What Service Evaluation Concepts does

Service Evaluation Concepts (SEC) is a privately held, multi-disciplinary customer experience research firm founded in 1987 by Pat Lieboff and headquartered in New York, with additional offices in Bangkok and Warsaw. The company's core offering is mystery shopping — deploying undercover Certified Brand Agents drawn from a crowdsourced network of more than 600,000 shoppers to conduct over 2 million visits per year across in-person, video, social media, online, and telephone channels. SEC packages this field data through its proprietary Enterprise Feedback Management System (EFMS) and supports it with SOC Type 2 certified data handling.

The company's product portfolio extends beyond mystery shopping into four integrated service modules: Compliance Auditing (HIPAA, firearm regulations, franchise and brand standards), Employee Engagement Analysis, Customer Intelligence Analysis (surveys, exit interviews, online forums), and Competitor Analysis. A specialized healthcare product conducts CMS-mandated appointment wait time surveys for Qualified Health Plan issuers.

SEC operates a B2B enterprise sales model targeting Fortune 500 companies and global brands across six verticals — retail, restaurant/food and beverage, hospitality, healthcare, financial services, and automotive. Pricing is bespoke and quote-based, structured as multi-year contracts. Notable clients include Cartier, Louis Vuitton, LEGO, Gucci, Macy's, Estee Lauder, Herbalife, Dunham's Sports, and Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield of Western New York. The company is founder/management-controlled with no disclosed institutional investors, leads a small in-house leadership team of 7–8 people under CEO Arcadio Roselli, and operates the wholly-owned subsidiary Frontline Focus International acquired in 2019.

Name

Service Evaluation Concepts

Legal name

Service Evaluation Concepts, Inc.

Website

https://serviceevaluation.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

1987

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Service Evaluation Concepts is a 35-year-old B2B customer experience research firm that deploys a crowdsourced network of 600,000+ mystery shoppers to evaluate brand compliance, customer experience, and regulatory adherence for Fortune 500 enterprises across six verticals.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Mystery Shopping Services

NAICS

Marketing Research and Public Opinion Polling (541910)

SIC

Services-Management Services (8741)

akta.pro primary industry

Brand Consulting, Audits & Research (Brand Health, Equity, Competitive) (BPAFAEAJ)

Keywords

• Mystery shopping services
• Customer experience research
• Compliance auditing
• Customer intelligence analysis
• Employee engagement surveys

Headquarters

HQ city

Melville

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices3 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Mystery Shopping Services: Core revenue stream providing mystery shopping programs including in-person, video, social media, online, telephone, and interview/hiring standards auditing. B2B enterprise contracts with customized programs.
2. Compliance Auditing: Specialized auditing services for regulatory compliance including HIPAA, firearm regulations, healthcare standards (CMS/QHP), and franchise compliance. Includes both covert and overt agent deployment.
3. Customer Intelligence Analysis: Research services including customer surveys, exit interviews, and online forums to provide unfiltered views of how audiences perceive brands and identify improvement areas.
4. Employee Engagement Analysis: Evaluation services to gauge employee satisfaction and engagement levels through mystery shopping interactions, both overtly and covertly.
5. Competitor Analysis: Intelligence services deploying mystery shoppers to competitor locations to compare customer service, promotional campaigns, and compliance levels.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Service Evaluation Concepts operates an enterprise mystery shopping and customer experience evaluation practice, deploying undercover Certified Brand Agents to client locations across in-person, video, social media, online, and telephone channels to assess customer experience, employee performance, brand compliance, and regulatory adherence. Programs are powered by its proprietary Enterprise Feedback Management System (EFMS), which delivers reporting, demographic-matched agent deployment, and analytics to enterprise clients across retail, restaurant, hospitality, healthcare, financial services, and automotive verticals worldwide.

