How many companies have moved away from Mystery Shops and why?

Anonymous Question!! (This is a good one)
How many companies have moved away from Mystery Shops and why? I know that it can be a stressor for some of our associates, and I am really interested to see how and IF companies are moving to other evaluation tools for associate performance.

I love Lease Hawk.

We do use mystery shops and will continue to do so.
I explain to our team members that it is one performance on one particular day. I always talk about how we use this as a playback, like a coach reviewing a football game with a team.
We have a MPL and if a team member isn’t meeting that we create a performance development plan with additional training and homework assignments. Once that assignment ends we evaluate their performance and growth.
When I was on-site was shopped, many times. I knew that any call or person walking in the door could be a shopper.
Knowing that kept me from getting complacent. Yes... many people hate getting shopped but it is an independent feedback tool that provide insight into what we, as trainers and managers, can do to help them grow.
My two cents.

We found it hard to get a quick enough turnaround from a third party vendor in our market for our student demographic.

I know we need to inspect what we expect, but many times I find that the shoppers are trying to catch the teams doing something wrong. I wish there was a better way to accomplish this.

My old company did them in house. A manager or assistant manager from another community would do the shop. They knew what we were looking for as a company and we received the shop results the same day. It made it a lot easier to discuss exactly what needed improvement.

Recently received a 'poor' shopping report on a good manager...I called to ask why? They had been receiving threatening calls and the shopper was so vague and suspicious that they thought they were being set up as there was another person waiting in their car. They were not comfortable touring.

I do always go back and review the call recording to make sure I agree with the shoppers evaluation.
It’s definitely not perfect. We also do video shops randomly and they are very helpful.

Use a reputable brand and use it as a training tool - its the company that puts the "stress" in the mix. We often would let employees watch their own videos in private - self-analysis.

Has anyone started using recorded Zoom tours as a training tool?

Why pay someone to tell you what you already know. Do you need a shopper to tell you who on your team are top performers and who needs coaching?
I don’t think so. Train people, set expectations and hold them accountable...offer coaching and praise in equal measure and make it a daily event. Why wait on the shopper? Never made sense to me:-)
#MyTwoCents