About Us: History
GAPbuster Worldwide's story is unique in the Mystery Shopping industry. It's about how an idea spawned an enterprise and methodology that today causes positive change in organizations all over the globe. The story begins with our Group Managing Director, New Zealander, Phil Prosser.
In a previous management role, Phil witnessed how difficult it was to manage customers' experiences across a 600-store network.
Phil's problem was this: how does a large organization,
with locations spread nationally or even internationally,
measure and achieve best practice service delivery in
every one of its stores? Convinced that customer service
would become an increasingly important market differentiator,
Phil looked for a company that could measure customer
experiences in each store regularly, consistently and
cost-effectively. Unable to find such a service provider,
Phil decided to create his own.
In 1994, Phil left his
employer and founded GAPbuster in New Zealand, initially
a Mystery Shopping Company operating under license from
Shop'n Chek Inc.
Phil's Mystery Shopping vision was to
broaden the scope of performance measurement, making it
part of an improvement system. GAPbuster sought to match
the product to clients' service strategy, and supply tools
that facilitate its execution. The GAPbusting concept
was born. "GAPbusting" relates to identifying the distance
between the reality on the shop floor and a client's service
goal - the "gap." GAPbuster's methodological framework,
assisting clients to close, ('bust') that distance, came
to be known as the GAPbusting system.
In 1996, GAPbuster
shifted its corporate headquarters to Melbourne, Australia,
and continued to develop a rapidly expanding client base.
Having become the leading mystery shopping service provider
in the Asia Pacific region, the new millennium saw GAPbuster
extend operations into Europe and Asia.
GAPbuster Worldwide
is today the world's leading customer experience management and Mystery
Shopping Agency. We work with some of the biggest, most
successful brands in over 45 countries around the globe. We have offices in Atlanta, Copenhagen, London, Melbourne,
and Tokyo, employing around 250 staff and a global field
force of over 200,000 mystery shoppers.
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