Measure what your
customers actually
experience.
Your staff training manual says one thing. Your customer's experience says another. We deploy trained evaluators into your locations across Singapore and Southeast Asia to measure service delivery, compliance, and customer experience as it actually happens. Structured scoring. Bilingual. Actionable within days.
Customer satisfaction surveys measure memory. Mystery shopping measures reality.
Most companies track customer experience through post-visit surveys. The problem is that surveys capture what people remember and how they feel about it later, not what actually happened. A customer who waited 12 minutes for service might report "about 5 minutes" if the interaction ended well. Another who was served in 3 minutes might report dissatisfaction because the greeting felt cold.
Mystery shopping fills the gap between perception and operational reality. A trained evaluator walks into your location, experiences the service exactly as a customer would, and scores every touchpoint against a structured rubric. Time stamps, dialogue accuracy, upsell compliance, grooming standards, facility cleanliness. The things your customer satisfaction score cannot isolate.
Our research on the Say-Do Gap in Singapore applies to internal teams too. Managers believe the process is being followed. Staff believe they're greeting every customer. The mystery shop reveals what is actually happening at the frontline, every single visit.
Five evaluation methods, matched to your operation
Every mystery shopping programme starts with the question your operations team needs answered. Are staff following the sales process? Is the customer journey matching the brand promise? We design the evaluation framework around what you need to fix, not around a generic checklist.
Trained evaluators visit your outlets as regular customers and score every touchpoint against a customised rubric. Greeting, wait time, product knowledge, upselling compliance, closing, facility condition. Time-stamped observations with narrative commentary. We recruit evaluators from our 100,000-member panel matched to your customer profile by age, gender, and language.
How does your call centre handle an enquiry? How fast is the email response? We evaluate phone, email, live chat, and social media interactions using structured scoring. Response time, accuracy, tone, resolution, and follow-up. Ideal for financial services, insurance, and healthcare where the first contact shapes trust.
Planogram compliance, shelf availability, promotional display execution, signage accuracy, and store cleanliness. We combine mystery shopping with mobile ethnography to capture photographic evidence alongside structured scoring. Useful for FMCG brands monitoring retail execution across multiple outlets.
We don't just evaluate your locations. We shop your competitors using the same rubric and scoring system. This gives you a direct, apples-to-apples comparison of service delivery, pricing presentation, and customer experience across the category. Our Jobs-to-Be-Done framework identifies where competitors are winning the customer's "hire" decision.
Are your staff delivering mandatory disclosures? Are age-verification protocols being followed? For regulated industries like financial services, pharmaceuticals, and alcohol, we design evaluations that test compliance with specific regulatory requirements. Reports structured for audit trail documentation.
One-off audits show a snapshot. Recurring programmes show trends. We run monthly, quarterly, and annual mystery shopping programmes with rolling benchmarks, location-level scorecards, and management dashboards. Patterns emerge that a single wave cannot reveal. Combined with qualitative debriefs, the numbers gain context.
Where we deploy mystery shoppers
Each industry has different service touchpoints that determine whether a customer converts, returns, or defects to a competitor. A jewellery showroom visit follows a completely different evaluation logic than a quick-service restaurant. We build the scorecard around your category's decision architecture.
Test drive experience, salesperson product knowledge, follow-up cadence, financing transparency, and handover quality. For dealerships and showrooms, the sales journey from greeting to close can take 60 to 90 minutes. Our evaluators complete the entire purchase consideration path, including digital enquiry, showroom visit, test drive, and post-visit follow-up.
Order accuracy, speed of service, food presentation, staff attentiveness, cleanliness, and upsell execution. From QSR outlets to fine dining, we tailor the scorecard to your service model. Our coffee market research shows how consumer expectations differ by format. Mystery shopping captures whether your team is meeting them.
Advisory quality, disclosure compliance, product explanation clarity, and needs analysis process. Banks, insurers, and wealth managers in Singapore operate under MAS regulations that mandate specific customer interaction standards. We test whether frontline staff meet those standards during real customer-facing interactions.
Product presentation, personalisation, clienteling execution, and post-purchase follow-up. Luxury and premium retail in Singapore demands a level of service that is difficult to maintain consistently across shifts and staff. Our evaluators assess the full arc from store entry to farewell, scoring against the brand's own service charter.
Briefing to first results in 2 to 4 weeks
We build the evaluation framework from your service standards, brand guidelines, and the specific operational questions you need answered. Each criterion is weighted, measurable, and tied to an actionable recommendation. Our briefing guide helps first-timers define scope.
Evaluators are selected from our panel and trained on your specific scorecard. They match the profile of your actual customer base. Bilingual shoppers for locations serving Chinese, Malay, and English-speaking customers. Deployed across your locations on randomised schedules.
Each visit produces a structured report with time stamps, scored criteria, narrative observations, and photographic evidence where applicable. Quality control checks run on every evaluation before data enters the analysis.
Location-level scorecards, cross-location benchmarks, trend analysis for recurring programmes, and prioritised recommendations. We present findings to your operations team with specific, implementable actions rather than abstract conclusions.
What separates this from a checklist service
Our mystery shoppers are drawn from the same 100,000-member panel we use for focus groups and product testing. They're screened for articulation, observation ability, and category familiarity. A trained qualitative researcher reviews every evaluation before delivery.
In Singapore, the way a staff member switches between English and Mandarin mid-conversation carries meaning. Our multicultural research expertise means evaluators notice signals that monolingual assessors miss entirely.
Felicia Hu writes for MRS Research Live and ESOMAR Research World. Your mystery shopping programme is designed by someone whose methodology standards are set at a global level.
A mystery shop tells you what is happening. If you need to understand why, we run in-depth interviews or focus groups with your staff and customers to connect operational performance with experience drivers. Few mystery shopping providers can offer this.
What mystery shopping costs in Singapore
Every quote includes scorecard design, evaluator training, fieldwork, quality control, analysis, and a presentation with recommendations. All quotes are fixed-fee. No hidden charges.
| Research Programme | Starting From |
|---|---|
| Desk research | SGD 2,500 |
| Quantitative survey | SGD 4,000 |
| Focus groups (per group) | SGD 3,000 |
| Product / concept testing (CLT) | SGD 6,000 |
| Multi-phase or multi-market study | SGD 15,000+ |
All quotes include active consultation, scoping, methodology, fieldwork, report, presentation, and strategic recommendations. Final pricing depends on methodology, sample size, respondent type, and project duration. Tailored quote provided within 48 hours. Request a quote →