20-question quiz

   1.    your company is usually the sole supplier of your class of product or service to your customer.

   2.    customers have grown to consider your company’s performance as highly reliable.

   3.    your company’s performance is the industry benchmark and/or is used to judge the performance of competitors.

   4.    it’s been a long time since your company has had a “performance” problem.

   5.    customers are indifferent and seem not to care what your company does.

   6.    your company’s performance, especially its special efforts, is often invisible to customers.

   7.    you feel your company’s performance is underappreciated and taken for granted by customers.

   8.    customers have difficulty distinguishing your company’s performance from that of your competitors.

   9.    your company is experiencing arbitrary pressure to lower prices.

10.    customers have difficulty quantifying your company’s positive impact on their business.

11.    customers appear more focused on secondary attributes of your service than on your primary attributes.

12.    customers have difficulty articulating your company’s distinguishing value from that of others.

13.    an existing customer opened your company’s service contract to competitive bid for the first time.

14.    a customer states that the service your company provides is a commodity.

15.    a customer suddenly terminates (or threatens to terminate) your company’s service or relationship.

16.    customers are not advocating your company to others as favorably or frequently as before.

17.    your company’s margins have declined.

18.    customers were too happy or too upset over a trivial performance matter.

19.    customer feedback was conflicting (both positive and negative) regarding the same performance.

20.    customer expectations became increasingly unrealistic.

score

• > 15  =  highly at risk or already suffering from the paradox
• 10 – 15  =  moderately at risk
• < 10  =  less likely to be suffering from the paradox