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Synopsis You might have heard of mystery shoppers. It all sounds very secretive and, well, mysterious. Mystery shopping is a tool that has been used for decades by for-profit businesses, wanting to look at their business from the customer's perspective. Researchers are sent into a restaurant, a hotel, a supermarket, or a hardware store to evaluate their customer service experience. How long did it take for them to be acknowledged by staff? Were their queries answered? Were they encouraged to make a sale? Was it the right sale? Did the staff member (or indeed owner) offer them complementary products? Did they remember to mention the current offer? Mystery shopping is a well established technique that provides a true measure of the actuality of service delivery. Mystery shopping is a long-established research technique and is used extensively in many industry sectors to measure the quality of service provided. "It's an observational tool that closely focuses on how your staff are dealing one-on-one with customers." Even in the field of healthcare that has never been noted for its customer service, mystery shopping is now being used extensively. With patient surveys there's no way to find out how someone actually behaved, how employees interacted with the customer. Mystery shopping fills that gap by being very specific. Mystery shopping is a valuable tool for businesses and is especially helpful for small, start-up businesses that need accurate and fast information to assess their employees and compare their products and services with the competition.