Best practices - Is it the best practice?

Best Practices - Is this the best practice?

This is a rhetorical question in my mind.

I am a consultant and whenever we get to do some work for the client or even when we pitch for new business, we end up doing competition landscaping and highlight either their pit falls or come up with best practices.

I don't think it is the right approach. Especially if you are in the business of providing the solutions for customer experience.Let me try and back this statement using some logics which I think will be deemed fit. Ofcourse these logics are not as a result of any best practices exercise.

The justification are as follows:

• The inferences and recommendations as best practices pre-supposes the fact the customers have accepted that idea/initiative in a over whelming manner.God knows what they think.
• The subset of the earlier point is also the fact that the best practice is the interpretation of the expert and not the customer. Ultimately, it is pretty obvious that your opinion is not the same as that of the universe. So what if you are an expert? It still doesnt make sense
• I come from the school of thought that only original ideas sell. The "me too's" do not survive. Forget my belief. Lets take it objectively:best practice always leads to incremental progress. It is never radical coz you are just packaging what somebody has tried. Customers do know about it. I know some people will be ready to pounce on me to say that few companies have been successful ( I do not want to take names). But as you rightly said, its few and will only be few. They probably got their chemistry right in the other aspects of business.
• The key aspect about customer experience is innovation. Innovation clearly would mean that it its your idea and not a copy of somebody's idea.Customer would remember for your originality and not when you get somebody's idea and make a statement " I have that as well with me".
• Forgot all the other aspects.... Best practices approach is a clear shot cut and an excuse for not meeting your customers and trying to understand their experience. Best practices is the dampner for the concept called "out of box" thinking. It would probably mean out of business. No short cust please. Please make a sincere effort to understand your customer.

Google's and Ipods were born coz somebody soiled their hands to find out what customers want? What kind of experience is desirable? No best practices would lead to break through innovation.

So my suggestion is drop the practice of best practice. Get to know your customers better instead of learning from your competitors. The devil is in the details. May be ethnography will help. That'ss my next topic and I had to make a mention of it.. Fits in well I guess.