set up own mystery shop business

mitch161

everyone knows that these agencies make profit on every visit made. has anyone thought of setting up their own mystery shop hobby offering their services to local independant shops as a once only assessment of quality or regular visit inspections?

think about it i know of a few independant shops that would love to get some outside insight into their business for improvements. offering a secret shop report or a full store review audit/assessment.

spending an hour walking around with a clip board noting down missing price tickets. area's that would make products sell better like moving pens next to paper and not having them on other side of store next to the clothing racks (a silly example)

anyone have any response to this or tried offering their services locally as retail auditers / analists?

official businesses charge £500-£50,000 for full on business analysis and charge upto £50 a visit for mystery shopping (mostly £15-£25 for retailers) but if i could just get 5 local shops to regularly want a secret shopper i could charge them £10-£15 per report (a week) netting me £50-£75 for jsut 5 hours of work.

or offering a special 'full visit' audit inspecting missing tickets, product locations etc for £30-£50 for a 2 hour visit

anyone with any thoughts?

TUS

I would suggest the first port of call would be to do some basic market research with your target market ... to see if they would actually pay for these services.

esalad

What a great idea - I used to do loads of MS work so would be interested to see how you get on. :j

Box

This is actually a very good idea. If you're successful locally, then it's the kind of industry that makes itself very easy to expand into other cities aswell, as there are thousands of people (on this board ) looking to earn a bit of extra cash who would love an extra mystery shopper job and could do the work for you.

I say go for it, and good luck!

mitch161

i know of a couple places that want some insight into their business but dont want to be paying the hundreds/thousands of pounds "business analysts" quote.

but charging £25 cant be a offer a business would ignore. after all thats pennies to a company but works out as 4-5 hours wages for me. and if i can do it in under a hour or two even better,

every town has independant restaurants, odds-and-sods/brickabrack shops newsagents, travel and property/letting agents so just getting just a couple shops to agree on a regular visit/report in exchange for under £20 and/or agreeing to a full store experience audit for under £50 once every 3-6 months cant be ignored, can it?

if some supermarkets and fast food venues are already paying these big mystery shopper companys £20-£50 just to say how fast they served customers or how friendly staff were. then i think independants would also be onboard. Obviously with me heading it id ensure the shops got a more detailed report then the simple how fast were u served, was the meal prepared to specification, was the toilets clean.

right now i developing the questionaire and making a mock up of results to show as a sample report to show indepentants of what they will get for their money.

anyone with suggestions on their mystery shopping expereinces at what you think the reports should include would be greatful. i have done MS myself so i have a few idea's of my own but want to do more then what gyp do for instance. i have been part of other MS companys too so have a good idea of what they all ask, but want some fresh idea's of things they dont ask.

of course once i have developed my own questionaire i will offer shop owner a free consultancy AFTER first visit (£20) to gauge their response to the report and to input what they want to learn. basically find out what matters to them the most, and obviously to help ease them into to agreeing for further visits. and then just post them the report or provide them with a weblink.

dont worry i already have a domain handy and web page development experience so costs are negligable for set-up.

so any suggestions feel free to reply

p.s
and suggestions about improving my grammar and spelling are already noted. im typing this on smart phone so i get lazy, dont worry all reports will be done properly on PC and triple checked lol

podperson

I think it's a good idea but think perhaps you're under-estimating how much time you need to put in. If you're saying £10-15 per report then that's fine if, as you seem to saying, you're spending an hour on them. I do mystery shops and I'm lucky if they're done in an hour when you factor in travel time and filling in the report. On top of that you need to factor in the marketing, probably various phone calls to the company, initial meeting to agree on what they want the mystery shop to focus on, do they want a written report, do they want a questionnaire - if they want a questionnaire do they want to do it or do they want you to (bearing in mind small companies may not want to take the time out to make a full questionnaire so may ask you to do one and then just approve it). What if they have issues or queries on the report afterwards. You could end up spending a large amount of time dealing with just one small business and then just get one report from them at £15 so you're making a loss there.
Not saying it won't work, just maybe look at the price structure a bit more.

mitch161

podperson, thanks for some insight.

