I stayed in a hotel earlier this week and the customer service was really very good. Better in fact than the last couple of hotels I stayed at.
This was my own personal benchmarking system whirring into action. It could easily compute into a league table – by recalling my experiences and how they felt. And like most people, I will use the organisations at the top of the list more often when I need that service in future.
But this kind of “apples with apples” comparison is not always possible in reality because, as customers, we don’t always get to compare service directly with a range of providers in the way we can with, for instance, hotels.
Yes, there are exceptions, mostly in retail where we can compare the experiences when we use various stores in the high street or on-line. John Lewis or House of Fraser, Costa or Starbucks, Amazon or Play.com to name but a few. But in other parts of our lives it just isn’t practical.
We can only compare the service from our local authority if we have moved house. And if we don’t like the service we now get, short of moving again, we are stuck with it anyway! It’s the same with water companies, our GP and dentist or our social landlord.
We can compare our providers of gas, electricity, telephone and broadband for service but only when it’s too late and we have already moved around. I do recall being visited once by a customer representative of a very large utility company who (whilst trying to handle a serious complaint) said “yes our customer service is bad, but it’s better than our competitors”. Well that’s alright then!
So we begin to compare every service we receive against the other service we encounter – regardless of what it’s for – because it’s our point or reference. And it’s easier than keep moving house!
It’s not always fair but if I have emailed Amazon to find out where my book is and get a response in less than half an hour, I am left frustrated when an email to my council telling them they forgot to empty my bin is still unanswered after a couple of days. The council may have a five-day SLA and consider that perfectly reasonable, but for the customer, surrounded by great practice in other walks of life, it’s not.
I ordered a toy for my daughter from a small on-line toy shop. The service was phenomenal because they had clearly identified what best practice looked like and made sure they matched it, or even tried to better it (a text message saying they would be delivering within the hour, for example). I was delighted with the experience, but it did make a lot of other organisations I use look pretty poor by comparison. And that’s the point.
If organisations continue to compare themselves to their competitors, they are going to fall short of customer expectation in many cases. That’s because the customer simply isn’t making the same comparisons.
And a further advantage of benchmarking outside of the sector and comparing to best practice is that it gives an organisation the opportunity to see what CAN be achieved. Aiming to be the best, not just the best of a bad lot, will differentiate service excellence organisations from those that merely talk about it.
For details of the next CSN event, “Benchmarking Your Organisation” click here
