Services Mystery Research

Test shopping

Test shopping involves an anonymous tester encountering a real shopping situation, usually involving the return or exchange of an item. Test shopping is most widely used in retail, catering, petrol companies, the hotel industry and the service industry.

Test consultancy

The test of advice is carried out when seeking someone’s assistence in a manner which will not immediately lead to a direct sale. Test consulting is applied with cars dealers, banks and insurance companies.

Test phone calls

Test phone calls assess the quality of assistance provided by a customer advisor in call centre or information centre. concertare employs people to call from at home or at work to ensure the conversation is as authentic as possible.

Store checks

Store checks allow a means of assessing general standards in a particular premise, for example adhering to company policy, monitoring the number of customers and overall shop presentation. Generally this is distinct from test shopping or consulting.

Campaign tests

Campaign tests monitor the successful running of a campaign. Testers document how closly the key campaign objectives are being followed, in a quatitive manner according to set protocol, and with the visual aid of digital photography. Thus it can be clearly established whether strategies are working equally effectively across the board.

Promotion checks

Promotional checks are a means of ensuring that any promotional strategies are standardised. The testers document the attendence levels and degree of success by checking adherence to protocol and digital photography.

Website tests

An alternative to the standard ‘usability test’ in which few people can be said to be actively using a website, this grants many testers particular target group profiles to find particular website uses. Thus the value of a site is assessable according to its helpfulness on a standardised template.

Comparison with the competition

In much the same way as we test our clients, so too the competition can be sized up. This gives a benchmark in standards and is often a good source of motivation in the workforce.

Test thefts

Test thefts are an acknowledged way of reducing ongoing problems with missing stock. With the appropriate thieves about, losses in value can be considerable in even a short time frame – test thefts lead to clear improvements in staff vigelence and some valuable suggestions in crime prevention.