The call centre industry continues to be one of the fastest growing industries in the world. The cue has been given for management to maintain and keep pace with this growth with Best in Class (BIC) performance.

For an organisation to maintain a competitive edge, to maximise profitability and efficiency it must be up there with the best.

When an organisation measures its own business processes against those that have been identified as BIC it can readily identify opportunities for improvement.

Whether large or small, old or new, in the competitive call centre industry it is vital for an organisation to know where it sits with regard to world’s best practices.

Benchmarking is the comparison and measurement of the four P’s; practices, policies, philosophies and performance measures against those of high performing organisations world-wide.

Through benchmarking an organisation’s management team is able to clarify the organisations strategies and objectives across a broad range of call centre operations.

Benchmarking coaxes managers into regularly reviewing all areas of performance and not just productivity outputs.

The qualitative nature of benchmarking surveys and reports make them particularly beneficial. Dennis Sanner manager of benchmarking services with the AQC, told Telcall magazine in May 2000, ‘The benchmarking studies and networks that AQC run are more qualitative in the sense that we’re really benchmarking processes or methods that other organisations are using rather then just the end results.’

More and more organisations are seeing the real benefits of participating in benchmarking activities and credit it’s existence for helping them to not only see the ‘bar’ but to jump over it to success.