The main success factor of the inspection lies in the customer itself. On the surface, it seems that it is easy – they just came in, chat a little bit, and watch an apartment. But sometimes customers face quite difficult situations. For example, when inspecting one developer in Tyumen, our secret client was sent for an unaccompanied visit to an unlit construction site, on the way to which he had to run away from a guard dog and listen to an impressive bag of profanity from the guard. But he managed to complete the inspection, although any other person in his place would escape and forget about the remuneration. If you want to find a hero of that kind, we advise you to have a look at the following recommendations.

The most important feature of a secret customer is sensitivity (but not excessive) to the level of service as well as the willingness to share their impressions. If you accidentally choose a phlegmatic employee who makes little account of how the sales officer behaves or how neatly dressed they are, you can get just "average temperature in the hospital", as we say in Russia. However, overly emotional candidates are also better avoided – they can exaggerate any problem.

This experience does not have to be in real estate purchasing only. The main goal is to understand how tractable a person is. How do they feel about sales assistants? Do they often make impulse purchases? Are they inclined to trust the opinion of the sales assistant? Let applicants for the position of inspector tell you how did they buy a TV, a refrigerator, or a car. Such a retrospective analysis will be useful not only for you to make the choice but also for the secret customer itself when conducting further inspections.

Learn about past experience of a potential mystery client. It does not have to be inspections. The main task here is to learn more about the candidate and their attitude to work. Despite the fact that inspections are one of the least labor-intensive tools of additional income, no one can be immune from irresponsible customers. Therefore, make sure in advance that the candidate left their past job not because "the dog ate their report".

Ask a few aside questions in order to understand how a person speaks, what speech patterns they use, if they use filler words. The style of communication should correlate with the status of the customer and correspond to the class of housing being checked. One can wear an expensive fur coat and drive a premium car, but as soon as they speak, they can break the whole picture. The same applies to the legend that you elaborate for inspections. One day, one of our customers faced a certain discomfort and realized that the proposed purchase scenario didn't correspond to his actual situation and this made it look less natural. The elaboration of legends for each customer, taking into account the plausible situation for them, is one of the important factors of a successful inspection.

It is better to invite potential buyers of new apartments or someone who recently bought it to act as a mystery customer. In the first case, the person is more interested and not biased (being in the process of choosing an option for the future for themselves), and in the second case, the person is sufficiently aware of the details of buying an apartment and knows what to pay attention to. If you ignore this recommendation, then the selected person may fail the inspection or behave in an extremely unnatural manner, fueling suspicion by the sales officer. For example, one our candidate, when calling the sales office, could not remember the number of rooms he wanted to buy, whispering to the sales officer: "Just a moment, wait, I wrote it down somewhere".

This criterion follows from the previous one. If a person is looking for housing or already knows how to choose it, then it will be easier for them to "settle into the role." Or find an actor who was accidentally forgotten to be awarded an Oscar. Sales officers will immediately unmask a secret customer if they hesitate, revert their eyes, constantly touch the pocket in which the voice recorder is located, etc.

We do not recommend attracting acquaintances or sending employees of your company to competitors. Such persons already have a certain level of loyalty or negativity to the organization being checked, which may adversely affect the inspection and put the research results into question. For example, if a potential "spy" has a negative experience of interacting with your company, then it is highly likely that their report will contain underestimated scores.

An obvious criterion, but some neglect it. This may be due to an attempt to save on the remuneration to field staff or negligence on the part of the employee responsible for the recruitment. If you send a person to inspect new business class buildings, then you should not send a student with a transport card sticking out of their pocket. Attracting high-income buyers is not easy, but possible. For example, when we conduct inspections of new buildings of business or elite class, we select mystery customers with expensive cars.

Despite the fact that the main purpose of any inspection is to improve the quality of service, people are unlikely to agree to work "out of kindness". Sometimes it seems that the question of remuneration is meaningless: it is enough to define a certain payment and people will come. Usually, it is true, especially for the standard for standard-comfort segments. However, if you are going to organize inspections of the comfort, business or elite classes, then it is better to offer a noncash remuneration. There are many options: starting from certificates for various master classes or English courses to the products of your own company (discounts on parking, some free "meters" when buying an apartment). Thus, it is possible to conduct an inspection and, in the meantime, attract a client. It is better to have several options for remuneration, but don't offer all of them at once so that the customer can choose from them. When recruiting, offer different options alternately, only if the candidate refuses the previous one. Naturally, you need to start with what is more convenient for you.

An important component of the study is the verification of forms filled by secret customers. Some of the buyers may have random mechanical or systematic errors (due to a misunderstanding of questions in the form). The secret of well-filled forms lies not only in well-designed tools but also in competent instructions. If you just give a blank form and a voice recorder to a secret client, get ready for an unlimited stretch of imagination. We always listen to 100% of audio recordings and conduct additional interviews with the inspectors after their visits of sites, as they are not specialists and may miss some non-obvious aspects.

Read more about Mystery shopping in our blog.