Psychology of Motherhood » 2005 » March

What I Do All Day

I figured since I never seem to write here anymore I’d let you all in on just exactly “What I Do All Day” now. To start off with my job title is Mystery Shop Scheduler. And that is exactly what I do - I schedule/hire people to complete mystery shops of just about any imaginable customer service establishment you can think of - retail, food service, banks, bus stations, carpeting stores. And the list goes on.

A mystery shop - also called a secret shop - is when an individual goes to a predetermined location and follows a particular scenario or script and evaluates different areas of the business. They are to do this “in secret” and act as a normal customer so the staff doesn’t know they are being inspected.

I’ll give you an example of one I used to schedule - it was for a pizza chain and each month there were specifics given as to how and when to evaluate the restaurants. One month someone might be assigned to call ahead for a carry out during dinner hours, order a specific size pizza and an appetizer to go along with it. They would go pick up the pizza and while there take a look around the restaurant (without being detected - hopefully) and note how busy it was, whether there were napkins and stuff on the floor, stop in and check the restrooms when they first get there etc. Then sometime within 24 hours of visiting the restaurant they will fill out an evaluation form online about customer service, food quality, cleanliness etc and be paid a pre-determined fee. Sometimes this just means a free meal and sometimes it’s a few extra bucks in your pocket.

My job is to find people to do these evaluations in all of the locations given by the client. Maybe they only want to pulse their Midwest Market or maybe they want to pulse the entire country. For some of my assignments I have to fill 50 jobs, for some 600. Usually I have a pretty short window of a few weeks to find people and get the assignments completed. And sometimes the locations are so rural and remote that it’s almost impossible to find anyone that even knows what mystery shopping is let alone will actually do the evaluation.

We have a large database of shoppers to draw from but there are always places that are hard to fill. Then I have to go out to message boards on the net and yahoogroup mailing lists and post the available jobs and hope someone lives in the right area and wants to do the job. When all of those options are exhausted then I have to get on the phone. I call people listed in mystery shopping databases on the internet and in those locations where I am really desperate I call businesses, speak to managers, and beg them or a member of their staff to do the shop for me. This actually usually works pretty well because many of the stores I call get mystery shopped so to be able to do this to one of their competitors generally peaks their interest.

Since I am a hyperfocused, maniacal, work-a-holic I am good at this job. I work all day and all night seemingly, in reality it’s whenever I have a moment. The money is unreal - I’m easily making twice what I was making doing daycare and I have a LOT more freedom. The great part about this job - you get out of it what you put into it. The more I work, the more I make, and I can do it all from the comfort of my home, in my PJ’s if I want.

So if you don’t see me here for days or weeks at a time, just know I work against some crazy deadlines. And I do have 4 little kids that need my attention too. I pop into your blogs and read up on what’s going on. I don’t often leave comments but only because I want to check in with so many people. Just know that I’m here and I’m thinking of all of you