Our Mystery Client: excellence in selection and training
The quality of the mystery shopping service depends mainly on the skills and reliability of the mystery clients involved. Mebius has developed a recruitment and management system that ensures the perfect alignment between research objectives and the profile of the selected auditors.
Panel structure and strategic segmentation
Our network consists of more than 120,000 active mystery clients, divided into two strategic macro-categories to optimize the effectiveness of surveys. Expert auditors represent the technical component of the panel, characterized by specific vertical expertise in the luxury, hospitality and retail sectors. This category includes professionals with technical-sector backgrounds who ensure accurate assessments of complex parameters such as the quality of fittings, proper execution of service protocols or compliance with operational standards.
The second component is standard mystery clients, which closely mimic the target audience of the end client. These profiles are selected by demographic, behavioral and consumption matching, ensuring optimal sample representativeness. Their ability to simulate authentic customer journeys makes it possible to detect behavioral and perceptual insights otherwise not accessible through traditional market intelligence methodologies.
Our mystery clients can work with ultra-specific profiles, from owners of certain types of vehicles to test authorized workshops, to subscribers of premium services to evaluate loyalty programs. This specialization makes it possible to conduct surveys with the mystery client revealing themselves at the end of the simulation or maintaining anonymity for the entire duration of the test.
Process of onboarding, selection and certification
Each mystery client accesses the panel through a multi-step screening process that includes assessment of communication skills, observation skills and operational reliability. Initial training is followed by customized training modules for each project, ensuring standardization of survey methods and consistency of data collected.
The progressive scoring system incentivizes skill upgrades through gamification mechanics, allowing access to more complex projects based on demonstrated performance. This approach ensures continuous improvement in service quality and high retention of the best profiles. Mystery clients with high scoring can access more complex and rewarding audits, creating a self-sustaining ecosystem of excellence.
The automotive
We have over 10,000 cars in our panel for after-sale audits, mock trade-in and other types of investigations in the automotive world. Our experts can evaluate dealers, dealerships, retailers and garages.
B2B specialization and operational versatility
For surveys targeting business channels, Mebius has a dedicated panel of companies certified to conduct B2B mystery shopping. This specialized component allows the performance of enterprise sales networks to be tested with the credibility and expertise needed for complex interactions between suppliers and business customers.
The flexibility of our system allows us to handle both incognito and revealed mystery shopping surveys, adapting the methodological approach to the specific objectives of each project. In the case of mystery repair, for example, we provide experts who can handle simulated damage with technical expertise, ensuring the credibility of the intervention and the quality of the data collected.
Mebius competitive advantage
The careful selection, training and constant monitoring of our mystery clients is the core differential of our value proposition. A specific selection criterion is developed for each job order and an ad hoc training course that mystery clients must complete before they can carry out verifications. This process ensures that each survey is conducted with the highest quality standards in the Italian mystery shopping market.
Our panel represents the perfect synthesis of technical expertise and behavioral authenticity, key elements in generating actionable and strategically relevant market intelligence for our clients.
Shoppers are divided into subpanels: Expert and Customer Shoppers. The former are experienced mystery shoppers with many visits behind them and experts in specific industries (medical, automotive, hotel, etc.).
The second are the real customers whose key buying characteristics we know (car owned, spending profile, habits, etc.) and are used in all cases where shopper turn over is needed, such as in small stores or where the shopper has to turn out at the end of the checkout, or where there is a need, for example, for a specific car to be traded-in.
We can cover all of Europe from the smallest municipality to the largest city. Airport zones, vacation resorts, smaller islands and places not open to the public such as events or other are not a problem.
Expert shoppers are mystery shopping professionals with at least 3 years’ experience and specific training courses. We need them to assess whether experts and clients issue different evaluations or, if specifically requested by clients, to accompany real clients who have the characteristics for the project but not the skills. They are the ones to whom we entrust audio and video verifications and checks to be made in case of evaluation anomalies.
The auditors are qualified personnel from certification bodies who have experience in ISO 9001 audits: we use them in all cases where at the end of the audit we have to reveal ourselves to continue the audit in audit mode and in surprise audits that are mystery only in the date but then turn out to be real inspections on client specifications, both in the legal area (haccp) and on agreements (warranty).
We have created, perhaps, the only panel of companies that offer to conduct mystery mode audits for business-facing services.
The panel consists of more than 400 companies divided by type, product category, turnover and region. Those interested in audits of this type can contact our sales representative.
It consists of experts, enthusiasts or simple car owners who can evaluate dealers, workshops, gas stations. We can make verifications with specific car trade-in, with simulated damage, with making warranty and non-warranty repairs, with roadside assistance request. In short, we are able to cover the demands of the automotive world 100%.
Below is an excerpt of the cars owned by our shoppers.