystery shopper, I would go into a retail store, and the people who hired me would tell me how much I was to spend, what I needed to buy, who I needed to talk to, and to remember every single detail of the entire transaction from beginning to end. I had to ask all the right questions, so that the salesman would help me in the way I needed to be helped. Then I needed to write a long detailed report about every thing that happened. Was she nice? Was she clean? Was she happy? Did she seem irritated? Did she try to sell me more than what I needed? Did she act like she was too busy? Did she seem interested in what I asked her? What color was her hair? And I could go on and on. So I had to pay SUPER close attention to every little detail. So, I did this for a few months, and then as I got to thinking about it, I really wasn't sure I was cut out for it. I mean, I HAVE been on the employee side of this. I understand if they don't sell the whole entire store to me. I know sometimes you are busy with other customers and you have a hard time multi-tasking. So I stopped mystery shopping. I just had a really hard time disclosing all the bad parts of the employee's behavior. The one thing I didn't have a hard time with though, was understanding the need that employers have for getting top of the notch employees. Their company really depends on it. And they spend ALOT of money every year hiring these "mystery shoppers" that give them a great idea of who is doing a good job, and who really isn't cutting it. I really learned alot from both sides.