Internet editorial

Citation

McGaughey, R.E. (2003), "Internet editorial", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 10 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/bij.2003.13110aag.001

Internet editorial

The editorial staff of Benchmarking: An International Journal (BIJ) is committed to helping those working at a senior level in industry, the public sector, or consultancy, as well as researchers, to stay current on developments in the areas of quality, technology and benchmarking. The focus of the journal is on “topics that have substantial management content, rather than being primarily technical in nature”. The Internet editorials will center on sites with a similar focus. I will examine sites believed to be of interest to BIJ readers and report, in what I believe to be a fair and objective manner, what I find at those sites.

This editorial is devoted to benchmarking customer service. We have witnessed over the last couple of decades a growing recognition of the importance of customer service. Today’s consumers do not just expect a high level of service, they demand it. The evolution of total quality management with its primary goal of customer satisfaction, and customer relationship management with the dual goals of better meeting the needs of existing customers as well as attracting and retaining new customers, provide evidence of the growing importance of customer satisfaction, and thus a high level of customer service. Companies are exploring ways to lock in customers to the extent they are so well “programmed”, to purchase company products, that they exhibit little or no search behavior when a purchase decision is at hand. Companies want to make their customers so loyal, that they routinely purchase products to meet their needs from “their” preferred supplier, without even considering a competitor’s offering. Companies want to cultivate long lasting, mutually beneficial, relationships with customers. Excellent customer service figures prominently in strategies to develop such relationships. You will see from this editorial that benchmarking customer service is becoming popular. Many sites now contain information about customer service generally, and benchmarking customer service specifically. This is further evidence of the growing importance of excellent customer service.

The searches

As in all of my Internet editorials, I provide information about searches and search engines as well as benchmarking sites. Before conducting the searches for this editorial, I sought to identify some new search engines for use. They are not actually new to the Web, but this was the first time that I used them in preparing an editorial. In addition to the two new search engines used, I used an old standby, Google.com. Searches of Google and the two other search engines produced many hits and numerous good sites to feature in this editorial. To search for search engines to employ in this editorial, I did a key word search on Google.com using “search engines” as the search phrase. The search produced a mere 2,850,000 hits. Needless to say, I did not follow the links for all hits on the list, but I did examine quite a few near the top of the list. Of those sites containing lists of search engines, the one I found to be most useful was called Search Engine Collosus at www.searchenginecollosus.com That site contained links to search engines in 223 countries, and it was organized by country in an alphabetical list. It is noteworthy that the list of US search engines was so long, that it was divided into four parts with a separate link to each. The UK list was similarly treated. I found the two new search engines used in this editorial on the lists of US sites. It is noteworthy that some of the same search engines can be found on lists associated with different countries (i.e. Google and Yahoo, are listed under multiple countries). Given the global nature of the WWW, this is not surprising. If you are looking for search engines, I highly recommend that you visit Search Engine Collosus. The two “new” search engines I used for this editorial were Galaxy.com and Findinfo.com

When searching on Galaxy.com I used the meta search tab which allowed me to submit my query to the Galaxy directory, a meta-engine that queries additional Web resources. The results of searches on Galaxy.com produce hit lists with up to 50 matches, ordered by prevalence across the resources polled by the meta-engine. This eliminates much of the redundancy encountered when using many search engines. The Galaxy directory includes some 350 vertical search engines. If one opts to use the Web search tab for more general searches, the Galaxy’s search engine can recommend contextually relevant sources that will help one narrow down one’s search. When I conducted my search on Galaxy.com I used two phrases: “customer service benchmarking” which produced 43 hits, and “benchmarking customer service” which produced 37 hits. I found interesting sites quickly on each list, and not surprisingly there was much overlap in the two lists. I liked the Galaxy.com search engine and will definitely use it again. My Google.com search yielded some 160 hits and identical list for each of the two phrases used in my searches. As is usually the case, I found useful sites on the Google.com hit list, but it took me longer to examine the list, simply because it was so long. Most of the interesting sites I found on the Google hit list, I had already found on Galaxy.com and without nearly as much effort expended examining links. The other search engine employed was Findinfo.com One of the largest search engines on the WWW, it searches over 1 billion Web pages. The advanced filtering used by Find Info helps you, as they put it, “find exactly what you are looking for”, while not being bothered with the “junk that populates the other search engines”. Find Info definitely did some filtering, because the hit list for my searches were quite short, with only 14 hits for “customer service benchmarking” and 21 for “benchmarking customer service”. These lists were short, but contained quite a variety of sites. I found links to studies, case studies, books, online magazines, consultancy sites and more. Some of the very same sites I found using Google and Galaxy appeared on these two hit lists, and some of them were what I perceived to be better sites (more relevant sites). One thing I liked about Findinfo.com was that it opened the other sites in a different browser window. Although not everyone would prefer this approach, I do! It makes it easy to leave the site active for a quick return during one’s search session. The only drawback to Findinfo.com was that it simply found too few sites of interest to satisfy me. Of the two new search engines I used this time, I added only Galaxy to my favorites list for future use.

