Do you taste your own service?

How do you know your service? Do you test it? How do you test it? When I speak to companies about testing their service I usually get a positive answer ("yes, we do QA"). Excuse me, but testing the service is more than doing QA. I propose that you taste all aspects of the service from OUTSIDE your corporate wall - that means: experiencing the service using conditions similar to your clients, and calling customer service with real problems. To see how good do you taste, do the following:

• Use your service from outside your corporate network - use your customer's PC/device if possible. What if there are problems with their ISP? or some other thing outside your corporate network? Do not use any corporate advantage or identify yourself as an employee - do not seek preferential treatment. No VIP pass for you.
• Taste during high peak times - no experimenting at 3 AM when the servers are at 0.0001% utilization (unless that is your peak time). Do not use an super-machine with an infinite bandwidth connection (routed through NASA and a private line to the president).
• Call customer support with real problems - but use the customer's line (don't listen from the call center or call from HQ). I recently had a call with a company's customer service. I am pretty sure my call was between me in the US, one customer rep in India and another company's customer rep in the US. The quality of the call was horrible and it dropped several times.
• Do experiment with different ways to use the service: PC, iPad, Laptop, old PC... and call from landlines, cell phones, international phones (get your overseas relatives involved). 

Live your service from the outside. Get the real picture and the real taste.