set up own mystery shop business

mitch161

1) the mention that i would drive down fee's making it worse for the rest of you.

well MS companies mainly concentrate on CHAINS, and multi outlet businesses. MS companies dont want to invest lots of time and money travelling from their london HQ to the country to visit a village shop. so i feel little me wont be putting a big dent into MS companies profit lines.

2) at first i just invisioned as a hobby or extra income doing exactly like servicedesk international, GAPB do but instead of me receiving a minimum wage 'fee' which after tax ni, petrol etc is not much. doing it without the middleman. again only to small local shops for more money then id receive from some of the bottom line basic MS companies. but of course supplying the shop with abit more insight then the standardised 50point questionaire results.

3) my experience. strange thing for someone to question my experience. i guess you must know me personally or have read my CV. nope? ok thats cool i dont mind peoples opinions but please dont assume.

4) if i were to make a business out if it then yes being more of a analyst is a aim, i do have skills qualifications, and experience so its not a problem.

5) this is not my business plan yet, its just a draft of idea's i want to start slow. i dont want to be going to the bank asking for hundreds of thousands to set up a HQ with several hundred employees. i want to be small and local self employed. im not looking to earn millions.
if i wanted a get rich quick scheme id move to thailand and open a english breakfast restaurant. but no

6) to avoid all assumptions i am currently unemployed due to health issues. locally there is no big bisiness analyst jobs going, and if there were i would only be able to go part time due to issues. so im looking for something small something that only takes a few hours a day not a full 9-5 in a officee job. something to get me out and about using my skills knowledge and experience.
mystery shopping has done this, but i am looking to expand on it

7) you would be surprised how many people go shopping each day and how some shops never think twice that a person is a regular loyal customer. id be more surprised if a shop owner never expected to see the same person twice.

i just want to start off with a hobby style affair to begin with, nothing set in stone in the form of contracts. just trials where i can test out a few idea's with shops and get feedback on if they want to go further. if not then there is no skin off my nose, or theirs.

what i want are some suggestions on people that do independant testing their methods of getting their name known and if they tier their services EG small amount for basic questionaire of quality. medium amount for detailed typed reports and larger amount for full reports.

8) if the MS basic reporting does take off and i find that staff start acting over the top enthusiastic to help as if they know what im doing then i can always employ a family member to put a lil mix into the shops. and ill develop or concentrate on adding a new layer to the plan.

EG doing a full quality standards review/audit where i make myself known to which ever shop worker is on shift and with a clip board spend a few hours really knit picking standards and area's of improvements. in things like product placement etc.

all im looking for is some feedback into people that already do independant mystery shopping reviews, as to how well received their reports are, cost bandings depending on type/detail and if they are visiting regularly issues they found being recognised. so far i go to fast food places once a week personally and one time a month as a MS and never have they acted as if they know who/what i am. MS companies dont like to employ a shopper to visit too often officially but in actual fact all those MS shopper that go to supermarkets every week without fail normally. do you think they avoid doing their normal weekly/daily shop simply because once a month they do MS there, nope.

although i walk down to my local grocer every other day, never once has he thought i was reviewing him lol

mitch161

i have already developed software that can transform a basic questionaire into a full report where i can type in 1 word and it automatically expands it into a full sentance. thus for instance

"SMtickets" become
During the review of your premises it has been noted that there have been some missing price tickets on products displayed. by not displaying tickets not only leads to potential trading standards issues but also customers do not want the bother of picking up the product to get it price checked, but would prefer to pick up the next closest product that is priced. ensuring price tickets are available and on display improves the selling potential of that product, please find attached photographic examples of these items.

(rough draft off the top of my head (i normally go through 5 drafts before finalising it into software))

so filling in a questionaire after visit takes 1 second to write a paragraph and the software i made already has the ability to grab the photos from my smart phone and attaches them. so report writing will take minutes not hours.

Highview

Sorry, I don't think this idea is a runner, small independent shops are under enough financial pressure already and the thought of yet another bill, for your services, will represent a sizable amount of takings to them. Or, even if they were interested in your services, a single visit would be enough for many of them, for continuity of your business you would need to be finding new shops to visit each time. I think, therefore, most of your time would be spent looking for these shops and then getting them to pay your bill at the end of it!

Becles

You need to add capital letters etc., before you send that report out mind

Have you thought of the admin side of things if you have other people doing the shops? I'm assuming you'll need to take people on as you can't repeatedly do the visits all by yourself.

I did some ad-hoc proof reading once to help a company out for a few months. If you got a well written report, it just needed a quick skim over to make sure it flowed correctly and there were no spelling or grammar errors. Those reports were a doddle.

However, there were reports with poorly constructed sentences or all written in caps, or with no capital letter or punctuation and so on. You either had to play tennis with the shopper sending it back and forward until it was improved, or just correct it yourself. Other times there were inconsistencies which had to be clarified with the shopper before it could be passed. This was all very time consuming.

Occasionally there were reports where the shopper had clearly not followed the brief or just made it all up, so they were useless and had to be passed back for someone else to find a new shopper.

We've all seen how many jobs get dropped at the last minute or companies ringing round begging as they can't find people to do jobs. You need to factor in time doing that as well.