Mystery Shopping

Mystery Shopping Tells You the Real Story

It’s essential to know how your front-line staff is really performing. The experts at WISE offer mystery shopping services for an effective, unbiased evaluation of your tasting room or call center. Your metrics will tell what is happening, but mystery shopping can tell the story of WHY it’s happening. Effective, invisible, and unbiased Mystery Shopping is impossible to do yourself. Our service keeps your team on track and focused on your mission.

Program Details

Our program is based on the WISE Mystery Shopping Scorecard, which ensures consistency of feedback over time and is also a great tool for individual coaching. Mystery Shoppers can cover winery tasting rooms, tours, phone calls, club membership, and online shopping experiences. The WISE scorecard consists of more than 80 questions, and wineries may also add in their own questions if there are specific areas in which they would like more detailed feedback.

We recommend a full round of mystery shops per location three times a year. This rhythm gives wineries enough time to review the results, implement changes, and measure again. It is best is to get several data points within a short period – e.g., six shops on different days/times over a few weeks – to ensure different associates are shopped.

Our Mystery Shoppers

Our mystery shoppers are unbiased third-party industry professionals who understand WISE standards regarding guest experience, sales skills, and industry best practices. They are WISE Certified Tasting Room, Wine Club, and/or Phone Sales Professionals. Over the past few years, we’ve conducted more than 6,000 mystery shops and have been tracking industry trends, which gives WISE a unique perspective.

Channels

Test your DTC channels with mystery shopping – WISE will give you an unbiased opinion on these DTC Channels:

  • Tasting Room: Tasting-only, Tour & Tasting, Food Pairings & Tastings
  • Phone or Call Center
  • E-commerce or Online Presence
  • Wine Club

Costs

  • Single winery program fee is: $350.
  • Corporate is $1,000 plus $350 per property, per program, including summary report of each program: standard in-person tasting-room shop ($350 per shop or $400 if tour or food pairing is included).
  • Phone Shop ($125 per), text shop ($50).
  • Wine Club ($350 per).
  • Out-of-pocket tasting (or tour & tasting) fees for two & wine purchases (if requested) will be reimbursed at cost. See breakdown of costs on last page. If you would like WISE to deliver results to the team (without naming who was shopped), it is $400 for the hour (1½ hour).
  • For one-on-one coaching for managers (to then coach their team based on the results), WISE offers this for $750 per winery/location.

How it Works

  • Download and fill out the form to capitalize on this program. The information you provide on this form will allow us to better evaluate what aspects are most important to your goals and coaching your teams. If you don’t want to fill out the form, call or email us.
  • Submit the completed form to WISE along with a 50% deposit.
  • WISE will review the form and send you a confirmation recapping all of your needs along with a confirmation of the fee structure.
  • WISE will send out mystery shoppers, compile and analyze the findings, and prepare your summary report.
  • We will schedule a meeting to review our WISE Mystery Shopping results and summary report recommendations for your winery at the earliest mutually agreeable date.
  • A copy of your WISE Mystery Shopping Summary Report as well as copies of the individual WISE Mystery Shopping Scorecard Reports will be delivered via email following the debrief meeting.
  • Wineries may choose additional coaching to help managers better coach their teams or have WISE conduct a team meeting to review the general highlights of the mystery shopping results.