clients pièges

English translation: mystery shoppers

07:07 May 18, 2017

French to English translations [PRO]
Bus/Financial - Business/Commerce (general)

French term or phrase: clients pièges

Sent to a business to test compliance. I thought of test customers but I'm sure there's a better term

Jane RM KudoZ activity Questions: 508 (9 open) (13 without valid answers) (35 closed without grading) Answers: 256 France
Local time: 04:13

English translation:mystery shoppers

Explanation:

Mystery shopping

Mystery shopping (related terms: mystery consumer, secret shopper) is a tool used externally by market research companies, watchdog organizations, or internally by companies themselves to measure quality of service, or compliance with regulation, or to gather specific information about products and services. The mystery consumer's specific identity and purpose are generally not known by the establishment being evaluated.

Mystery shoppers perform specific tasks such as purchasing a product, asking questions, registering complaints or behaving in a certain way, and then provide detailed reports or feedback about their experiences.
...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_shopping

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Note added at 6 hrs (2017-05-18 13:52:39 GMT)
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IOW

Sent to a business to test compliance

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Note added at 6 hrs (2017-05-18 14:01:55 GMT)
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"clients pièges" = these "clients" themselves are the trap used to catch shoddy practices
vs
"clients piégés" = these clients are victims of someone else's trap / have fallen into a trap [set by hackers ...]

which one could be of any use for the purpose of "sending them to a business to test compliance"?

Selected response from:

Daryo
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:13

Grading comment

Selected automatically based on peer agreement.
4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer

Summary of answers provided

5 +3

mystery shoppers

Daryo

under-cover customers

David Hayes

Discussion entries: 12

David Hayes

France

08:16 May 19, 2017

I take the point, but again we could quibble about what "compliance" means here. Does it mean legal compliance with regulations, or does it mean compliance with the company's customer-service policy, for example. The asker really does need to help us out a bit here!

Daryo

United Kingdom

in fact

08:04 May 19, 2017

if it's some authority sending pretend clients to check compliance with some laws and regulations, "undercover" would probably be more suited (by analogy with "undercover agents");

the point of "mystery shoppers" is more to check the quality of services provided to customers, not fishing for anything illegal.

David Hayes

France

16:37 May 18, 2017

Interestingly, the various definitions in online sources about "mystery shoppers" are not uniform. Some specify that they are to check out retail stores, others have a broader definition. There is, of course, no real difference between "mystery shopper" and "undercover client/customer" (or indeed "secret consumer" - another term used). The point is, which one works best in the context? We do not yet know which "business" the asker is talking about. Perhaps we could receive that information, please?

Daryo

United Kingdom

16:18 May 18, 2017

"under-cover customers" exactly that: 33 ghits
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q="under-cover customers"&st...

"undercover customers" exactly that: 289 ghits
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q="undercover customers"&sta...

"under-cover customers" exactly that: 40 ghits
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q="under-cover customer"&sta...

"undercover customer" exactly that: 123 ghits
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q="undercover customer"&star...

and some ghits should be discarded, when "undercover" is followed by some punctuation mark.

Daryo

United Kingdom

Resorting to mystery shoppers

14:07 May 18, 2017

is pretty standard practice in almost any business that wants an objective evaluation of its services.

Can't see what else could possibly agree with "Sent to a business to test compliance"!

AllegroTrans

United Kingdom

11:01 May 18, 2017

What kind of a business?

David Hayes

France

09:17 May 18, 2017

I did that too, but I found that unless you expressly exclude "piégé(s)" from the search, the results for both terms are mixed together.

BrigitteHilgner

Austria

@ David Hayes

09:06 May 18, 2017

I don't know! Maybe there are some misspellings on the web (accent in the wrong place), but I used the term "clients pièges".

David Hayes

France

08:54 May 18, 2017

Sure you're not thinking of "clients piégés"?

BrigitteHilgner

Austria

After some google search, I get the impression ...

08:49 May 18, 2017

that "clients pièges" are such clients/customers (frequently of banks) whose data have been hacked (due to a hacker attack on the bank in question).

Sinéad Moore

Romania

07:32 May 18, 2017

Could you post the sentence for context please?

Mair A-W (PhD)

Germany

07:13 May 18, 2017

What kind of a business? "Mystery shopper" comes to mind

Answers

1 hr confidence:

under-cover customers

Explanation:
This comes up on Google. I guess it's a variant of the secret/mystery shopper idea, but perhaps covers more contexts. See Google for examples.

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Note added at 1 hr (2017-05-18 08:26:02 GMT)
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Looks like that should actually be written "undercover"!

David Hayes
France
Local time: 04:13
Works in field
Native speaker of: English
PRO pts in category: 4

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)

neutral

writeaway: undercover shoppers gets a lot of hits, not undercover customers /but in this context, shoppers is the trade word used. In UK and US. A 100% literal translation of the Fr doesn't work imo/mystery shoppers is used a lot but I do prefer undercover here

21 mins

-> undercover clients could be an idea. The point is to broaden it from "shoppers", which only covers a certain segment of businesses to check out. I still think "shoppers" could be limiting in this context.

neutral

Daryo: not wrong, but: grand total of 33+289+40+123 ghits vs About 394,000 results for "mystery shoppers" PLUS About 403,000 results for "mystery shopper"....

5 hrs

-> Not quite sure where you got your wildy inaccurate figure of 33 ghits from. I too know how to google and had noticed the abundance of the term "mystery shopper". If the asker could clarify the exact context, we might be able to clear this up for good.

6 hrs confidence:

peer agreement (net): +3

mystery shoppers

Daryo
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:13
Specializes in field
Native speaker of:

Serbian,

French
PRO pts in category: 166

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