Only conduct net promoter score exercises or customer satisfaction reviews if your organization is actually ready to respond to the feedback that you’re getting from your clients. 

Nothing is more annoying to a client than to be asked their opinion, “Hey, what do you think of our business?” And then we go: “Well, we think this and this and this, and it would be better if you did that and that, and we have competitors doing this, but you’re not.”, and so on. And “You know, I’m hoping that it is good feedback for you.”

So then, if we take that feedback in, but we are not in a position to change anything about the feedback that we’re getting. Then what is our customer going to think about how valuable we find their feedback? As a customer, I would think: “Well, you don’t really care about my opinion if I see no change (in response) to the feedback that I’m giving you.”

So therefore, there’s a logical sequence to getting this right: If you want to embrace customer centricity and you want to embark on a journey towards better customer experience, then you better start inside the organization and make sure that the organization is actually ready to give that response to the feedback, and to give that customer experience that you’re looking for.

You better start inside the organization and make sure that the organization is actually ready.

So how do you know whether you are ready? Well, there’s another tool called the MRI or the Market Responsiveness Index, that we endorse that helps you to actually measure the readiness of your organization for being customer centric.

So there are seven or eight (depending on the metric you use) parameters that we can measure within your organization, both inward looking and outward looking to a customer, to give you a score against. Like I said, seven or eight parameters in terms of how ready are your teams within your organization to even being customer centric?

And this is a fantastic exercise to benchmark your organization, and to see where are our opportunities, where are the challenges, what will take a bit longer, where do we need to put our efforts, and then to keep measuring the progress that you’re making as an organization towards customer centricity.

Now, at the stage when you are there and the organization is agile enough to respond to the customer’s feedback, then you can really embrace customer centricity and you can embrace things like Net Promoter Score or Customer Satisfaction reviews. But the important thing is to get the organization ready first, and to know when you’re ready, and how to improve continuously thereafter.

So, if you’re interested in any of these things please here is a link to more information. Also, feel free to contact us and have an obligation-free conversation about what we can do for you, and how you can benefit.

Thanks very much! I’m Peter Strohkorb. I’ll talk to you soon, bye-bye.

This article was posted with permission from the author. See the original post here.

By Peter Strohkorb:

Peter Strohkorb is the CEO of Peter Strohkorb Consulting International, a published Author, an international Speaker and Executive Mentor, as well as an Executive MBA guest Lecturer. Peter developed our 5-Step OneTEAM Method®, which is the only structured program to lift business performance through superior and sustainable collaboration between your two most customer-facing and revenue-generating functions, namely Marketing and Sales.