When was the last time you took just a few minutes to gauge how effective your firm is at communicating with clients and prospects at different “touch” points? If it has been a while, or maybe you’ve never even thought about it, start with something exceedingly simple-something far too few executives do. Call your own company’s 1-800 number to see how quickly—and professionally—your call is handled. Call at different times, including non-business hours. If your voice isn’t recognized, we bet you’ll be surprised.

Send a few messages to e-mail addresses included on your website, like sales@ or jobs@. See what happens and how long the responses take. Gauge if the responses are timely, clear and well written, or are they “canned” messages that do nothing to address your questions?

Complete a few online forms and sit back and wait. Again, gauge both the timeliness and quality of the responses.

These are just a few of the ways you can spy on your operation. I’m sure you can think of lots more facets to examine. Plus, don’t stop with your own company. Do the same with your competitors and learn from their successes and failures.

No matter what methodology you employ for “spying,” don’t forget the most important thing: Learn from what you’ve observed, or in some instances exposed. Fix what’s broken. Fix it quickly. Fix it effectively. And then, go spying again to see how well—and for how long—your fixes worked.