With the ability to instantly broadcast compliments and complaints to social media, customers now expect a high level of engagement from companies. Contact centers must strive to continuously improve operational performance and must work to contain costs at the same time.One of the tools that contact centers rely on to improve their efforts is benchmarking, the process of improving performance by identifying, understanding and adapting best practices found both inside and outside the organization.This perspectives paper discusses ways in which leading organizations are gaining value from accurate, insightful benchmarking.