Back in the 1980’s, one of our early mystery shopping clients was a McDonald’s franchisee. When our CEO, Elaine Buxton, met with him to discuss our quality review process, she explained that all reports would reflect the utmost professional language. She gave the example stating the review team would change a phrase like “She took her sweet time” to something more professional sounding, such as “She was slow in approaching the drive up window.” That wise client taught us an early and valuable lesson: don’t change the tone of what the shopper communicates in verbatim comments. As he so aptly put it, “I can picture exactly what happened when I read “she took her sweet time”, so keep those types of comments in, please. We learned a lot from that client, including how to guide a quality review team to strike a balance between flavor and tone, content and quality.
A few months ago, Confero revealed 25 mystery shopper comments that shed some interesting light on shopper experiences in a humorous way. We know our clients take mystery shopping reports seriously, as do we, but comic relief is always welcome, so we decided to share more funny comments. Enjoy!