Mystery Shopping is a customer service evaluation technique whereby the customer service and product quality of a company is critically assessed. The reason it is called Mystery Shopping is because when a Mystery Shopper is given an assignment they act as any other normal customer would, except that they secretly monitor and observe all aspects of the company’s service offering.

When the Mystery Shopper is through with the interaction they then document their entire experience in detail in order to provide the store management an accurate view of their experience. The stores make use of mystery shopping to uplift their sales by improving customer satisfaction. Secret shoppers are hired wholely and solely to increase sales by improving the performance of the employees. Mystery shopping is useful not just for evaluating the staff's performance but also for checking the customer service offered by the rival business. It can be compared with one's own customer service to find the problem areas. The problems can then be rectified to increase the number of customers and hence the sales.