Solon Community Network is the market leader in recruiting and training residents as mystery shoppers. We pioneered and drafted the ‘Guide to Using Residents as Mystery Shoppers’ which you can download as a PDF using the links below.

• Guide to Using Residents as Mystery Shoppers - Section One (PDF, 316KB)
  
• Guide to Using Residents as Mystery Shoppers - Section Two (PDF, 536KB)
  

What is Mystery Shopping?

First used in 1940, Mystery Shopping is a form of Market Research where individuals are trained to observe experience, evaluate and report on the customer service process of an organisation.

Mystery Shopping tests front-line service standards and customer care from a user’s perspective. The information gathered can then assist organisations to focus on customer service improvements by providing them with information on the quality of their current service.

In addition to providing high quality management information for social landlords and service providers, resident Mystery Shopping fosters greater tenant involvement in the provision and standards of service delivery. At the same time, it increases the confidence, knowledge and skills of individual residents taking part in the programme. All research has shown that a significant proportion of tenants coming forward as mystery shoppers have not previously been involved in other tenant participation initiatives.

We can offer:

• A unique programme to enable organisations to recruit, train and support their residents to become Mystery Shoppers
• Work in partnership with an organisation to support them to develop Mystery Shopping
  
• Run a one day session to train staff to run a complete in-house Mystery Shopper programme
  
• Run a one day course to train residents to Mystery Shop
  
• Produce Mystery Shopper reports (data analysis, main trends and summaries)