Mystery Shoppers: The Benefits to Customers and Their Dining Experience

What is a “mystery shopper?” Despite the provocative name, it’s quite simply a hired individual posing as a customer to evaluate your restaurant. A spy – unknown to your staff – conducts an unbiased observation of staff performance, along with other key aspects of the dining experience. The objective is NOT to find reasons to punish your employees, but something that provides significant value: identification of business pitfalls that when addressed, lead to improved marketing strategies, thereby increasing sales.

How Can Mystery Shoppers Improve Customer Service?

Hiring a mystery shopper is a valuable tool for monitoring and evaluating restaurant operations. In a fast-paced environment with multiple services to coordinate with a constant flow of new and returning customers, it can be difficult for management to maintain an objective perspective.

A mystery shopper provides a unique opportunity to acquire impartial feedback on typical customer experiences. By obtaining a better understanding of the overall performance of hosts, servers, kitchen staff, bartenders, – even parking valets – restaurant managers can identity priorities for improvement to keep the profits rolling in.

For example, mystery shopper data can minimize loss prevention through the investigation of questions such as:

• How many customers do you lose because of reservation mistakes?
• How many meals or drinks are reimbursed because of an error in preparation?
• How many bad Yelp reviews do you receive because of slow table service?

In some cases, you can even create a “stress test.” For instance, how does your staff respond to a rude diner? By studying the results of contrived scenarios, you can adjust training to improve employee response to difficult situations. 

Creating a Mystery Shopper Strategy

The first step is to decide exactly what you’d like to measure and how you want to use the data. The best place to start is to answer some tough questions about the state of your current operations, such as:

• What are the pain points of your customer service experience that causes the most problems?
• Is your staff performing at optimal levels?
• What are the most frequent complaints on social media?

Above all else, BE SPECIFIC. If you set out to observe everything, your feedback is most likely going to be too general or overwhelming to help you focus on priorities. A day or two before the visit, provide your mystery shopper with a precise agenda to focus on. Ask for OBJECTIVE OBSERVATIONS rather than SUBJECTIVE EVALUATIONS. The mystery shopper provides the data; management decides whether it’s “good” or bad” and how to use it.

Questions to Ask Yourself Before Hiring a Mystery Shopper

The following outlines a number of questions to prepare before hiring a mystery shopper. Being prepared with the variables you care about is key to successfully using the data gathered from the mystery shopper.

Server Performance

• How long does it take to get water? To be greeted? To put in an order?
• Is the server knowledgeable about the food, beer, wine, and cocktail menus?
• Is the server knowledgeable about daily specials and the policy on substitutions?
• Did the server put forward effort to upsell and promote new menu items?
• Did the server make recommendations based on diner preferences?
• How long does it take for orders to arrive at the table?
• How accurate are the orders?
• How often does the server check the table? Refill water?
• How quickly are plates cleared?
• How long does it take to receive and pay the check?

Host/Hostess Performance

• Are they at their designated post?
• Do they acknowledge the customer upon entrance?
• Did they respect reservations?
• Did they offer an accurate explanation for longer wait periods?
• How long does it take to get seated and receive a menu?

The Kitchen

• Are the food and drinks prepared as described in the menu?
• Are special instructions followed (e.g., how meat is cooked)?
• Is the food cooked to the correct temperature?
• Is the presentation attractive?
• Are the courses well timed?

Infrastructure

• Is the exterior of the restaurant clean and well-lit?
• How difficult is parking? What was the availability?
• Is signage visible and helpful?
• Is there handicap accessibility?
• How clean are the restrooms?
• How clean are the tables, the bar counter, silverware, place settings, napkins, and server attire?

Taste of Food

This category can be problematic. As we know, taste is entirely subjective. If you want mystery shoppers to evaluate the taste of food and beverages, emphasize that they should not think of themselves as food critics, and therefore, should avoid adjectives such as “good” or “bad.” Instead, have them choose more observational terms, such as: salty, sweet, flavorful, balanced, imbalanced, bland, fresh, burnt, spoiled, undercooked, overcooked, and so forth.

Using the Results

It’s not the job of the mystery shopper to make recommendations, rather, management digests the data then determines next steps. Negative observations can raise red flags for your restaurant business. Use them to see how you can improve staff training, infrastructure, and marketing efforts. Don’t use them to discipline employees, and leverage the positive observations to provide employee recognition. Remember that incentives create change better and faster than demerits.

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