as a mystery shopper already, most of us are in receipt of at or below minimum wage for doing these shops for the big guys. yes we might get a free fast food meal out of it but my aim is to treat it like this but with me finding my own customers/visits too,

as said before i developing a questionaire based option and hopefully looking to do a one time trial for under £25 including a consultancy meeting. working it out 20 minute visit normally nets me £5 so doing what i already do for the big boys and have £15-£20 spare for time to consult the business for another hours meeting to personalise the following visits is what i have planned.

basically doing a test shop. AND THEN do the initial meeting to agree on terms. and some persuasion to agree for more regular visits.

that way they get to see the potential results upfront.

jen_br

Firstly a lot of us MS do independant work I for one do a lot of video independantly, however your figures are way off... Companies pay a LOT more then 25.00 per report... think about this and since I am bound by contract I can't really give away fees. But you will need to proofread reports (sometimes its hard to do your own).

Really sit and think it it out, I do 2 restaurants that are local to me I go in bi monthly and do a secret dining and give them a full report (and video) now it takes me about 3 hours per site to complete this... from start to finish to preparing the report in a fashion that is acceptable (spiral bound etc) .

What qualifications do you have to make judgements on shops?I would want someone with retail degree or some sort of hard core background to be able to tell me about my shop before I paid them anything.... Plus geography what if Joe owns a shop in leeds and a shop in Scotland wants them both done for 25.00? You see where im getting at.

There is a reason that the companies charge over 100.00 a site. Some of my favourite companies are hubby and wife teams but again they don't kid themselves and charge silly money

jen_br

Oh and if its a mystery shop-- you can only do the shop once every so many months otherwise your not a mystery lol

nehpets81

I have a few comments... Firstly I think this is a great idea, especially if you live in an area that is not completely overrun by chain stores/restaurants. You might be surprised about how many others would have tried this, though - I have heard it discussed on here before now. Secondly I think you may be pitching your prices a little low - I'm not sure where you got the figure of "£20-50" for a report - I'm not saying it's wrong but anecdotally I understand that the it is more likely that companies pay upwards of £100 per report (of course for this money the results should be analysed by "experts" on a massive scale across the chain). Also worth considering that once contracts have been won, it may not be that easy to up your fee.

One problem I can forsee is that the owners of independent restaurants and shops may be very hands on and know exactly what is going on without the help of a ms program. However, how the staff act around the boss is obviously very different to an undercover shopper. Which brings me to another point, take a leaf out of experiences with companies like Gap and RE and make sure your scenario doesn't have anything that might make a shopper stand out. Asking questions about the food is great but ask too many and the whole thing is devalued if the staff get suspicious.

When you get up and running, it might get logistically very difficult to arrange all the shops, but they would have to be done every month, or whatever is in the contract without fail.

Finally, ask the client what they want to find out, anything in particular they want to find out and then use your experience to come up with a tailor made program to fit their requirements.

Good luck!

Jeez, I'm such a slow typer! Cross posted with the ones above - listen to her, she's more of an expert than I...

mitch161

jen cheers

for the standardised £25 reports that (for instance are done for fast food venues where you just vet how fast you were served how pleasant staff were and how clean the toilets were.). would be the basic quick overview done by myself or family member to add some randomness to the faces of the companies visitors. yes family do MS shops for places and fill in the quick 30-50 question reports and receive about £5 so if i gave family member £10 or even a better christmas present theyd be happy to help

the more detailed reports would be the £50+. and these will be done by me using my extensive expereinces and knowledge of merchandising H&S, customer service standards etc

but i would like to hear you experiences of how receptive places were to you seeking them independantly.

i have business qualifications ETC, expereince owning a business, working for a business and also mystery shopping a business (or 300 lol)

so credentials are not a problem. i am looking into using the simple £25 visit as just the trial or pocket money bit and then use it to get into the businesses mind to meet them and push for the bigger options..

after all to make a average income i only need £200-£300 a week if i done it full time . so thats just 8-12 shops a week (36 hours) but as a part time thing just one visit a week is still £25-£50 for a couple hours work.

i thinking of this as not my main business, but a hobby to start with. so i am not looking to run before i can walk. just generate a lil more income at first. like i do already with MS companies but where i would receive more then a free meal and a £5 for a fast good restaurant.. (we all know who im talking about)

as a totally ... un related example my £25 initial test shop would be exactly like gyps questionaire on supermarkets and fast food venues.

atleast my income would be better per hour then gyp give lol

**disclaimer note: any mention of gyp and prices are totally unrelated LOL**