When it comes to evaluating customer experience (CX) in the hospitality industry, there are two major methodologies for gaining critical insight—restaurant mystery shopping companies and online review management. But what are the benefits and drawbacks of each? And, more importantly, which will provide better data for improving and optimizing the diner experience?
This article examines the importance of continual analysis of the restaurant customer experience. Additionally, we’ll look at the process, pros, and cons of hiring quality restaurant mystery shopping companies versus gathering data from online reviews. Ultimately, each approach yields valuable data—and a comprehensive, full-circle CX program includes both.
Let’s begin our evaluation of restaurant mystery shopping companies and online review management.
Evaluating the Restaurant Customer Experience
For real estate, it’s all about “location, location, location”—and in many ways, the same is true for restaurants. There are countless dining options available to consumers, whether they want a burger, a burrito, or a bao. While food quality and price are certainly key factors, the atmosphere a restaurant provides at their location is truly the pivot point of differentiation. What does this restaurant serve in terms of customer experience that another simply doesn’t? And are diners willing to prioritize this experience over other options?
Consequently, business owners and executives looking to stand out from the crowd do well to have ongoing CX evaluation programs. Here is a short list of key benefits a program like this offers:
- Determines overall diner satisfaction levels.
- Identifies CX issues and rectifies them in a timely manner.
- Measures the effectiveness of new initiatives, menu items, and marketing pushes.
- Gauges improvement over time, as well as return on investment (ROI).
- Compares different locations and boosts overall success of the entire company.
A strong CX evaluation program should leverage multiple methodologies, including data analysis and customer surveys. However, the two main pillars of gauging CX success are studying online reviews for trends and feedback, which is a part of online reputation management—and mystery shopping, often through restaurant mystery shopping companies.
For the sake of debate, this article will examine the effectiveness and drawbacks of each method.
Online Reviews: The Pros & Cons
Online reputation management is an essential element of any successful business, especially in the restaurant industry, where good word of mouth is mission critical. Diners are usually eager to provide feedback on their experience—and restaurants do well to mine this wealth of readily-available CX intelligence and leverage it to their advantage.
While merely reading online reviews is a valuable part of this practice, there are a number of concerns that one should keep in mind. Furthermore, this strategy has several inherent limitations to analyzing and improving CX that hiring restaurant mystery shopping companies doesn’t. This won’t negate the value of online reviews, but it does inform this practice. Online reputation management is a distinct aspect of a strong CX program with its own applications and advantages.
With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at the pros and cons of online review analysis.
Online Reviews—Pros
Public and Highly Visible
For many business executives, their first instinct when looking for insight into the state of their CX is to get intelligence “straight from the horse’s mouth.” And customers aren’t shy when it comes to online reviews. Often, they flock to the comments sections immediately after their meal—or even during it—to announce their opinions and experiences for all to see. When a restaurant has great CX and plenty of satisfied diners, this is a quick way to get insight into what people love about a restaurant while also stirring up some great word-of-mouth.
Free and Readily Available
Another bonus of leafing through online reviews is that it’s essentially free of charge. Besides what a company is already paying for their online presence and reputation management, gathering the readily-available data from resources they already have presents great ROI (return on investment). All that is required is time, a little skill, and brainpower.
Raw, Emotional Feedback
One key advantage of online reviews for CX data collection is the authentic nature of customer commentary. Diners provide their opinions honestly, openly, and free of motivation—besides being heard. Thus, their feedback is a great sampling of qualitative information. This can support quantitative data conclusions or spotlight instances of unique information. Customers might even offer brilliant ideas that can be leveraged for the business’s success.
Experiential for Major Wins & Problems
Because of the immediacy of the internet, businesses can use online reviews to get timely, ongoing feedback from diners. That means they’ll get instant data on moments of major success in their restaurants—or potential disaster. Thus, online reviews function as a kind of early alert system. When restaurant staff aren’t quite sure of the response yet, or haven’t had time to run concerns up the ladder, online reviews flag changing customer sentiment right away. That way, executives can celebrate with their team or work to rectify a situation.
Online Reviews—Cons
Often Biased Toward Extreme Experiences
Although the emotional nature of online reviews can be an advantage, it’s also a disadvantage. This is due to the fact that many reviewers are motivated by extreme experiences—either good or bad. Lukewarm or moderately-satisfied diners aren’t as likely to leave feedback online. Additionally, people reading reviews are more likely to focus on negative comments when forming a first impression, which sets their expectations before they even get a taste. Thus, data gathered solely from online reviews is usually skewed.
Potentially Vague or Incomplete
Reviewers speak from their experiences, which is really all they have. Therefore, they will often leave out important details, whether accidentally or purposefully, that could help the restaurants make concrete improvements. They may even want to be vague in order to protect the identity of the servers they’re critiquing. While this may seem nice on the surface, it can be unhelpful.
Lacking Credibility
Similarly, business executives reading online reviews only know what they see on the screen. A customer might claim to have tasted a toenail in their tilapia, but if there’s no other evidence that this was real, it amounts to little more than hearsay. Furthermore, some reviews left on a restaurant’s Yelp page might not even apply to that establishment at all—or, even worse, they’re faked just for the sake of stirring up chaos. Credibility is a major limitation for online reviews.
