| Weekend Special: The mystery shopper strikes |
| Team BS / New Delhi/Mumbai/Hyderabad November 12, 2006 |
| Hotels have mystery guests who check in to time room service, look for dust beneath mattresses and set off crises to see how the management deals with them. Restaurants have mystery diners to find out how waiters behave when faced with irate guests, and to test whether the soup is served piping hot or merely warm. And large stores have mystery shoppers to see how well the staff is trained to help you locate the five packets of imported sugar that you took the trouble to hide behind the tea before asking for them! Or so these companies claim. With retail booming across all formats in India, we decided to turn a group of journalists into covert mystery shoppers, to see how well store managements respond to the average customer suffering a bad hair day. The instructions: act spoilt, be petulant, raise your voice, get into an argument, look disinterested, snap. Mystery Shopper #1 surfaced at the just launched Reliance Fresh store early in the morning in Hyderabad |