I will continue in future editorials to introduce readers to different search engines. I hope this practice helps BIJ readers to locate information regarding benchmarking and related topics on the Web. Now, we will examine the featured sites. Please note that many of the sites featured in this and other editorials are the property of “for profit” enterprises, and that their purpose is primarily to promote and sell the products of the owners. My review of those sites should not be construed as a recommendation of the goods or services of those entities.

Featured sites

The Customer Service Networkwww.customernet.com/

The stated purpose of the Customer Service Network (CSN) is “to achieve collaboration in customer excellence”. More specifically, CSN encourages and facilitates collaboration among members to promote best practice in customer service. It is an organization of organizations, in that membership is restricted primarily to organizational memberships (academic memberships are an exception). Member company personnel can participate in site visits where they can observe, first hand, best practice in operation. Member companies can send company personnel to workshops sponsored by CSN. Generally, managers and others from member organizations can learn what it takes to achieve excellent customer service from those directly involved in doing so. The primary function of the CSN site is to serve its members. Since the Web site is set up primarily to serve members, much of what is available from the site is available to members only. I will examine briefly what services are available to members and examine other aspects of the site as well.

The following is a list of the many and varied services available to CSN members. Included among member services were the following:

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  benchmarking;

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  people surveys;

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  customer surveys;

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  customer service training;

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  focus groups;

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  site visits;

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  member help via e-mail;

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  service excellence audit;

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  mystery caller;

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  strategy development;

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  network days (for networking); and

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  member Web site and excellence collection.

There were also other member services available. One can examine the many member services by following the “Services” link on the CSN homepage. It takes one to what might best be described as a map of available services. When I visited the page, a banner appeared at the top of the “Service” page displaying a reminder about an upcoming network event (advertised to take place late in the month during which I was visiting the CSN site). One would expect the items on the services map to be links to pages that explain the services, but not so. Instead, each node on the service map has a caption, activated by a mouse-over event (moving mouse over the node), that briefly describes the service and advises one on how to find out more about the service. Contact information is included in some service descriptions–most often an e-mail address. Although I would have preferred to know more about the services CSN offers, the service map was an interesting way to provide a quick summary of each service. What about the cost of membership? When I visited the site, an extended corporate membership was approximately £1,500, a corporate membership was around £500, a charity membership ran about £300, and an academic membership came at a price of about £250. The application for membership was relatively short and easy to complete, but I did not join to find out more about the services. In fact, the short service descriptions on the service map did not provide all the service details I would require before joining CSN. I tried the “Member services” link to discover more about membership, but quickly discovered a roadblock – you must be a member to get anywhere in the member services area. The only thing I could examine in the members area was a single case study. Apparently, similar case studies are available to members so that they can learn from the experiences of other members and previous CSN sponsored studies. I assume from my experience, that one would need to seek more details about services by using the contact information available on the “Services” map and on other parts of the Web site. I would not join without knowing more about CSN.

Among the other items one might wish to examine on the CSN site is the “Events” page. One can follow the “Events” link on the navigation bar to the “Events” page. On that page one will see a schedule upcoming events which includes some past events – this leads me to conclude that it is not updated very regularly. Among the events one will find scheduled are workshops, site visits, networking events, and special events. Members can sign up to attend those events, and events that are already booked up indicate as much. This would certainly make it easy for members to make at least some of the arrangements necessary to attend events. Not much detail was provided on the events, but I would assume that members could obtain details somewhere on the “members only” section of the site, or elsewhere. Another interesting link is the “Members help zone” link. The link is found on the main navigation bar. This service is for members only. It allows them to submit a question by e-mail, which is then routed to another member, or members for an answer. This allows members to tap into the collective knowledge of some 400 members of the network. This seems a potentially valuable tool for members. The last item of interest on the site is the “Links” page. One can access the “Links” page by following the “Links” link on the navigation bar. The “Links” page has some interesting and potentially useful links. Most of the link targets were sites in the UK, and some were quite interesting. The list of links is not very long, but the ones on the list were interesting. I visited many of the links on that page and found all to be active – no link rot. My overall assessment of the site is that it appears quite useful for members, but not so much so for visitors simply looking for information about customer service and customer service benchmarking. For firms looking to participate in benchmarking studies and other efforts to improve customer service, the site offers promise.

