NOP Mystery Shopping is a division of the NOP Research Group, one of Europe’s largest research organisations. We were launched in 1993 in order to co-ordinate all NOP Group mystery shopping activities, to develop further this area of research and to highlight the distinctive features of mystery shopping versus consumer research.

We are dedicated solely to designing and implementing programmes to measure and improve an organisation’s customer service levels and therefore, its customer satisfaction. Our unique approach to collecting, interpreting and presenting data provides readily actionable information which enables a client's management to track the organisations performance against pre-defined customer service standards.

We draw on dedicated planning, data processing, field and administrative resources and our experience and expertise provide clients with a proven methodology.

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For large numbers of companies the quality of service they provide their customers is vital to their success. Many have rigorous training programmes for their staff which detail exactly how they should behave with customers. Mystery Shopping observations are a vital tool that clients use to understand how their staff interact with their customers on a day to day basis. They may want to know if staff are following the guidelines they have been given on what to say and how to act. They may also be interested in finding out if staff following the guidelines they set leads to increased customer satisfaction.

The data helps our clients to analyse their strengths and weaknesses in the area of customer service. Interpretation of the results enables client to monitor the effectiveness of their staff training and take remedial action where necessary. Assessment programmes will normally last for a year, allowing for continuous monitoring of the content of client training courses.

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Your role as a Mystery Shopper is vital to the success of NOP Mystery Shopping. Without you the business would not exist and you are the foundation of all the work we carry out. This means that the quality of your work can affect the whole company.

As a Mystery Shopper you will visit, make phone calls or internet enquiries to various establishments, posing as a prospective shopper or purchaser of some product or service. You will be asked to report on various details of your ‘shop’. This will be done via a questionnaire, which will ask you to report on many things, such as the quality of the service you received, the interior appearance of a shop, etc. All details and equipment that you will need for your role as a Mystery Shopper will be available on this website.

Honesty - never guess at anything - go back and check (99% is not good enough for our clients.) 

Objectivity - for the main part we need you to be objective and report on facts, not opinions. We will in some cases ask for your personal viewpoint on what your feelings were as a ‘real’ customer.  When this is required it will be clearly stated in the questionnaire.

Be observant - know what you need to be aware of and look for it. 

Reliability - do what you have agreed to do - unreliable Mystery Shoppers jeopardise projects. 

Self motivation - You are working from your home base and only you can make your visits.

The identity of Mystery Shoppers is always a mystery to individual client branches, it is almost never revealed. The only occasion where it may happen is if you are asked to reward good service with an on the spot voucher. Some enquiries may require you to give your real details, but the branch you are dealing with will still not know that these are the details of a Mystery Shopper. We profile our Mystery Shoppers in line with our client requirements, which will sometimes mean we have to send families instead of single people, younger people rather than older, males rather than females etc. To this end it is important that we maintain a broad base of Mystery Shoppers.