Benchmarking is defined as “an improvement process in which a company measures its performance against that of best-in-class companies, determines how those companies achieved their performance levels, and uses the information to improve its own performance.” (Bemowski, 1992, p. 20). Under the best of circumstances, benchmarking can be difficult, time-consuming, and costly. Service benchmarking is made more difficult than benchmarking in manufacturing because it appears that those things which are important to the customer may differ significantly from one service industry to another (Sower, et al., 2001). Because of the question about the universality of the definition of quality in the service industry and the impact on benchmarking activities, the editors obtained as broad a cross-section of papers for this special issue as possible. The industries represented by the nine papers in this issue cover a broad spectrum of service industries from sports to banking; from laboratory services to hospitality and tourism.