Steve,

If, for me, there were significant value in a meal exceeding $25, I would agree with you. The situation with me is not the length of the report, as I have the ability to compose a novella, just not the desire. Hold the food and throw in a C-Note, now you have my attention. The job then becomes a category #1 for me.

I well understand and respect that other folks have their priorities. As for mine, I do not drink wine, only need a single fork, do not care how the server in garbed nor am impressed my meal is divided into courses. There is one area where I attempt, but fail, to turn a deaf ear: The Roadhouse music. I would much prefer a symphony, concerto or incidental music of Tchaikovsky.

@shopperbob wrote:

MisterBill opines--.............and the $150 reimbursement is generous enough.

Bob comments--My last fine dining shop was in Aug. of 2007. There was zero fee, it was necessary for me to ante up $8+ from my pocket and the reimbursement took 101 days. In addition, the plates were approx.12", with a scant amount of food in the middle the was not satiating. In comparison, I have always departed the Roadhouse full and taken food home.

If one has ever read any of my postings, you know it is adage time: What ever floats one's boat.

Well, I've wanted to try this place and I'm fairly sure we won't be hungry afterwards.

I had done a local fast casual Chipotle-like chain for them many months ago after not shopping for them since Covid. Got paid $50 for doing a location for a shop that typically pays $8. That shop I would not take again, even for that price. Had to take pictures of everything and I'm sure they'd figured out who I was by the time I was done. But they were going to reject the shop if I didn't get the required photos, so I had no choice but to take them, even if I had to be obvious. I would not do it again for $50, and can't imagine anyone doing it for $8.

Interesting! I was wondering the same thing because they used to have several thousand shops available and now it’s consistently 800 or under. I guess I have to troll every day.

I agree with all the complaints about Coyle , however, I’ve had some really great experiences at resorts that I normally couldn’t afford to go to. I hope to continue working with them, and that the jobs list grows.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/2024 10:33PM by kelly622.

Bickering over $.33. Well not bickering but I left $2 tip with the cashier. This location is take out only. Suppose to leave between 10-20%. On this shop, this is supposed to be no more than $1.67 according to the guidelines. I either stiff the staff or I am out 37 cents. How petty of this MSC to expect us to come up with tip maximum on the spot.

Ive been seeing a little of complaints about coyle over the last year or so. I didn't think they were that bad because I always dealt with Sheila? And she was great. But lately there are some new people and they are super ambiguous on the guidelines. They are enforcing what's convenient to them and not clearing up the guidelines.

Maybe I’m circulating in a different region than y’all and I seldomly do fine dinning but hotel n catering.
The significant pay cut for me was last year when a hotel shop gone from $500+ down to $250. I was shocked when they told me the new pay for the second round end of last year.
Well, it seems the co I enjoyed doing left Coyle after covid, guess it’s time to leave, too.

You all need to start using AI to frame out your Coyle reports.

1. Input the given examples from the Coyle website
2. Input your unique times, names, dates, etc
3. Push “write report” and boom! 75% done!!
4. Edit for clarity and accuracy. 100% done in one hour or less!

I've done several hotels for Coyle, and never had a $500 OR $250 shopper fee. I must be looking at the wrong shops!

@Pw21 wrote:

Maybe I’m circulating in a different region than y’all and I seldomly do fine dinning but hotel n catering.
The significant pay cut for me was last year when a hotel shop gone from $500+ down to $250. I was shocked when they told me the new pay for the second round end of last year.
Well, it seems the co I enjoyed doing left Coyle after covid, guess it’s time to leave, too.

@ColoKate63 wrote:

You all need to start using AI to frame out your Coyle reports.

1. Input the given examples from the Coyle website
2. Input your unique times, names, dates, etc
3. Push “write report” and boom! 75% done!!
4. Edit for clarity and accuracy. 100% done in one hour or less!

Not that familiar with AI, where would I do that? Which platform?

Thats $600/250 include travel

@ColoKate63 wrote:

You all need to start using AI to frame out your Coyle reports.

I find this questionable for a variety of reasons...outside of the fact that it would most likely start providing redundant narratives that will ultimately have you flagged and removed from their system. If an AI system were to work for us, the editors are probably soon to be replaced by, or at least utilize, an AI that will probably spot your AI generated content.