No Standard Evaluation Criteria
This is one area where restaurant mystery shopping companies have the clear advantage. One diner’s idea of a great experience may mean something entirely different than another’s—or a professional evaluator’s. Lay customers may believe they had a terrible time, but were merely in a bad mood that day. Professionals do their best to avoid that kind of bias.
CX Data from Restaurant Mystery Shopping Companies
Every solution has its advantages and disadvantages, and it’s always best to compare and contrast strategies against each other to see what will work best. So let’s cover the other side of the aisle next: restaurant mystery shopping companies.
Pros: Restaurant Mystery Shopping Companies
Objective, Skilled Shoppers
This is the main advantage that restaurant mystery shopping companies have over online reviews: their reviewers are truly objective, and they’re skilled at identifying wins and issues that have clear value to the businesses themselves. These aren’t random diners off the street—they are trained evaluators who know what they’re doing, who they’re talking to, and what businesses need to know.
Structured Procedures
Furthermore, professional shoppers follow structured protocols when it comes to every visit and report. They have specific evaluation criteria as well as tried-and-true methodologies, taking careful record of their visits with detailed metrics. Then, they turn that information into data-supported, easily-understandable, actionable feedback.
Hard and Soft Data
While online reviews provide plenty of qualitative, experiential data, mystery shoppers also understand the value of quantitative data. They rate and rank every detail of their shop using predetermined criteria with the business’s success in mind. This data can then be aggregated over time to provide a clear picture of progress and standing.
Private and Discreet Methodology
Mystery shoppers don’t do it for the glory. In fact, they do their best to remain anonymous to the public. That way, neither employees nor fellow diners will catch on to the fact that they’re being audited. Furthermore, businesses that use mystery shopping can get private feedback on what they can do to improve—before the public gets a chance to rake them over the coals.
Cons: Restaurant Mystery Shopping Companies
Financial Investment
While online reviews have strong appeal for their free or nearly-free nature, it’s true that hiring restaurant mystery shopping companies is a financial investment. The trade-off here is that it usually saves time in the end, because the mystery shopping company handles the bulk of the work of hiring, employee management, and other resource-heavy tasks. As a counterpoint, hiring a third-party partner in online review management does much of the same. It’s something to consider.
Third-Party Reliance
Anytime a business takes on a vendor like a mystery shopping company, there’s always the risk that comes with relying on an external entity. If the company has a problem, then the client does too. This is what makes research and careful hiring so important, especially when it comes to an investment like CX evaluations. Again, hiring an online reputation management partner presents the same issues—as will relying heavily on external review platforms like Yelp and Google. There’s only so much that can be done for the sake of independence.
May Take Time to See Results
With online reviews, it may seem simple enough to identify a problem and then immediately take steps to rectify it. With a mystery shopping company, sometimes the best gains happen over time—as little adjustments here and there come together to create a snowball effect. If a business isn’t interested in investing in the long-term nature of these results, or is simply looking for a quick fix, then this might not be the answer for them.
Only As Good as the Follow-Up
Ultimately, all the data provided by a mystery shopping company will only yield results if the client acts on them. Whether this is a question of trust or motivation, failing to take next steps can cause progress to stagnate. If a business isn’t following up on feedback and making strategic efforts at improvements, then a mystery shopping company will start to look like a bad investment.
What’s More Reliable—Online Reviews or Restaurant Mystery Shopping Companies?
Now that we’ve pitted the top pros and cons of each strategy against each other, which one is the winner? Let’s review:
| CX Data from Online Reviews | |
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| CX Data from Restaurant Mystery Shopping Companies | |
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The Ideal Strategy: Use Both
If your business is looking for a single solution that will help you improve your diner experience, there’s good news: both strategies are powerfully beneficial. Either one will yield results you can use. Because of the complementary aspects of each, it’s often best to pair them for optimal results. That way, you get the immediacy, authenticity, and personality of online reviews—and the hard, objective, reliable results from skilled evaluators.
Even better—you can get both mystery shopping and online review management when you partner with IntelliShop. Of all the restaurant mystery shopping companies out there, we stand out from the rest with our nationwide network of highly-skilled shoppers, data-driven insights, and strategic support. Plus, we can manage your online reputation for you, keeping all customer communications and feedback on brand, on time, and on mission.
Learn more about our full-circle CX solutions and consider making us your partner in diner experience.
Build Reputation from the Inside Out
When comparing restaurant mystery shopping companies and online reviews, it’s clear that each method offers distinct advantages to businesses seeking to analyze and improve their diner experience. On one hand, online reviews provide immediate, emotional feedback from real diners. This can highlight standout experiences or urgent issues that businesses should address. In contrast, mystery shopping delivers structured, reliable, and actionable insights gathered by skilled evaluators, providing credible intelligence through an objective third-party company.
As with many strategies, rather than choosing one approach over the other, the most effective CX program incorporates both. By combining the authenticity and visibility of online reviews with the consistency and impartiality of mystery shopping, businesses can gain a well-rounded understanding of how their service is performing—and make strides to optimize their CX on a regular basis.
Together, these tools support more informed decision-making, ongoing operational improvements, and a stronger overall dining experience. This dual approach—especially when supported by a strategic partner like IntelliShop—can elevate customer experience programs from reactive to truly proactive.
