Best Practices Can Be Dangerous to Customer Experience

By Shaun Smith

I was speaking at a large Customer Service Management conference. Senior executives from Disney, Southwest Airlines and Ritz-Carlton gave presentations and the audience were clearly enthralled with how these organisations operate. Perhaps it is no coincidence that these three organisations are often the first port of call for organisations wishing to benchmark in the US. Indeed they each offer public workshops to teach their best practices.

Yet this is dangerous.

One of the first principles of business strategy is to differentiate rather than be ‘me too.’ Strategy is about making a choice; of what to do, but event more importantly, what not to do. To attempt to copy other organisations runs the risk of your being second rate, at best and totally inappropriate at worst. What do Virgin, The Banyan Tree, Harley-Davidson, Amazon.com, First Direct, Pret A Manger and Tesco all have in common?

The answer is that their founders and many of their senior directors share an approach to business that is uncommon in industry today. We admire these organisations because they have strong brands, offer distinctive experiences, attract enthusiastic customers, retain proud employees and have their own unique way of doing things.

We found that their approach to business is not the norm, that these companies often do things that are unusual and even defy conventional business wisdom, ‘daring to be daft’ to paraphrase Richard Branson. But what gives them the confidence to operate in this way and what is it that their leaders do that is different? Sir Terry Leahy, CEO of Tesco, the global supermarket chain, tells us that the key to Tesco’s success was being different. “The day we stopped following Sainsbury (the market leader at that time) and started following our customers”.

In other words they focused on differentiation and meeting the needs of their target customers rather than simply copying competitors. Since then the brand has focused on creating value for customers to earn their life-time loyalty. Tesco’s slogan of ‘every little helps’ describes the enormous attention to detail that enables them to ensure that processes, people and products operate seamlessly to deliver value. Today Tesco is the market leader and has declared a £2billion profit for the last year.

Comments

[John I. Todor, Ph.D.]

This is a very important point. Differentiation should be the goal not homogenization. When I get into a discussion about the damages of best practices, the proponents argue that they are really interested in copying the essence of the practice. However, what I observe is a much too literal transference. Before someone applies an idea they got from someone else they should be sure they understand the underlying principle, not just the observable practice. Clayton Christensen hammers this point home this way. Back in the Middle Ages, people were intrigued by birds’ ability to fly. Many poor souls jumped off of cliffs with feathers attached to their arms—copying the birds but not understanding the principles of aerodynamics. John I. Todor, Ph.D., author of Addicted Customers: How to Get Them Hooked on Your Company.