1. The examples are of one particular, and basic, experience, and it's not as much of a cookie cutter process as one might think. What happens when the server brings the wrong entree to the table, or spills your drink, or the check is wrong, or another server takes over mid-meal, etc. None of that is contained in the sample narratives, so it has to be spelled out. There is no way for the AI to know the specifics of your dining experience unless told, so you are either spending a LOT of time doing that, or submitting fallacious reports.

2. The reports are sectionalized, so you would have to either create a doc that has all the sections combined, and later split them out again, or do this process over and over for each section. And different clients have different standards, and different sections. Some additional narrative sections are now required inside the questionnaire, so you could have upwards of 20 narrative sections in a dining report.

3. 50% of the time I spend on Coyle reports is scanning and uploading receipts, filling out the checklists and answering the comments related to that, which an AI is most likely not yet doing for you.

Based on your claim of being 75% done when the narrative is written, I'm guessing perhaps typing is your biggest time investment. I can start and finish a dining report in about an hour when typing it myself. I find that to simply be the fastest process, and I am an average typist. What is your typing time when typing it yourself, and what it the average time to generate the needed AI content, and then proof it to Coyle standards?

I probably have completed more dining reports for Coyle than anyone in their system. That accounts for part of my speed, because I know the system well, but since I have been doing it for more than 20 years now, I have tried countless ways to speed the process up. The second fastest way I found was being able to generate narratives using speech to text software, but the editorial and formatting fixes that were required always bogged me down. I could see AI helping with that if you could develop a Coyle format template, so I'm guessing it might save you a few minutes of time, but in the end, you still have to know the standards and system to utilize that process.

That said, what's the big issue with just learning the standards, going for dinner and then sitting down and banging out a report the old fashioned way. They way that was intended, and that you are being compensated for? This work is about reporting on human interaction, from the point of view of another human. That's a core element of "hospitality". Once you start injecting AI into that chain, I think it breaks down pretty quickly and we end with AI monitoring service through cameras at the restaurant, and generating reports that render us useless.

I've spelled out my process in many different threads here before, but the basic component of it is just having an organized, ergonomic work environment. Coyle does not require a novel. Looking through my last 10 dinner assignments, they are between 3-5 pages of written text in a 12pt word doc, or about 1,000 words. Google tells me the average time to type that out is 25 minutes.

I take detailed shorthand notes at the restaurant, email them from my phone, and then just have that email side-by-side with a word doc that type into. 20-30 minutes for that, then proof against the checklist, upload the receipt and done in about an hour. If it's taking you more time, perhaps there are other components you can work on to improve your speed that will carry over into all of the work that you do.

BTW; I understand the inclination to automate. I just don't always agree with it. I have an assistant who's younger than me, and obsessed with automating everything in the workflow at my main job. I had a project that was particularly redundant and asked him for help with it. He developed a script that saved a few days of my time, which was great, but he continues to try to automate every aspect of his job, including having AI reply to his emails, and a variety of other client-facing elements. My client called me recently and said they would prefer if I took over attending meetings for the project I had assigned to him. The work he was submitting was good quality, but the client's team had lost faith in him from some of the responses they received when interacting with him. I can chalk some of that up to experience, but I feel like the lesson here is knowing when automation is helpful (for redundant mindless tasks) and when human interaction is important. I have no issue using automation to resize or rename a batch of photos for a hotel report. I just think Coyle's end client is probably more interested in your personal subjective commentary that whatever an AI can regurgitate.

Even if Coyle now indeed does suck to work for, I still take pride in the work I do. If a lower myself to their level of apathy, the work ultimately suffers and the end clients will see that, and there goes my 'free' dinner...

Steve,

Your comment completely missed the point that I was making about getting through the redundancy of Coyle’s reporting process.

Coyle has lost many clients since I began reporting for them 20 years ago; they do far fewer independent restaurants and boutique hotels, more chain restaurants. I suspect that their stodgy, dull format written in boilerplate is part of the reason. I am perfectly capable of taking an AI-generated V.1.0, editing it, adding all relevant detail, and producing a 10/10 report that meets or exceeds their standards.

I wonder if perhaps a lot of the pushback against AI is due to unfamiliarity with the technology.

While reading your opinion on AI, I was reminded of my high school physics teacher who insisted we use the logarithmic tables in the back of our textbooks and/or slide rules for calculating our lab reports. If he saw us using a TI-50 calculator* it was an immediate F. He angrily predicted over and over that “no good thing ever comes from using calculators, they rot the brain.”

