BARE Evaluator: Code of Conduct

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Recently, we received a complaint about a mystery shopping visit, which we would like to share with you.

As required by the project guideline, a BARE evaluator obtained the contact information of several employees from the target brand stores.

However, after the visits were completed, the evaluator kept in touch with these employees in private, during which the employees were verbally offended and harassed.

After having verified the evaluator’s inappropriate behavior, we immediately deactivated his Apollo ID and added to our blacklist. At the meantime, we also reported this case to MSPA and CMRA to ensure this evaluator would no longer be used in this industry.

In addition, considering that the misconduct of this evaluator has seriously affected our company brand image and reputation, we have also involved local legal department to investigate legal liability.

We will also provide active support to this client, by providing related information and evidence so as to facilitate their legal process.

An incident like this is the least we would like to see, neither do other companies in this industry.

We would like to take this opportunity to reaffirm BARE company philosophy, that is for evaluators to respect BARE’s evaluator code of conduct and BARE’s clients, so as to work together with us to ensure positive and sustainable development of the industry.

01

Evaluator Behavior

Evaluators, as independent individuals entrusted by BARE, perform assigned customer experience research tasks and by return obtain the corresponding reward. They represent BARE during the visits, and thus they should maintain professionalism as market researchers, and always pay attention to their words/deeds, and avoid the following inappropriate behaviors:

Contact BARE clients in private

For whatever purpose, evaluators should not ask for personal contact of the clients (unless specified by the project) during the visits, and should not keep in touch with the clients in private after the visits. Disputes with or harassment to BARE clients, in particular, due to personal emotional reasons, are strictly prohibited by BARE.

Unprofessional appearance

BARE assigns tasks to only qualified evaluators after the screening, and on the basis of mutual trust, we expect our evaluators to be professional. When performing visits, especially luxury or high-end brands, evaluators should mind their appearance and hygienic condition, as well as courtesy and manners.

Behaviors that would affect the result of the visit

For certain projects, BARE does not strictly limit the number of people to accompany the evaluator, but if the visit is performed with the company, the evaluator is obliged to ensure completeness and impartiality of the visit. Behaviors like constantly chatting with the companied person during the visit would by no doubt affect the result of the visit.

02

Below behaviors are not allowed

Provide FAKE data

The evaluator should provide all relevant information based on the real visit experience.

Some examples of fake data:
– Edited POVs (storefront photos, photo of the receipts, etc.);
– Edited audio recordings;
– Biased/negative comments filled in reports due to some personal conflict with the staff

Scenario breach

Every Evaluator has to strictly follow the scenario step by step as stated in the evaluator guidelines.

Some examples of scenario breach:
– You are required to visit the shop alone, but you bring a friend along;
– You have completed the shop by checking a different product than the one indicated in evaluator guideline.

Other Behaviors

– Duplicate accounts;
– Re-assign the agreed task to another person without permission from BARE;
– Fake personal profile in order to meet project requirement;
– Proactively reveal mystery shopper profile during the visit to demand a bribe or for other purposes;
– Refund the product that has already been reimbursed by BARE, in order to gain double pay.

All the above behaviors, once verified, BARE would immediately deactivate evaluators’ accounts and take corresponding measures depending on the severity level.

03

Mutual Respect and Protection

We hold the belief that most of BARE evaluators have passion for this industry and would respect our company philosophy and project requirement. Therefore, while expecting professionalism of the evaluators, we would also respect and protect their personal information and privacy to the utmost extent.We call for our evaluators to inform us the very moment they encounter any inappropriate words or acts from BARE client, so that we could take immediate action after verification, in order to provide them with a trustworthy shopping environment where their privacy and safety could be guaranteed.

BARE hope to work together with our evaluators, on the basis of mutual understanding and respect, toward establishing a higher standard for customer experience industry.

Mystery Shop Insights on a Budget: How to Monitor Compliance and Improve Results with Self-Audit

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Are you interested in making an impact on your operational and service results?  Are you concerned that standards have fallen due to lack of corporate budget for monitoring? Do you want make a difference with a nominal investment in time and money? 

There is a saying, “You cannot manage what you do not measure”.  Linda Amraen, Global Director of Client Services of Hospitality at BARE International,  provides an overview of the Self-Audit methodology and why deploying Self-Audit to ensure your team is performing according to standards is important in mitigation of risk and overall improvement. 

Circumstances led me to travel in the pandemic time and to stay in several highly rated, branded of hotels.  My 9 to 5 has me responsible for creation of programs to measure compliance so I am acutely attuned to establishing and to meeting standards. I was not prepared however, to check-in to find the room I was assigned had not been cleaned.  I do not mean new protocol sanitized/cleaned, I mean overall, base change the sheets cleaned.  It appears there were some obstacles operationally that put the room in as occupational when in fact this was not the case.  I made the front desk aware and they handled the problem remedially, providing a new room and resolving it to my satisfaction. However, use of the Self-Audit could have proactively prevented this circumstance from occurring!

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SHOPPERFEST 2021

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Meet Global Vice-President Jason Bare and Director of Business Development Michele Jowdy at ShopperFest!
MSPA Americas, the trade association representing the customer experience (CX), measurement, and merchandising industries, has announced the return of its annual independent contractor conference, ShopperFest, to be held June 25 – 27, at the Sheraton North Houston at George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

“We are excited to bring together our MSPA family once again for a weekend of industry education, networking and fellowship,” stated MSPA Americas President Sam Hersey. “ShopperFest has been an important event for our CX research and merchandising member companies to connect with our MSPA base of independent contractors, and for us as an association to deliver a robust series of sessions and courses to aid in the development of their skillset.”

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Go! China’s Dream Team!

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Last Friday, China office received a special gift from one of our clients, Kantar TNS, all the way from London, UK. It was a simple card saying “THANK YOU DREAM TEAM” and a “Thank-you” cake, but the meaning and sincerity behind this was neither simple nor easy.

Imagine searching for and finding a cake-delivery vendor in a country that you do not have much understanding of, in terms of culture or language. Well, that’s what our client – Kantar TNS – did, just to reward our efforts in the recent HSBC audit project in Hong Kong, China.

This is the first time BARE China partner with Kantar TNS UK directly, and the reason why the client wants to express their “thank-you” in such a touching way is also simple (but not easy to achieve) – we WOWed them.

For this pilot project planned to be finished in 5 weeks, our KAM – Lock Chen – devoted extra time and energy to finish it ahead of time in less than 4 weeks with good results. Throughout the project, Lock went above and beyond to try to provide solutions that exceeded the client’s expectations or requests. There were days when Lock left the office after 11pm, and also times when Lock and the Operations Director ST Chong frequently exchanged ideas even during vacations. For data quality checks, Kristen (DQ Team Leader) coordinated and Caroline (DQ Specialist) devoted extra time to ensure the reports were of tip top quality.

All these efforts have been remembered and rewarded. Not just from a cake and a card, but also from the understanding and cooperation of the whole team and the client.

There is still much work to be done before we are able to devote ourselves in providing services beyond the client’s expectations every single time, but this is a testament of our progress and we will take this as a motivation to continue to strive for excellence.