Mystery shopping is a tool used by private and public organizations to measure the quality of customer service, operations, safety, contract compliance, and the overall experience of the everyday customer.
Most people think this tool is only used for retail and restaurant businesses, but nowadays it is used by the government sector (Federal, State, and Local), transit agencies, parking garages, airports, taxis bureaus, colleges, and airlines just to name a few.
Today, the  transportation industry is using “mystery shoppers" to ride buses, trains, subways, and even taxis with one goal in common: Generate a positive customer experience in public transportation. Most of the time these mystery shoppers/riders are from a third party contractor with industry specific experience and they are secretly scheduled to board the routes the transit agency picked beforehand, making observations and gathering all the data possible about customer service, safety, appearance, ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance, operations, and overall experience.
"Our overall goal is to monitor our operators - like a quality assurance check," said Houston METRO's Senior Director of transportation. "We'll have eyes and ears out on our service from an objective point of
view, so we can monitor where we need to do some actual work."
When a transit agency like METRO sets a Mystery Shopping program in place, there are important variables to consider like the size of the fleet, routes, time of the day to evaluate (morning/evening rush hour), etc. A primary key value to consider during the mystery rider observation is safety. Safety concerns include running a red light; not following speed limits; a bumpy ride; or hard turns where passengers feel like they're about to fall off a seat. Another advantage of using Mystery shoppers/riders is that the transit agency can compare the hard data vs customer complaints.
"It's to pinpoint what is really happening. Our main goal is to see a decline in the number of complaints that come in," said Marie Turner, operations support analyst. "We want the public to see a difference."
Kim Wells,manager of customer service at Houston METRO, says using mystery riders is a great tool. "If you use it like in your retail environment - to improve the quality of service you offer - why wouldn't you do it in the transit industry?" Houston METRO is not the only transit agency doing this. Chicago Transit Agency started a "mystery shopper" program back in 2008. They asked their mystery shoppers to evaluate key values such as providing on time, safe, clean, courteous, and efficient service.
 The use of technology used by Covert Travelers, mystery shopping and customer experience programs brings to the transit industry a whole new concept and opportunity to improve their customer service, safety and operations with a real time feedback from front line operations.
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