Benchmarking/Best Practices
More than 70% of Fortune 500 companies use benchmarking on a regular basis.
Lots of companies feel content with the customer experience they provide. They benchmark with other companies and have best practices in place. They feel, 'while things could always be better', the basics are covered. We don't deny the importance of benchmarking and best practices. After all, these approaches address the need for unified, basic proficiencies. However, when it comes to customer service, we find companies that over rely on 'getting to the level' of other companies and industry standards don't project anything intriguing or unique in their interactions with customers. When you work with Interaction Metrics, we'll bring best practices to bear, but when it comes to improving the customer experience, we'll rely on rigorous interaction optimization.
Debunking the MythHere are 3 ways that benchmarking and best practices lower the bar on customer service: |
Our Better WayAfter you're done with benchmarking and best practices get ready for optimization's 3 advantages. |
- No new ideas. Benchmarking is a way to meet customer expectations, never exceed them. Consequently, it doesn't provide the insight needed to show customers how your business is different. Besides, since research overwhelmingly proves that it takes an emotional connection to impact customer loyalty, a program of "at the level" is simply insufficient when sales are at stake.
- Adopting another company's best practices does not reveal how or why those practices worked so well for them in the first place. Without understanding the root causes of their success, you run the risk of taking on procedures that don't actually fit your needs. Further, best practices may provide a false sense of confidence. By its very name "best practices" implies there are no "better" practices and this is simply not true. Solid quality programs always leave room for improvement because the marketplace and customer expectations are always shifting.
- Benchmarking and best practices can only identify general approaches to general problems. They cannot provide solutions for the customer situations that are specific to your business.
Optimization identifies the informational and stylistic cues that communicate what makes your company unique and your brand special.
Optimization tests how much variance is in your customer service execution then spotlights what's succeeding and recommends ways to eliminate what's failing.
Optimization works with what you already have in place or if you are embarking on a new program, optimization gets you headed on the right path with customized procedures and verbiage.
Think of optimization this way: If your goal is to attract Google hits, you use search engine optimization. Likewise, if your goal is to differentiate your customer service, you use interaction optimization.
To find out what's included with customer service optimization, let's talk.
For a more about Benchmarking, see our report: What It's Good For, What It's NOT.
