Mystery shopping

Mystery shopping allows us to step directly into your customers’ shoes.

Sometimes, excellent marketing and a well-designed store layout can be let down by a lack of knowledge amongst staff or a poor attitude on the shop floor. Discreetly assessing real-world interactions, we uncover what it feels like to be your customer and where improvements can be made.

Where can mystery shopping add value?

At DJS Research, our tailored mystery shopping programmes provide an authentic view of how your business performs across different touchpoints, whether in-store, online, over the phone or through live chat.

Mystery shopping is highly flexible. It can evaluate a single store, compare branches or track performance over time. It can assess competitor service standards or benchmark your brand against industry norms.

For online journeys, mystery shoppers test digital platforms, reviewing everything from product search to checkout flow. For physical locations, they capture the complete customer journey, from first impressions through to the final interaction.

How does mystery shopping work?

We work with a wide network of trained fieldworkers who pose as genuine customers, carefully following tailored scenarios designed around your research objectives. They record their experiences in detail, capturing everything from staff knowledge and service quality to ease of navigation and speed of delivery.

Our analysis combines detailed qualitative feedback with quantitative scoring, providing actionable insights to improve training, processes and customer satisfaction.

Some recent applications of mystery shopping include:

• Assessing in-store sales and after-sales experiences at a watch and jewellery retailer.
• Reviewing dining club benefits across competitor offerings.
• Evaluating electrical store staff on customer engagement, EV point installation knowledge, trade discounts and upselling wider product needs.
• Tracking the visitor journey when booking tickets to a national gallery.
• Benchmarking prices for service packages across a garage network.
• Gauging compliance and staff knowledge of a ‘Help to Buy’ scheme among UK housing developers.
• Comparing customer journeys across different debt advice providers.

Whether you want to monitor compliance, track brand standards, or identify moments that delight or disappoint, mystery shopping helps you understand how your business is really performing when it matters most.

With mystery shopping, DJS Research brings you closer to the customer reality, highlighting what is working, what is not, and what you can do to raise the bar.