by Keira Mackenzie-Smith, Learning Curve

As mystery shopping providers in this brave new world of AI, we should be looking to tools to streamline and enhance the data collection and analysis process, making our lives more efficient and accurate. With clients accessing sophisticated and inexpensive AI technology, we, and our mystery shopping reporting platforms, can’t get left behind. 

If the tech tool examples below are not already integrated into your current platform, they should at least be in serious development. Let me share some ideas to challenge your providers…

Mobile apps with AI-enabled surveys that use algorithms to dynamically adapt the survey questions based on their previous responses, ensuring that mystery shoppers are asked relevant and contextual questions. Dynamic surveys can adapt questions according to the location, brand online review, or operational measurements. They can also include voice recognition and real-time syncing of data.

AI-powered speech recognition and Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms that convert speech recorded during the visit into text. Along with this, platforms are not far from being able to rephrase, replace, and detect inappropriate language in reports. We can soon expect the capability for shoppers to complete full surveys by conversation only.

Chatbots powered by AI that can be used to collect data from mystery shoppers during or after their visits. Chatbots can engage in interactive conversations with shoppers, asking specific questions and capturing their responses. These chatbots can also provide immediate feedback or clarification to the shopper, ensuring accurate data collection.

AI-powered computer vision and image recognition technologies that can be used to capture and analyze visual data during mystery visits. These tools can automatically detect and analyze product placement, signage, or compliance with brand standards by analyzing photos or videos collected by mystery shoppers.

Shoppers would cheer loudly if they were offered ‘assignment personalisation’ where platforms use targeted AI-assisted job promotions on Job Boards.  

Platforms should now be able to support project management teams by using predictive analytics to optimise and automate the project setup. They do this by assessing allocation difficulties and risks to recommend actions and predict project budgets based on past fieldwork data.

The platforms should be using Generative AI to automatically create Customer Journey Maps. And is there a future where we can expect automated generation of VoC Surveys for clients based on existing data sources? 

Clients are expecting dynamic dashboards presenting real-time data, along with their mystery shopping results. Dashboards should offer our clients the ability to generate conclusions including linking correlations between MS and CX measurements and business financial performance metrics, sales conversions, etc.

It's time to explore the offerings and future availability of the different mystery shopping platform providers to find the tools that best suit your needs.