Two EASY Rules for Better Writing

One of the most important skills you can always improve as a mystery shopper is your ability to write.

High quality writing is almost guaranteed instantly put you at the top of the list for any mystery shopping company. Which means they will fall all over themselves to give you more assignments.
Here’s why: Top quality writing is worth a lot of money to mystery shopping companies. They need to impress their clients with the quality of their mystery shoppers, and they often do that by highlighting one or two outstanding reports.

On the other hand, if the writing in a report is poor or sloppy, then it is costing the mystery shopping company money because they have to spend valuable time fixing the report.

The writing in your report is the product both you and the mystery shopping company are selling.

Good writing is valuable to the company, and poor writing is costly. All things being equal, they will always pick the shopper they know has better writing.

And every little bit of improvement counts. Yes, they DO notice.

I remain convinced that ANYONE can improve their writing. Even if you have struggled with poor grammar or bad spelling.

The key to good writing is actually very simple.

Actually, for our purposes, good writing is simple.

Rule #1: Everything you write should be easy to understand. I studied writing in college. Creative writing actually. And it was appalling how many of my fellow students got bogged down with flowery language and complicated sentences. It was difficult to understand. AND it was boring.

Remember, when you are writing your report, make it simple. You want to remove every possible hurdle for the reader. Simple language is what you want. Trust me.

Rule #2: Be precise. Mystery shopping companies want to know exactly what happened. They don’t want vague interpretations. They want precise description. They want specifics.

Don’t use sentences such as “the clerk was rude” without explaining HOW he was rude. Give precise detail. Try something more like this: “The clerk never made eye contact with me. He did not speak to me at all. He yelled to the clerk at the next aisle that he was ‘tired and wants to go home.'” (Don’t forget to be specific about the GOOD things too!)

You don’t need to write big sentences to follow this rule. And you DON’T need a big vocabulary.

But it does have everything to do with your memory.

The WAY you remember things will make a huge difference when it is time to write them down.

Get in the habit of observing things as though you were writing them down. Describe the precise details to yourself as you observe them. Instead of thinking “hmmm, that guy ignored me”. Think “He walked past me without looking at me.”

Make as many notes as necessary as soon as you can. This way, when you need to write down the specifics, they will already be formed in your mind. You won’t need to create them, you will just need to remember them.

You don’t need to be Shakespeare to impress the mystery shopping company with your writing. You just need to be simple and precise.

The more you practice thinking in terms of writing with simplicity and precision, the easier it becomes.

It really is amazing, because you can improve your writing without doing ANY writing at all. All you have to do is practice thinking in a slightly different way.