As it turned out, he had no idea how to operate a basic calculator, and was afraid to learn. He had an engineering degree from Yale, and thought that punching buttons was beneath him.

*Yes, I’m THAT old. But I embrace technology in all forms.

@ColoKate63 wrote:

Your comment completely missed the point that I was making about getting through the redundancy of Coyle’s reporting process.

And I think you completely missed my point...which is when your work matches the "dull format written in boilerplate", it will in turn push any remaining good clients away.

I suspect Coyle is leaning into the chain restaurants and retails shops because there's money to be had there. They maintain a few upscale and boutique clients, and those are the only assignments I still do. This industry is just starting to recover rom the massive loss of clients during the pandemic, and while Coyle may have started to suck long before that, the loss of clients can be directly attributed to it.

My non-MS work is highly technical and I utilize AI regularly in it. I have spent my entire career pushing for utilizing technology in the workplace, and was amongst the first students in my line of work who were allowed to use computers for school projects. I simply believe in using the right tool for the right job. Your proposition would strip away customization, rather than streamline it. The calculator style tools to streamline reporting have existed for some time in spellcheckers, grammar checkers, speech-to-text and more recently picture-to text software, so it's been possible for a while to have a text template and replace details. AI just obfuscates the fact that a narrative was written from a template. And my point is that it goes against the spirit of the job you have agreed to do, and I can't see how it can be both accurate and truly time saving.

If you have been doing Coyle assignments for that long, you may remember that assignments were originally called into a dictation service, who wrote the narrative for you. That was abandoned when the company grew in size, so more work was pushed onto the evaluator, and the typists became editors. When that happened and I started using speech-to-text, I found the process too problematic, but I am sure it's improved greatly since then.

You haven't really answered the questions I posed:
-How long to write the narrative yourself?
-How long to come up with a complete and edited narrative using AI?

I find that in the early rollout of any technology, there's often more time put into attaining acceptable results, and that the process gets faster/easier over time, so I am curious about any time savings reported. I am just suspect of the quality.

Reasons why coyle sucks? Let me count the ways. Oh wait, I only have 10 fingers.

@SteveSoCal wrote:

You haven't really answered the questions I posed:
-How long to write the narrative yourself?
-How long to come up with a complete and edited narrative using AI?

If you are indeed “highly technical” in your non-MS work and truly “utilize AI regularly in it,” then I must admit to being baffled by these questions. They are the sort of thing my parents (in their 80s) would ask, as they are very naive to modern computational mechanics.

For example, the first chain restaurant Coyle report that I’d write would take 3 hours to run the program multiple times to achieve desired results. For the same chain, three assignments later, it would take 15-20 minutes. That’s the point of artificial intelligence, right? It is trainable and adaptive.

If you want to learn more about iterative controlled artificial intelligence, Steve, there are several excellent resources online. Let me know if you are interested in a very basic bootcamp. :-)

@ColoKate63 wrote:

For example, the first chain restaurant Coyle report that I’d write would take 3 hours to run the program multiple times to achieve desired results. For the same chain, three assignments later, it would take 15-20 minutes.

Not sure why it's so hard to just answer a question without being sarcastic and combative. You sound a bit like my 25 year niece who learned one thing and now thinks she's an expert at everything, but you claim to be older and should know better. There's a fair amount of signal processing AI that doesn't require an iterative process to function.

That said, what I do know about it tells me that AI essentially regurgitates a version of what it has learned. It's fantastic for signal processing, and it's really good at outputting text that looks like a human may have written it, but it stalls out when asked to do something truly unique and creative.

From there, it really just comes down to a definition of terms. I'm presuming your "desired result" is a report that doesn't get rejected or marked down for errors, but my pushback is on the investment in time, and my suspicion that the AI generated narratives may not necessary be an accurate portrayal of the events that took place, without significant editorial.

If you told me you were feeding video and audio from your dinner into the AI to generate the report, despite it being against policy, I would have some faith in it at least being original and accurate, but your claim is about only feeding sample narratives in, along with some additional details; "Input your unique times, names, dates, etc". However, when I look at my Coyle narratives, almost every sentence contains something unique about the experience, so I am suspect of the AI results in relation to time savings.

