Company Overview: According to the company website, “The word ‘Kinesis’ is Greek in origin and means both ‘motion or change’ and, in the philosophy of Aristotle, ‘the actualization of potential.’” Founded in 2001, the company’s philosophy is to better align client’s service execution with their customer’s expectations. It does this by offering customer surveys, employee surveys, and mystery shopping.
Most clients are in the financial industry. Restaurants and retail stores are also on the client list. Locations of shops are somewhat concentrated in the Pacific Northwest. A recent listing of shops listed locations in a large variety of states across the country. Many of those are on US military bases.
Kern Scheduling Service (KSS) is used exclusively for scheduling. Shoppers awarded shops will be sent an email. Then the shopper must then log on to the company website called the Kinesis Insight Shopper System to accept or decline the shop. The main company website is here. However, for shoppers the main website is not the most intuitive to navigate. One may access the shopper area here. The website has minimal information for shoppers.
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This MSPA member company pays by Paypal at the end of the month following the shop. It maintains a presence on Facebook and Twitter for client directed information.
What others have to say: Forum members have a variety of comments. Some like this company. The pay is higher than similar shops for other companies, payment is on schedule, and there have been no problems. Others complain about nitpicky comments in the feedback. One shopper said the good pay made these comments bearable.
There were several questions about payment from shoppers. Upon closer review, it seems this can be attributed to shoppers jumping the gun or the payment being a small number of days late. Another comment is that there is no easy way to contact Kinesis when clarification is needed, something goes wrong, or a question regarding payment occurs. Only a phone number is listed as a contact point on the client portion of the website. One shopper stated it was better to go through KSS for such assistance. In no less than two instances, KSS employees responded to such questions on the forum.
One KSS scheduler invited shoppers with payment issues to contact him. He said, “I’ll make sure you get paid.” Another comment was about an open ended phone shop. This is were the shopper waits for a return call with no ending date. There was some confusion about when the assignment ended if no return call was received.
Overall, the comments were more positive than not. The BBB rates this company A+ but does not accredit it.
Personal Experience: For some time, I have received emails from KSS for a Kinesis shop for a bank on a military base in my area. The fee was good, but my access to the base was not. For that reason, I have not performed any shops for this company. Signup was easy. A quick form generated an email. From my inbox, I responded and accepted the ICA and filled out my profile information. There is no job board and I was informed scheduling was done by an outside agency (KSS).
Overall: This is a smaller company that has nicely paying shops around the country. For those of you that have military bases access and like bank shops Kinesis should be on your list. Others should consider it for the higher fees. The shopper experience on the website can be somewhat unrefined compared to other companies. However, it is clear KSS goes beyond the normal scheduler relationship to assist shoppers for this company.