Good businesses are always measuring progress - - sometimes in the unlikeliest instances.

Years ago, retail magnate Marshall Field was walking through the original store that bears his name in Chicago. In doing so, he overheard a clerk arguing with a customer.

He stopped and asked: "What are you doing?"

The clerk answered: "I'm settling a complaint."

Field shot back: "No, you're not. Give the lady what she wants."

Marshall Field, a notorious "floorwalker" at his landmark store, was way ahead of his time. He knew that giving customers "what they want" is the heart and soul of any commercial enterprise.

He also knew that the key to boosting both his company brand and his bottom line was by constantly measuring progress, not just as a customer service barometer, although that's obviously critical to any company's success. Like most successful business owners, he also measured the overall quality and effectiveness of the entire shopping experience.

That's what separates the contenders from the pretenders in business today – the ability to know exactly what makes customers enter your doors and come back again and again – knowing they can rely on receiving the same quality, service and product each time they do.

Fast forward to the first decade of the 21st century, where companies like Starbucks are taking a similar page out of the Marshall Field playbook.

No matter which store or city a Starbucks customer is in, each one knows exactly what to expect – not just in terms of service, but in terms of overall experience. Each store's product, design, atmosphere, décor and service is so predictable that it becomes intuitive; as a result, consumer behavior and response becomes accurately predictable – making it even easier to design promotions, incentives and products that will immediately boost sales.

Small businesses can learn a lot from such customer-centric themes. It's also profitable. For example, what's the difference between a store that offers customers an in-store charge card at  checkout every time and one that makes the same offer just 20% of the time? An annual
sales spike of $90,000 per store, according to one retailing industry study.

So clarifying employee expectations and creating reward and incentive schemes go hand in hand with increased sales. That's what measuring company progress can do for you. But it's "how" companies are deploying performance measurement programs that is changing the business landscape today.

Historically, gauging consumer "experiences" has been the primary responsibility of the customer service department.

But in reality, customer service departments have become little more complaint departments. Or even worse, a place to go for customers to go and replace unwanted merchandise. Let's face it, you can't use the current customer service department model as a way to gauge the health and vibrancy of your company's customer relationships – it's an outmoded model that is spread too thin in terms of responsibilities and is not advanced enough to handle all the measurements that need addressing across the company.

Enter the mystery shopper.

Sometimes stereotyped as a subjective and slightly campy approach to evaluating customer service (think trench coats, wigs and dark sunglasses) mystery shoppers actually embody the complete customer satisfaction program.

How so? By measuring both the tangibles and intangibles of a company's customer experience program. Mystery shopping is a the answer to the question "How can managers seek to understand their company – and its product, service, or idea – from the customer's perspective?"

Let's face it, the level and quality of service you deliver to your customers is critical to your company's success. In fact, it may just be the ultimate barometer of your success. Many company's don't realize it, but their customers' total experience with the business and its employees dictate whether the company will succeed or fail...whether you will be profitable or not. Simply having expectations about what sort of experience your customers will have is not enough...you have to measure, you have to inspect. In the form of good, solid, effective mystery shopping programs, objective, anonymous, third-party assessments of the customer experience will provide the information you need to ensure that your expectations for customer experience are carried out in reality.

I'll have a lot more to say about mystery shopping programs in the next few blogs. In the mean time, I'll leave you with the following keys to mystery shopping -- and whether it might help your business.

• Most customers who have unsatisfactory experiences will not complain...they will just never come back.
• Shopping programs can identify areas of training that need improvement and can identify areas of training that are working particularly well
• If 20 customers are dissatisfied with your service, 19 won't tell you. Fourteen of the 20 will take their business elsewhere.