Which leads me to the next question; How many assignments per month are you taking for this particular chain restaurant? Given Coyle's basic policy of not wanting to repeat evaluators at the same location, you are then in a race against the available rotation and available locations for said chain restaurant. Not taking into account the time to research the software and learn it, your numbers tell us that it is potentially 3 hours invested to save what would be a maximum of 15 minutes of time for me on repeated reports, to generate a regurgitated and potentially plagiaristic narrative, so one would have to repeat that client around 12 times to even see a savings in time spent. Do you think that a majority of Coyle shoppers do 12 of the same client evaluations in a year?

You can go about running your business how you see fit, but I take issue with you coming onto a forum where mystery shoppers come to learn and share information, and telling everyone that they need to start regurgitating the examples back to the client through the use of AI. Not by having the AI check their narratives for formatting, or potentially missing information, but by directly feeding the example narratives in to have them rewritten with new details.

And here's what I know for sure; I am getting the top assignments from Coyle, and putting about an hour into finishing the assignments with the original content that I write. You are NOT getting the top assignments (because I know the small group of those who are) and suggesting using AI to a create narratives, in order to see a 15 minute time savings after completing 12 assignments of the same chain restaurant.

That said, your syntax leads me to believe that you are not actually doing this, based on your quote above; "the first chain restaurant Coyle report that I’d write..." That you would write?...or that you have written? You don't seem to know the Coyle jargon either. And there's this...

@ColoKate63 wrote:

I am perfectly capable of taking an AI-generated V.1.0, editing it, adding all relevant detail, and producing a 10/10 report that meets or exceeds their standards.

So...answer the important question; Have you actually done this with Coyle, and how many times?.. because they don't grade on a 10/10 scale. If you spent even a small amount of time reading the comments from others here, you would know that their grades are stated as a percentage. Have you ever even completed a fine dining assignment for Coyle?

Perhaps back off the snark, and try adding something honest and useful to the discussion.

Steve,

Not to be snarky, but it's not called typing anymore they teach "keyboarding" on school now. Or at least they started to 20 years ago when my daughter was in school.

And I agree. I can type 40-45 wpm faster than I can edit a document.

[Edited by author to remove negative response to someone who, quite simply, isn’t worth my time. Have a nice day.]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/10/2024 02:47PM by ColoKate63.

@wrosie wrote:

Not to be snarky, but it's not called typing anymore they teach "keyboarding" on school now.

That's not snarky at all. I had no clue. I call it a keyboard and not a typewriter, so that makes sense. I imagine it's probably not a school requirement like it used to be, either.

I'm probably also at about 40-45 WPM. I'm not struggling with typing speed slowing me down as much as outside elements interrupting me while I try to finish reports, so I try to get the narratives done early in the AM the next day after a dinner, when the experience is fresh in my head, but the alcohol has dissapated. If I start at 7 AM I am usually through by 8-8:30 AM, and can get to work on other things.

I am making a promise to myself to stay away from the hotels and long-form reports these days, however. They have gotten too tedious for me, and there's too much going on in a regular day for me to commit 8 hours to a report, no matter what the value of the assignment is.

About a decade ago, I made a point of tracking my time vs. income from MSing, and realized that I was spending about 25% of time on it, while it only accounted for 10% of my income. I made a change that altered my relationship with MSing, and when I cut back to only a few choice assignments per month, my non MS income increased dramatically, to the point where it overshadowed all of the reimbursement. At that is one of the the biggest things about Coyle that suck. I spent more than a decade of my life chasing that lifestyle with Coyle when I could have been putting the time into my business, and achieve the lifestyle I wanted on my own, without restrictions.

But...some amazing things came from it! I saw the world, met some wonderful people and dined in some of the best restaurants. I had priory status with multiple airlines and hotels, and I got to spend a lot of time around successful people, and see how they handled their businesses, which impacted how I ran mine. I also was able to spend some time in wonderful destinations with friends and loved ones. THAT specifically is invaluable. Perhaps working for Coyle is not a "job" that you do repeatedly over a lifetime. You put up with the sucky component for a fixed amount of time to have those experiences, and move on, so that someone else can rent a private island for the day.

And that is also the main reason why Coyle used to attempt to distinguish itself from other MSC's. Their system doesn't fit well in the MS community, and they have always received better output from evaluators who don't come from the MS world. Their mistake, in my opinion, was taking on traditional mystery shopping evaluation and then having to suffer the ire of mystery shoppers hating on them.