The Resource Center for Customer Service Professionalswww.the-resource-center.com

The Resource Center for Customer Service Professionals (RCCSP) was founded in 1995 by a re-engineering and cost reduction specialist. She is quoted as saying “it’s cheaper to purchase the knowledge of others than to pay for your own mistakes”. RCCSP assembles products from publishers around the globe in one place and makes them available to customer service professionals involved in a variety of customer service related areas. The Resource Center publishes none of its own work, thus it is not limited in the resources it makes available to its customers. The center is a self-professed “market force in the customer service information industry”. The Resource Center product/service offering includes books, reports, surveys, self-study training, association memberships, and training seminars produced/provided by the industry’s finest associations, consulting firms, and publishers. As one might guess from the above description, most resources are not free.

The RCCSP site is well organized and designed to help visitors find products and services of interest. The opening page (homepage) of the RCCSP site is, for all practical purposes, a site index of a sort. Links are logically grouped under headings such as “Special events”, “The basics”, “Management topics”, “Metrics, performance and cost management”, and more. Faster access to specific topics or areas of interest is made possible through the “Subject Index” and “Catalog index” links found on the main navigation bar, located on the left side of RCCSP homepage. These links make finding products/services (books, videos, seminars, etc.) fast and easy. Both index pages are organized alphabetically to make them easy to use and both contain good descriptions of products and services. To illustrate, if one examines a book link on the “Cyber catalog index” page, one will find a good summary, a reasonably complete table of contents, and ordering information (price). One can add a book to one’s shopping cart and purchase the book online. Videos can be purchased in similar fashion. Many, many resources can be found using either index page. When I visited the site, I examined many of the links on these index pages and found very little link rot (links that do not work). The “Seminars” link, also found on the navigation bar on the RCCSP homepage, will allow one to examine the seminar calendar to learn more about seminars and register if so desired. If one is interested in automating some aspect of customer service, one might examine the “Automation aids” link on the homepage navigation bar. The accessed page provides descriptions of books, reports, buyer’s guides, and training aids. Relevant books, videos, reports and seminars can be examined using links provided on this page. Near the bottom of the RCCSP homepage, one will find information for organizations that might wish to “team-up” with RCCSP. RCCSP offers a free calendar of events that interested customer service related organizations can include on their sites. Since RCCSP maintains the calendar, it relieves organizations that use the calendar from the responsibility of updating the calendar – RCCSP updates it for them. RCCSP offers qualified organizations an opportunity to partner with them, entitling said organizations to have events (workshops, conferences, seminars) posted to the RCCSP calendar. The Center will even e-mail event information to organizations who wish to include the information on their own calendars.

Although there are many links on the page that visitors might want to examine, two warrant some attention because they are free. First, there is the “Call center jobs” link. That link accesses a page with two interesting links for job hunters. Each of the links accesses a different site. Those sites, CallCenterJobs.com and CallCenterCareers.com, post job openings for customer service professions. Both allow interested persons to post a resume and to examine job openings. CallCenterCareers.com even has links to sites that offer job training and courses designed to enhance one’s marketability. CallCenterCarreers.com and CallCenterJobs.com both offer valuable services to anyone with an interest in the rapidly growing customer service segment of the job market. Both job sites allow companies to post job openings. The last link on the RCCSP site that I wish to mention is one labeled “Industry links”. That link takes one to a page listing numerous industry links. The “Portals and resources” section on that page has many interesting links to sites pertaining to customer service-related areas of interest. The Call Center Depot, the CRMExchange, and the TelePlaza are just a few of the sites one can access through links found on this page. The RCCSP site is a useful site for anyone interested in customer service. One can find books, videos and seminars that can improve one’s understanding of various aspects of customer service, including customer service benchmarking. Even though most of the resources available at this site are not free, I felt it worthy of inclusion in this editorial because it does, as the site’s founder suggests, assemble many resources in one place. If one is interested in customer service benchmarking, call center benchmarking, or any customer service related topic, one can find valuable resources on this site.

