IMPROVING RESTAURANT CX
Why Choose Tattle Over Mystery Shops?

In this brief comparison, we’re going to look at the key reasons restaurant brands have been opting for Tattle – a Customer Experience Improvement platform – as opposed to the more traditional mystery shops.
And further down the page, we will jump into a direct comparison table between the offerings of Tattle and mystery shops. We hope this is helpful in your journey to choosing the right guest feedback solution.
4 Reasons Restaurant Brands Choose Tattle Over Mystery Shops
#1
Feedback From Your Actual Customers

While mystery shops can provide valuable information for a restaurant’s operations and customer service, they fall short in collecting genuine, real-time feedback from your actual customers.
When the feedback is not coming from actual customers, but rather from individuals hired specifically for the evaluation, these auditors don’t have the same level of relationship with the brand that a regular customer does. Additionally, the fact that the evaluation is not anonymous can very well influence the feedback provided.
This is not to mention that your location-level teams can oftentimes spot the myster shops, and act less naturally when the hired auditors show up.
As for Tattle, feedback is collected from actual guests, at scale, and in a completely automated way. And similar to mystery shops, you can still control the narrative of the questions you want to ask, and the type of feedback you’re gathering—without compromising the survey volume.
#2
Superior Bang For Your Buck

Tattle collects more customer insights and at a far better price. Here are a few things to consider on this point:
- Tattle collects 20x more data than traditional mystery shops, providing a more comprehensive and accurate representation of the customer experience.
- Because of Tattle’s efficient feedback collection methods, it is significantly more cost-effective than hiring out a secret shop. If both solutions captured the same amount of data, mystery shops would cost anywhere from 50-200 times more.
- Because Tattle is built exclusively with restaurants in mind, the data that brands receive is highly-actionable. Mystery shops, however, often use repurposed or generic templates from other industries.
These bullet points, when combined, really highlight the cost-effectiveness and viability of Tattle as a long-term customer feedback solution.
#3
Holistic, Real-Time Data

Because mystery shopping can get very pricey, many restaurant brands have resorted to sending out one or two a month to any given location. This, however, is a poor way to get an accurate reading on the full scope of the customer experience.
While these anonymous auditors only visit for one or two hours on a monthly basis, Tattle is getting feedback directly from customers 90 minutes after an order. With an industry-high 10% survey participation rate, along with a 94% completion rate on a 50+ question survey, Tattle data is holistic, actionable, and real-time.
Restaurant brands never have to wait to know how their locations are performing with Tattle.
#4
Intuitive Dashboard For Everyone

Outside of the expense, it’s difficult to accurately measure and scale mystery shopping campaigns. The secret shopper feedback comes back as either a 200-question questionnaire or a multi-page executive summary.
That is a lot of data to sift through each time one appears.
With the Tattle dashboard, all feedback data is consistent and well-organized. A couple quick glances and the operations team can easily understand guest sentiment across the brand and assess problems that need to be addressed.
It’s extremely easy to navigate the dashboard, filter metrics, track objectives, communicate with dissatisfied guests, and monitor the latest feedback submissions. In fact, the dashboard is so intuitive that most brands don’t require any training (though we do provide that at no additional cost).
Direct Comparison
In this section, we will look at a direct comparison of the capabilities of each feedback and customer experience solution.
Feedback Volume
Scoring the total amount and quality of feedback collected from each solution.
- Tattle 98%
- Mystery Shops 30%
Feedback Cost-Effectiveness
Scoring the volume of feedback each platform can deliver per dollar.
- Tattle 95%
- Mystery Shops 15%
Data Collected Per Survey
Scoring the volume of feedback collected per individual survey submission
- Tattle 98%
- Mystery Shops 98%
Data Accuracy
Scoring how precise and actionable the survey data is to a restaurant brand.
- Tattle 97%
- Mystery Shops 75%
Operational Categories
Scoring each solution’s ability to measure broad operational areas (Food quality, speed of service, order accuracy, etc.)
- Tattle 98%
- Mystery Shops 90%
Root Cause Identification
Scoring each solution’s ability to provide granular insights into operational sub-categories (food temperature, flavor, texture, etc.)
- Tattle 97%
- Mystery Shops 55%
Ease Of Analytics/Reporting
Scoring the accessibility and intuitiveness of each solution’s reporting/analytics functionality.
- Tattle 98%
- Mystery Shops 45%
Menu-Level Insights
Scoring the depth and granularity of reporting with regard to individual menu items.
- Tattle 80%
- Mystery Shops 50%
Guest Recovery
The ability to instantly communicate with and win back dissatisfied customers.
Tattle
Yes
Mystery Shops
No
Location-Level Objectives
The ability to create trackable monthly objectives for GMs and location-level teams that will most improve guest satisfaction.
Tattle
Yes
Mystery Shops
No
Industry Benchmarking
The ability to compare how your restaurant brand fares in comparison with direct competitors.
Tattle
Yes
Mystery Shops
No
Reputation Management
The ability to intercept negative reviews before they’re posted to social media and prompt 5-star reviews from top customers.
Tattle
Yes
Mystery Shops
No
Dedicated Strategy Sessions
The ability for a feedback solution to dedicate a team members a brand, providing routine insight and strategy sessions to imrpove satisfaction.
Tattle
Yes
Mystery Shops
No
TESTIMONIAL
“The volume is the most surprising thing. We were doing 8 mystery shoppers a month. We turned on Tattle and were doing 50 to 75 a month … so everybody becomes a mystery shopper.”
Jim Bitticks
President & COO, Dave’s Hot Chicken