Improve Service with Mystery Shopping in Your Restaurant

Mystery shoppers can help provide a meaningful evaluation of your customer service, but only if they’re prepared when they go in. Provide your mystery shoppers with specific direction a day or two before they’re scheduled to visit your restaurant. If they set out to “look for everything,” you’re likely to get a generalist’s point of view. Letting them know ahead of time what you’re specifically looking for will ensure you receive the feedback you need.

Remember that shoppers are observers, not critics. Instruct your shoppers accordingly, making sure the forms they use ask for specific observations rather than subjective ratings. Posing the question “Did your server make helpful suggestions? What were they?” is a better approach than having the shopper grade the server’s overall suggestive selling performance.

When designing your mystery shopping form, incorporate the points of evaluation that are most important to you and your operation. It should be designed to be filled out by the shopper but scored by a member of your management team. That way, the measurements of service quality will be more accurate and consistent from one form to the next.