The Service Quality Institutewww.customer-service.com/

The Service Quality Institute (SQI) describes itself as a “global leader in customer service”. The original focus of the organization, when started in 1972, was workforce performance. In 1979, SQI offered the world’s first training program devoted exclusively to customer service. For the last 20 years, SQI has focused on helping its customers create a culture conducive to delivering excellent customer service. More specifically, SQI helps organizations learn how to keep customers, build market share and improve workforce performance. SQI is a global company with distributors, licensees and consultants in some 35 countries around the globe. The company offers seminars, consulting services, training, books and more.

What is available on the SQI site that might be of interest to visitors with an interest in customer service benchmarking? As one would expect, there is much attention to the services provided by SQI. If one wishes to examine the services and products of SQI, one might examine the following links found on the navigation bar at the top and left side of the SQI homepage:

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  “Our services”;

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  “Consulting services”;

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  “Training programs”;

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  “Strategic seminars”;

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  “Video library”; and

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  “Book store”.

I will devote little attention to those links as it is not my objective to promote the products or services of SQI. There are other links of more general interest to site visitors, and I shall focus on those links and what is available through those links. First, there are the articles that are published monthly and archived, which can be accessed via the “Media” link on the left navigation bar or the “Featured articles” link on the navigation bar on top of the page. The articles found on the “Media featured articles” page are relatively short and address some aspect of customer service, including benchmarking and measurement issues. Articles found on that page cover such diverse topics as e-service, employee training, empowerment of employees, service guarantees, cutting costs and more. Most of the articles are written by the founder of SQI, who is considered a “guru” in the area of customer service. The articles are generally well written, interesting, short and tightly focused. Many are worth the few minutes it takes to read them. One can, by providing minimal information, sign up for the SQI newsletter that contains the articles when first released. New articles are available on a bi-monthly basis. If one’s interest is specifically benchmarking customer service, one might want to examine the “Measurement” link found on the left navigation bar. That link accesses a page where many measures can be found pertaining to customer service benchmarking, as well as a general framework for improving customer service. That framework is called “Seven steps to customer service”. One can download, free of charge, a measurement instrument designed to help one assess employee performance in the many areas believed to influence customer service directly or indirectly. The instrument is four pages long and allows one to score one’s employees on performance related to customer service. The left navigation bar contains several links to contacts. There are links to international, US and government contacts. Although the contact information is complete (name, address, phone, e-mail, and Web sites for some), the contacts are SQI personnel in the USA and elsewhere around the world. I really expected links to other customer service related sites or organizations when I followed this link, but none were found. If one wishes to pose a question about customer service or customer service benchmarking, one can use the discussion forum for that purpose. The “Discussion forum” link can be found on the left navigation bar. I examined the discussion forum and found little activity, with much time in between postings to the various active discussions. Posting a message was easy as was examining previous postings. Unfortunately, I did not find the discussion forum to be of much value. The key to an effective discussion forum is participation, and there was not much participation evident on the SQI forum. Surprisingly, there were no links to other customer service organizations. That was a bit of a disappointment, as the site was generally. Unless one is interested in securing the services of a “customer service” consultant, the site offers little of value other than short articles and limited help with measurement of customer service performance. Some of the articles were interesting and worth reading. Recall that they can be delivered to one if one signs up for the bi-monthly SQI “Newsletter”. One other negative aspect of the site was the slow loading pages. I found that the pages loaded very slowly, even more slowly than pages on other sites with far more graphics. This site is probably most useful to members or those interested in membership.

Call Center Learning Centerwww.call-center.net

The Call Center Learning Center (CCLC) is self-described as a “comprehensive index and directory site for call center managers”. The CCLC site, sponsored by Prosci Research, helps visitors find information about books, articles, benchmarking studies, best practice, software, vendors, training, call center solutions, vendors, and more. The site is not devoted exclusively to benchmarking and best practice, but it did house much information about benchmarking call center performance. Call centers can be the primary point of contact between customers and a company, so how call center personnel handle a customer will very much influence the customer’s perception of the company and the level of service provided by the company. Call centers allow companies to provide real time or nearly real time customer service. In industrialized nations, where customer service and convenience are critically important, call centers offer an avenue for serving the customer in a way that is efficient for the company and the customer. Benchmarking call center performance, thus, should be part of a good customer service benchmarking initiative. Because call centers figure prominently in the customer service strategy of many organizations today, I included the CCLC site in this editorial.