Product overview

Service Evaluation Concepts (SEC) is a multi-disciplinary customer experience research studio that has operated for over 35 years, offering mystery shopping as its core product alongside a suite of complementary service modules. The core Mystery Shopping service deploys undercover Certified Brand Agents across multiple channels (in-person, video, social media, online, and telephone) to evaluate customer experience and brand compliance. This core offering is supported by four integrated service modules: Compliance Auditing (for legal and franchise compliance evaluation), Employee Engagement Analysis (for measuring staff satisfaction and knowledge), Customer Intelligence Analysis (for understanding consumer perceptions), and Competitor Analysis (for market benchmarking). SEC also offers industry-specific mystery shopping for restaurants and a specialized Healthcare Secret Shopping service for CMS-mandated appointment wait time surveys. All programs are powered by the company's proprietary Enterprise Feedback Management System (EFMS) for reporting and data delivery.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Mystery Shopping SEC's flagship service involving the deployment of undercover Certified Brand Agents posing as ordinary customers to evaluate customer experience, employee performance, and brand compliance at client locations across in-person, video, social media, online, and telephone channels.
• Compliance Auditing Service evaluating adherence to federal, state, and municipal regulations, franchise expectations, and brand guidelines, including firearm regulations, HIPAA compliance, and other legal requirements.
• Employee Engagement Analysis Service measuring employee satisfaction, knowledge levels, and engagement through surveys and mystery shopping interactions, enabling clients to identify training gaps and improve staff performance.
• Customer Intelligence Analysis Service providing insights into customer perceptions, feelings, and behaviors through exit interviews, online forums, and surveys to help brands understand how they could improve their customer experience.
• Competitor Analysis Service benchmarking client performance against competitors, examining value propositions, market positioning, and customer sentiment to help brands identify gaps and differentiation opportunities.
• Restaurant Mystery Shopping Industry-specific mystery shopping for the food and beverage sector, evaluating customer service, food quality standards, health and safety, legal compliance (including alcohol service and allergens), franchise compliance, and employee engagement across restaurants globally.
• Healthcare Secret Shopping Surveys for CMS Appointment Wait Times Specialized secret shopping service for Qualified Health Plan (QHP) issuers in Federally-Facilitated Exchanges to conduct CMS-mandated appointment wait time surveys for behavioral health and primary care, measuring compliance with wait time standards of 10 and 15 business days respectively.

Quantifiable outcome

• 92% of people trust word-of-mouth recommendations - mystery shopping drives brand advocates
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers11 records

Segments6 records

Ideal customer profiles5 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature3 records

Partnerships

Two partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services)coreOthersSEC has been repeatedly recommended by CMS as a corrective action partner for Qualified Health Plan (QHP) issuers found in violation of appointment wait time regulations. CMS mandated all QHP issuers in Federally-Facilitated Exchanges to contract SEC for secret shopping surveys starting 2025. This regulatory endorsement validates SEC's expertise in healthcare compliance evaluation.
• International Mystery Shopping Alliance (IMSA)minorOthersSEC helped form the International Mystery Shopping Alliance (IMSA) in the early 2000s, which later drove over 3 million mystery shops worldwide through partnerships with major global brands.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves7 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• IntelliShop: Mystery shopping and CX measurement firm competing for enterprise retail and brand-compliance programs; similar crowdsourced-shopper model and reporting-tool approach.
• Service Management Group (SMG): Customer experience management provider offering mystery shopping, employee engagement, and location-level CX analytics — overlapping directly with SEC's core enterprise service suite.
• Reality Based Group: Mystery shopping company focused on customer experience measurement for retail, restaurant, and hospitality clients — directly comparable in service offering and target verticals.
• Second To None: Mystery shopping and CX research competitor serving enterprise retail and restaurant clients with comparable crowdsourced evaluator programs and reporting platforms.
• Market Force: Direct competitor in the mystery shopping and customer experience measurement space, serving large enterprise and retail clients with similar crowdsourced evaluator networks and CX reporting platforms.
• MaritzCX (now Customerville): Long-standing customer experience research firm combining mystery shopping with enterprise CX analytics; competes directly for multi-year enterprise CX and compliance programs in retail and financial services.

Broad incumbents

• Kantar: Global market research and insights business with brand and customer experience practices; overlaps with SEC in brand experience measurement but is far larger and more diversified.
• Qualtrics: Enterprise experience management software platform increasingly absorbing the CX measurement, survey, and customer feedback workflows that SEC's EFMS currently supports; a broad incumbent rather than a direct mystery shopping peer, but a key substitute for enterprise buyers.
• Medallia: Customer experience management software vendor offering enterprise CX analytics and feedback orchestration — competing for the same enterprise CX budget as SEC but via a software-led model rather than a human-shopper services model.
• Ipsos: Global market research and public opinion firm with a customer experience practice that includes mystery shopping; competes for large multinational CX mandates but operates at much broader scale across all research verticals.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights5 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/sec_shops
• Facebookfacebook.com/Service-Evaluation-Concepts-104276980931070
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/service-evaluation-concepts-inc-

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles7 records

Subsidiaries1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Service Evaluation Concepts