We return to the area of customer service: a recent issue of Fortune has some suggestions on how to obtain insights to help create a truly customer-centered company. Here’s one that we’ve streamlined slightly:

Get together with a group of colleagues, and compile a list of the best and worst feelings you can have as a customer. Ask the group to identify the best service experiences they could have as customers. Try to deconstruct these great experiences into the specific things that provoked good feelings. Then have members of the group go and live through the experience of being a customer at your own company. Have them focus on the not-so-good feelings – the ways in which the company inadvertently irritates or annoys customers. Get back together with the group and analyze the discrepancies between the ideal customer experiences and the actual experiences. This can provide the raw materials to brainstorm breakthrough strategies.

Source: FORTUNE, April 30, 2001