Upon visiting the CCLC homepage one will discover three “Benchmarking” links – one in the left navigation bar, one in the top navigation bar, and one in the “Quick links” navigation bar on the right side of the page. Any one of those links will take the user to the “Call center benchmarking” page, where there are numerous benchmarking links providing access to useful materials. When I visited the site, I found links to a couple or interesting study summaries. The summaries and tables of contents provided enough information for one to ascertain if the reports would be useful, but the reports are not free. In fact, the reports are a bit pricey. One particularly interesting item on the “Benchmarking” page at the time of my visit was a current study in which one could elect to participate and receive results when the study was completed. I examined that study and found it to be well designed for Web delivery. It provided good instructions for potential participants to increase the likelihood that they would be prepared to provide “good” data, thus making the study results more meaningful. Further down the “Benchmarking” page, one will find links to a number of sites that pertain directly or indirectly to call center benchmarking. I examined the links and found that some were not functional. The links that did work, provided access to some interesting and potentially useful sites. Back on the CCLC homepage, the “Articles” link provides access to a page listing many articles. The articles are available online and free of charge. A wide variety of articles are available, including many good articles pertaining to call center benchmarking, best practice, measurement and metrics. Some of the articles are available on site (on the CCLC site), but many links point to articles available from other sites. Every article link that I tried was operational. Another interesting link on the homepage is the “Media search” link. It is found on the “Quick links” list (on right side of homepage), and will take one to the “More media” page. The “More media” page has links to newsletters, magazines, consultants, conference and tradeshow postings, and related organizations. I found this page alone to make a visit to the CCLC site worthwhile. The “Newsletters” link accesses a page with links to many different newsletters for many different organizations, not just CCLC. Accessing the newsletters was quick and easy, and the information provided about each would allow one to inquire about or subscribe to the newsletters. The “Magazines” link takes one to a page with links to many customer service and call center related magazine sites. If the publication is not available online, sufficient information is available to allow interested individuals to subscribe. The “Conferences” link accesses the conference page where many customer service/call center related conferences and tradeshows are listed, with links that allow one to visit other Web sites and learn more about the events. The “Associations” link on the “More media” page accesses the “Call center associations” page which contains links to the sites of numerous organizations dedicated to improving customer service or call center performance. Many more links reside on the “Call center associations” page, than appear at the bottom of the “Benchmarking” page. All the links I evaluated were operational, and I found many good sites with customer service benchmarking related information.

The Call Center homepage contains other items of interest. The “Bookstore” link assesses the bookstore where many, many good books are listed. Each book entry contains a brief summary of the book, as well as a link to Amazon.com to allow one to purchase the book online. There are many more books available about call centers than I would have imagined, and there are books about customer service, customer relationship management, call center technology and more. All of the links I examined on the “Bookstore” page were functional. I thought that the short book summaries were particularly helpful. The last item on the CCLC homepage that I will mention is the tutorials. Many of the “tutorials” are quite interesting and thought provoking, and they are free. In most cases they come from longer articles or books, and at the end of the tutorial CCLC makes it convenient to purchase the source book or study. If one is interested in call centers, many of the tutorials are worth reading, even if one does not intend to purchase additional materials on the topic. In sum, the CCLC site is very interesting, well organized, and well maintained. It is worth a visit if one is interested in customer service benchmarking generally, or call centers specifically.

The focus of BIJ is “topics that have substantial management content”. Certainly, customer service is a topic of interest to managers as to researchers as well. Customer service is very important to the success of both public and private organizations around the globe. At present, one will not find many sites devoted exclusively to benchmarking customer service, but one can find numerous sites with information and resources pertaining to this important topic/practice. The sites featured in this editorial, as well as other sites found on the Web, will help interested persons find valuable information and resources pertaining to customer service generally, and customer service benchmarking specifically. I expect to see more customer service benchmarking resources become available in cyberspace with the passage of time. Sites evolve to meet information needs and the needs are great in this area as firms strive to improve customer service. BIJ readers, who may be familiar with other Web based resources pertaining to benchmarking customer service or related topics, might wish to share information about such resources. Reader contributions would help me write Internet editorials that are valuable to BIJ readers. If you have a site, or know of a site, that you would like to see featured in future editorials, please e-mail me your suggestions. If you have a benchmarking topic that you would like to suggest for future editorials, I welcome your suggestions. Your input would be greatly appreciated. Send your comments and suggestions to Ronald McGaughey at ronmc@mail.uca.edu

Ronald E. McGaugheyInternet Editor