The ability to experience a lifestyle you normally would not have is a reason to put up with their reports. I haven't gotten to that level with them.

I can agree that scheduling can be a little difficult when they don't get back to you. I would love it they could send out a, "Sorry, you didn't get it" message like some of the MSCs do.

I love Coyle though. I know the reports can be long but I really love being able to go out to eat in exchange for a report. I have tried many restaurants that I would not have otherwise. I've also broadened my horizons a bit and traveled to some different areas for shops and made some really fun discoveries. I have only had one difficult situation with a report and it still ended up being okay.

I know the reports can be long but, for me, the payoff is worth it.

What I find somewhat more difficult is doing a bar and restaurant shop for other MSCs who insist that the report must be written by midnight.

My experience has been that even though they put a clock on it, they would rather have the report than not. And I'm not saying to delay the report I'm just saying ask for forgiveness.

@olympia tennenbaum wrote:

What I find somewhat more difficult is doing a bar and restaurant shop for other MSCs who insist that the report must be written by midnight.

I came home from a dinner assignment last night and fell straight asleep (still thrown off by the time change a bit), then woke up to the usual barrage of Monday AM emails from my main job, so was happy to have the day to pick away at the restaurant report in between emails and phone calls, which makes it feel less overwhelming.

This was a new client with a lot more extra built-in questions on the form, so 6.5 pages of narrative! It was definitely more than hour of my time, but over $400 in reimbursement, so worth it for me. I don't think I'd take it again at one of the other locations, but have always wanted to experience this restaurant....and my wife excited when I mentioned the option to her.

Probably beating a dead horse here, but there's no way I could think of to cheat this particular narrative requirement, since there are no full examples, it is a new client, and it was such a unique dining experience.

On the other hand, I know I'm the third Coyle evaluator there. It's a new high-end client that just started monthly in January, and the bar requirement is such a giveaway. After I paid cash and moved to the table, the manager came straight up to our table, introduced himself and gave me his name. He then paused for a moment and spelled his name out for me...so I'm guessing the previous report must have had his name spelled wrong, or something like that. Dinner was mid Oscars and so this restaurant in the center of Beverly Hills had just us and two other couples seated throughout the night, and it was constant interactions with the manager, which just made the narrative longer. I was also probably the only person the entire night who sat at the bar...

@ wrote:

What I find somewhat more difficult is doing a bar and restaurant shop for other MSCs who insist that the report must be written by midnight.

I agree. I just did a very involved restaurant shop the other night (though not for Coyle) and it was so nice to have an extra day. I scheduled the dinner for a Thursday so that I write the bulk of the report Friday evening after work.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/2024 02:56PM by CorrieCJ.

@SteveSoCal wrote:

@olympia tennenbaum wrote:

What I find somewhat more difficult is doing a bar and restaurant shop for other MSCs who insist that the report must be written by midnight.

I came home from a dinner assignment last night and fell straight asleep (still thrown off by the time change a bit), then woke up to the usual barrage of Monday AM emails from my main job, so was happy to have the day to pick away at the restaurant report in between emails and phone calls, which makes it feel less overwhelming.

This was a new client with a lot more extra built-in questions on the form, so 6.5 pages of narrative! It was definitely more than hour of my time, but over $400 in reimbursement, so worth it for me. I don't think I'd take it again at one of the other locations, but have always wanted to experience this restaurant....and my wife excited when I mentioned the option to her.

Probably beating a dead horse here, but there's no way I could think of to cheat this particular narrative requirement, since there are no full examples, it is a new client, and it was such a unique dining experience.

On the other hand, I know I'm the third Coyle evaluator there. It's a new high-end client that just started monthly in January, and the bar requirement is such a giveaway. After I paid cash and moved to the table, the manager came straight up to our table, introduced himself and gave me his name. He then paused for a moment and spelled his name out for me...so I'm guessing the previous report must have had his name spelled wrong, or something like that. Dinner was mid Oscars and so this restaurant in the center of Beverly Hills had just us and two other couples seated throughout the night, and it was constant interactions with the manager, which just made the narrative longer. I was also probably the only person the entire night who sat at the bar...

Wish we could share notes! My Sunday dinner was also amazing but my reimbursement wasn't quite as high as yours. It was a restaurant I've never seen listed before and it was pretty stellar.

I love Coyle’s clients and hate writing narratives. I use my Siri to “write” reports and then just proofread them.