Take this little quiz to see if your organisation is ready for a customer community or conversational marketing;
 

1. There is a process in place to constantly measure customer satisfaction&sentiment. Not just on-line and not the annual customer satisfaction survey. Regular sampling. Y/N
2. Management calls a number of customers, happy and unhappy each day or week as part of their regular duties. Y/N
3. You have a social media policy for staff that as a starting point assumes they are already participating. Y/N
4. You do not just monitor social media mentions and sentiment about your brands, employees jump right in and join the conversations. Y/N
5. Poor customer satisfaction scores are immediately subjected to root cause analysis to determine what to do about them. The emphasis is on informed action, not measurement. Y/N
6. Staff&management mix freely and regularly, it feels normal to be around each other. Y/N
7. Staff have some flexibility&self-managed authority to resolve customer issues even if it costs money. Y/N
8. Legal sign-off is not required for every single piece of external correspondence. Y/N
9. All business meetings that discuss performance include some customer value metrics - for example, LTV, customer net present value, customer equity or even profit by segment, segment migration - some customer-centric discussion occurs, not just product stuff. Y/N
10. You have a customer segmentation framework in place that separates customer advocates (fans) from critics and tries to explain the differences between the two. Y/N   For example;

• • Promoter is more likely to have bought product X first
  • Detractor is more likely to have been acquired through the 'Everything must go, fire sale' campaign
  • Customer terrorist is more likely to be trapped in that 2 year contract that is now really expensive compared to the prices we offer new customers.

  Add up your Y's.

  If you have 6 or more, your company is ready to launch a social media initiative that will most likely work.

  Why? Because this score means you are not afraid of your customers. It sounds like you may even respect and value them, a good start to a relationship that has to be trust-based to work. Companies that are afraid of their customers show it in their conversations online - it is really hard to have a natural conversation with someone who is so frightened they check with their attorney and agent before making any comments.