Shopping for a new phone system can seem daunting, and while salespeople are always friendly, it's important to remember they aren’t necessarily your friends. Finding a phone system provider that values and supports their clients is just as, if not more, important than finding one that offers the features you need. In this article, we’ll break down the top three questions you should ask all prospective providers to make sure they’re a business you want to do business with.

The moment you announce that you’re in the market for a new technology provider, salespeople come crawling out of the woodwork. Even if you keep up with all the offers on the table, sifting through them to see what’s objectively better is a monumental, time-consuming task. Luckily, no matter the industry, there are guaranteed to be a number of third-party reviewers who already put in the work to break down each option and give you all the pros and cons without any of the marketing fluff.

Sites like G2 Crowd, Fit Small Business, and Capterra not only write their own reviews, they give current and former clients somewhere to rate their experiences. Capterra reports that 66% of their reviews were written by someone who had been using the product for longer than a year. Reading those personal stories gives you additional insight, but it also arms you with specific, real-world questions when talking to sales reps.

NPS, or Net Promoter Score , is a tool that gauges the loyalty of a company’s client relationships. It’s calculated based on responses to a single question: “ How likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague? ” Scores vary across different industries, but a positive NPS (higher than zero) is generally considered good, an NPS of +50 is generally considered excellent, and anything over +70 is exceptional.

By asking a company about their NPS score, you immediately get a feel for how open they’re willing to be.. If they have nothing to hide, they’ll jump at the chance to brag about how much their clients love them! However, if they try to deflect, take note. Showing is always better than telling…

Companies with great NPS scores will often make them public or readily share them. But you can find NPS scores for a lot of companies here , here , and here . In fact, check out scores from Comcast (-5) and Verizon (32) . At FluentStream, we’re maniacal about tracking NPS and are proud to report that our score for last quarter was 69 and has consistently been in the mid-to-high 60s for quite some time. Want an even more current score? All you have to do is ask!

Sadly, research shows that only 5% of the companies surveyed fully integrate client and employee feedback. You need to be sure that a company is responsive to direct client feedback. A top-tier company will have methods to collect regular and immediate feedback, like calls to take down new feature requests, internal chat channels to process those requests, client surveys after every interaction, and webinars to provide live venues for questions.

Ostriches don’t innovate. A company needs ways of pulling their head out the sand in order to keep growing and improving. If they don’t, they’ll need to run as fast as ostriches to get away from all the complaints and poor reviews from their unappreciated clients. But all ostrich jokes aside. At FluentStream, we review every client interaction and welcome any and all feedback!