If you are looking for work from home leads, then perhaps you might consider becoming a secret shopper for one or more chains. There is hardly a major chain in the country that does not hire some type of secret, mystery, or quality assurance shoppers. With all those companies out there how could one go wrong? That is exactly what many people think. For that very reason it can be difficult getting into the system.
The type of work from home you end up with depends on what chains have positions available. Each chain will have its own set of standards and compensation as well as coverage areas. Here is a short breakdown of a few of the types of mystery shoppers and possible compensations:
- Fast Food Chain: Some or all of these might be offered by fast food chains. Hourly compensation, per diem per mile, reimbursement for the food you order and eat. What are some of the responsibilities you might have?
Jack in the Box for example sends a mystery shopper to each restaurant in the chain at least once or twice a month. In rare cases more often. The mystery shopper grades the restaurant on greeting, speed of service, product made to company specifications, restaurant cleanliness inside and out. To be paid for doing a work from home job and still get to eat the food besides is hard to beat.
- Super Market: Might pay you per hour, allow you to keep items purchased from the list, pay a mileage differential. What expectations do the chains have?
Safeway for example will send in one or more mystery shoppers per 4 week period. The shopper will check to see that there are less than ten shopping carts outside that are not gathered up, grade employees on friendliness in greeting, in offering to help the customer find an item and if the shopper accepts the offer does the employee take the shopper to the item and physically touch it to show where it is, does an employee in each of the different departments: meat, deli, dairy, produce, bakery greet you and also make a selling suggestion. Does the cashier greet you then thank you by name if your name comes up on receipt, were there more than two people in a regular line or three in the express lanes. Is an offer made to take your order to your car. Were any problems observed in the store dealt with satisfactorily. This type of report is somewhat more time consuming for the person working from home than some of the other options listed.
- Super Stores or discount stores will often have a shopper buy a predetermined list of items then check for accuracy in pricing and then may even return the merchandise to the store for restocking along with the mystery shopper report.
- Department Stores, Mall Shops, and Convenience Stores may actually concentrate at times more on the security issues such as shop lifting. For example 7-Eleven used to send a member of management in to see how much merchandise they could shoplift without getting caught. Then the items would be shown to the employee and suggestions made how to avoid this from happening with real customers.
If you enjoy being out in public then being a mystery shopper is a near perfect work from home job.