Quality assurance permeates every aspect of BestMark’s business. From screening, training and certifying mystery shoppers and quality editors to validating receipts and digital photos of site visits, we ensure our data is accurate and actionable and that it is gathered and validated by the most talented, skilled, and highly trained people in the industry.

Our dedication to quality is unmatched. Over the years, we have built and perfected a phenomenal system of checks and balances, some of which are highlighted below:

Business Philosophy

Each and every mystery shop, compliance audit, or other site visit ultimately comes back to the people evaluated in the report. We understand the power of aggregate data but also know that the individual survey is a very personal thing to the employees evaluated therein. It is with that in mind that we undertake the process of reviewing and approving tens of thousands of reports each month. Our litmus test is always to ask if we would feel comfortable guaranteeing the accuracy of our work while standing eye-to-eye with the employee evaluated in the report. If the answer is No, we take steps to gather further details and correct the issue, or we deem the report invalid and don’t use it.

Extensive Story-Like Narrative

We require more in-depth narrative from our field representatives than do most companies, and this allows us to understand unique aspects of a visit that cannot be captured with survey questions alone. Extensive narrative is also an important quality control measure because it supports the scoring with very specific behaviors and actual quotes from the interaction. If there is ever a question about content, we contact the field representative to clarify. If we discover the assignment was not performed correctly, we throw it out and resend another field representative at no charge to our client.

No Outsourcing

BestMark maintains a corporate staff dedicated to designing and delivering customer research programs that provide the most accurate and factual results possible. Most of our competitors are turning to off-the rack software to support their operations, but we maintain a dedicated IT staff that is committed to software development that adheres to our strict quality standards.

BestMark also manages all shopper and scheduling operations internally. We do not use any outsourced or subcontracted companies or people to manage or schedule our field representatives or to edit our results. This allows us to maintain superior quality control over our entire operation. We maintain a staff of full time coordinators who cultivate one-on-one relationships with our field representatives and schedule every site visit. Through consistent direct contact, our field representatives feel like they are a part of our company, and we instill in them a high level of personal accountability and pride that their feedback is important.

Quality Editors

BestMark’s staff of Quality Editors is a tremendous benefit that significantly contributes to our ability to offer the highest quality data in the industry. Our Quality Editors are trained and certified on a client-by-client basis and scrutinize every score and every word our field representatives provide. Dates, times, receipts, and underlying methodologies are all checked for validity. BestMark Quality Editors conduct follow-up interviews with approximately 70% of our field representatives to make sure that all information in their reports is correct. If any item does not adhere to our strict internal guidelines or to a client’s requirements, the report is not accepted. We even go so far as to edit the quality editors’ work. Spot checks, or “second edits” are performed randomly to ensure quality editors are continually meeting our stringent standards. Our clients can be confident that each and every mystery shop, exit interview, or compliance audit will be performed to their exact standards, and we guarantee products that produce actionable and reliable data.

Many of our competitors don’t even employ quality editors. Are you willing to make critical business decisions based on data that may not even be accurate?

Field Representatives

BestMark’s application process is remarkably comprehensive, and field representatives clearly understand that information provided must be accurate, honest and actionable. Any less will not be accepted or tolerated.

All new field representatives have consultations/orientation with a live person in our scheduling center. More experienced representatives still must review and sign off on very detailed written instructions and sample surveys for each and every assignment. They also must pass an online certification test for each client.

Examples of Our Rules-Based Tracking Systems

We audit our field representative’s scoring habits to ensure that scoring is not biased. If a field representative consistently submits all high scores or low scores, he/she is targeted for review and faces possible termination.

We even track how much time each user spends reviewing instructions and completing each page of our online survey forms. This is just one of many quality control measures that allows us to determine whether adequate time was spent completing an assignment.

We also place limits on how many times a mystery shopper can visit the same location or client in a given month, year or period. Limiting exposure at a single location greatly helps to maintain anonymity, which ultimately increases the quality of our mystery shop services.