Best practice benchmarking
Featured in the Excellent Customer Service training manual
By Susan Iacovou & Caroline Clemie
Category: Customer Service
Credit price: 4 download credits (Single user)
Benchmarking is all about comparing yourself to other service providers (or product makers), identifying things that they do more efficiently or effectively than you, and taking steps to meet and surpass the ‘best in the class’. Benchmarking is a key tool for all organisations, and indeed for all teams. It provides valuable information on the way in which other organisations, departments or individuals approach similar tasks to your own. In this training activity, the team learn how to implement the five-stage benchmarking process – from identifying the products or services they want to benchmark and carrying out benchmarking research, to planning improvement actions and implementing key learning points.
You begin by outline what benchmarking is and what it can offer the team. The focus primarily is on the contribution benchmarking can make to the teams drive to meet and exceed customer expectations. The team are introduced to the five-stage benchmarking process and given the opportunity to practise selecting benchmarking targets for a variety of well-known organisations. The team look at a range of benchmarking research methods available to them. The team consider how to collate benchmarking information in a way that encourages the identification of improvement actions. Then they examine a sample benchmarking exercise for the Patient Admissions Department at Southwest NHS Trust. Following this, the team plan a benchmarking exercise. You review and comment on their plans before asking them to go and implement them. A date, time, and place to reconvene is agreed, and the team’s activity and progress in the interim period is monitored. When you get together again, the team lead you through the conclusions they reached following the benchmarking exercise, and discuss with you their suggested actions. There is a discussion to finalise the action plan arising from the exercise, and the training activity concludes by agreeing with the team the way ahead.
Who is it for: This training resource is intended for use by trainers to help participants learn how to identify excellence in customer service through dynamic benchmarking against other organisations.
- Themes:
- Benchmarking,
- Planning,
- Quality,
- Strategy development,
| Resource Type: | Activity |
| Min Group Size: | 4 |
| Max Group Size: | 20 |
| Typical Duration: | 04:35:00 |
| No of Pages: | 31 |
Resources: View standard resources for Fenman training activities
Purpose: This training resource is intended for use by trainers as part of the introduction of a customer service culture. This training activity is particularly useful for teams who have completed, ‘Seeking customer feedback’ – carrying out research on customer’s views of their products or service. Benchmarking can be used by the team as a means of discovering solutions to issues arising from this research.
Download the training activity, Best practice benchmarking as featured in the Fenman training manual; Excellent Customer Service