Philosophy of Shopping ...

We have a strong philosophy that impacts how we do mystery shopping in America's one-stop career centers. "Workforce development professionals do not make good mystery shoppers!" Here's why:

• If you study the background for mystery shopping, its purpose is to provide a "customer-focused" perspective of an organization and its programs and services.
• To get the customer's perspective, you have to ask the customer. You don't ask the service delivery team.
• Think about that a moment. If the service deliver team (workforce development professionals are part of that family) could tell you what the customers were thinking and how they were reacting, we would not have to put customer service surveys in our one-stops!!!
• Mystery shoppers ought to be real people from local communities who visit the one-stop centers to tell you how real customers react to what they experience.

The Customer's Perspective ...

Let's be clear. We are not saying that workforce development professionals cannot play a role in mystery shopping programs. In fact, if you have ever done mystery shopping in your one-stop centers and have not involved workforce development professionals in the process, you may have missed some important feedback.

We believe the best role for workforce development professionals in mystery shopping programs for America's one-stop career centers is to conduct Systems Reviews and to oversee the overall mystery shopping program.

But ... if you want the customer's perspective (and you should) then you need to go to real people who have been or potentially are real customers of your one-stop career centers. There is no better way to develop customer feedback than to get it from the customers themselves!