A lot of customer service operations feel that they can get along just fine without external benchmarking. 

They have their internal performance metrics in place and do a regular customer satisfaction survey. What more is necessary? 

Well, there are a number of things that may be wrong with that scenario, says Alton Martin in the May issue of Customer Service Newsletter. 

Martin, the CEO of COPC Inc., a contact center benchmarking firm notes, 'If you are always looking backwards - asking, 'How did we do before and let's just do better' - you are likely to be comparing yourself against bad results, particularly if you are in a low performing industry.'

 'Companies in the computer hardware and software space, for instance, will tell us that first-call resolution at 68 percent is good - but that wouldn't cut it in industries like airlines, financial services, hotel reservations, and many others.' 

Customers are experiencing different levels of service across industries, and 'they get educated pretty quickly about what's good. And one of the ways that we suggest people use benchmarking is to go out and find out how good they can get.'