Companies span the entire range from ONE to customer-oriented to companies that can’t even be bothered to answer the phone (insurance companies and banks, consider yourselves warned). Where does your company place? How ONE is it? Here is a ten-step test you can use to see how well prepared your company is for the coming consumer revolution.

Ten-step test for ONE
1. If you close your eyes, can you see yourself as a customer of your own company? Do you see yourself in the brand mirror? If not, pretend you’re a customer and inform your boss.
2. Call in and ask to speak to yourself. Be happy, angry, or wrong and see how you are treated.
3. If your company sells retail, put on an exhibition of customer-designed products. If the products sell, congratulate the head of purchasing for his or her good work. Write a press release.
4. Survey your company’s partners and suppliers. Do you have common interests, common customers? And, what can you do with that synergy?
5. Trial and error made Dell a Fortune 500 company. How often do you dare to fail?
6. Who at your company hears the customer’s voice first? How many customers have you hired?
7. It should never take more than 20 seconds to find the information you need on the company website. Does your company make the grade? Can customers communicate with each other on the site? Is your website interactive or is it more of a store window?
8. Benchmark other industries and learn from their mistakes and successes.
9. Would you want to be a customer at your own company? If not, perhaps you should start your own company.
10. How much time does your CEO spend with customers? IKEA’s CEO, Ingvar Kamprad, spends a large part of his time with the customers. Dell’s CEO, Michael Dell, spends at least 40 percent of his time with his customers.
11. Add at least three to five more tests to this list. Please drop me an email here and tell me how it goes.