How To Be A Secret Shopper

Have you ever seen a secrets shopper hard at work? Of course you haven't, the job isn't that hard. If you've never seen a secrets shopper, and don't know what one is, just imagine a company auditor in street clothing. Basically secret shoppers, sometimes known as mystery shoppers, look like regular customers. They enter a place of business in the very guise of a customer, and secretly check out the quality of service. Sounds pretty cool, doesn't it? Have you ever wondered how these people get their jobs?

Secret shopper programs probably work best for companies large enough to support a chain of stores, or restaurants, or other types of businesses. The big shots that manage certain companies were finding it difficult to gauge the quality of service their employees were providing customers. This was especially true for big chain stores. Sending in men and women from management to audit a store works to some degree. However auditors are often expected days ahead of time, and employees could always step up their performance when a familiar person in a company uniform arrives.

Someone got the bright idea that sending in regular customers to actually spy on the employees of an establishment would be far more effective. Being that the Internet is so widely used in America, it was the logical medium by which to hire these consumer spies.

Now if you want to become a secret shopper, you'll never get to use special gadgets like 007, but you will be using the Internet in most cases. Just do an online search for "secret shopper." All sorts of job opportunities will come your way. Or will they? Like with anything else that concerns money, people will be ready to scam you. You will find some sites that will charge you money before you can become a secret shopper for them.

Again, I can't stress it enough, be careful. Sometimes these sites, that charge you, will be agency sites, which to my knowledge are considered legit. Sometimes, however, they will be scam artists. Most of the time, legit sites will actually be the website of a company that has decided not to use an agent to employ secret shoppers. They will hire you, not charge you. In these cases you can become a secret shopper for free, just like getting any other job.

However, there are sites like shadowshopper.com. Shadow shopper is an agency site. It represents several different businesses that are looking for secret shoppers. Shadow shopper will charge you for using their services. Currently they offer a gold membership for $39.95, a silver membership for 19.95, and a bronze membership for free. Apparently these prices are only available for a limited time, after which I reckon shadow shopper will raise them. I have found some questionable information about shadowshopper.com in my research. What I know for sure is if you join for a free bronze trial offer, shadowshopper.com will spam your email address mercilessly until you join for a silver or gold membership.

My best advice would be to watch out for shadowshopper.com. Though I have never worked as a secret shopper, I have been audited by quite a few in the past. It pays to be nice to all customers. Secret shoppers will typically report directly back to someone at company headquarters, usually via cell phone or email.

I've personally never heard of anyone getting fired because of a bad report, but it is quite likely to have happened by now.