Get customers to sell for you
More entrepreneurs are embracing a simple metric that measures referrals – and helps boost profits. How do you track client satisfaction? What do you think of NPS (the Net Promoter Score)?
From Linda Popky, Woodside, CA It is amazing to me how many people are reaching for the magic potion to solve their customer satisfaction issues.
If only customer satisfaction could be "fixed" with a simple number like NPS.
But life isn't that easy. In the early 1990s , I helped build the customer loyalty program for a Fortune 500 computer systems company. We looked at various components of satisfaction and loyalty and we asked the NPS questions that Reichhold is now championing as a panacea.
What we found is that recommendation levels are very much culturally dependent. That means in certain countries or with certain ethnic groups scores will be inherently low or high, based on cultural norms, and there isn't much you can do to change them.
We also found that what gets measured, gets managed. A focus on improving those recommendation scores that could be influenced distracted resources from fixing the real problems driving satisfaction and loyalty.
Since then I've had the opportunity to do business with organizations that use NPS as a key metric. Heaven help you if you are ever labeled as a negative promoter. The system is set to reward those employees who move moderately happy customers to promoters, not to worry about those who are obviously unhappy (who are interestingly more likely to tell many others about their bad experiences).
There are no magic potions. That's true whether we're talking about losing weight or increasing customer satisfaction. The simple truth is that nothing substitutes for hard work and discipline to attack the root cause of a problem.
regards,
Linda Popky
President
L2M Associates, Inc.
http://www.L2Massociates.com
Blog: http://www.facethecustomers.com
From Jeff Spencer Dear FSB,
Thank you for the article on NPS in the June 2008 issue.
I am the NPS manager for a chain of furniture stores owned by my father and brother. We have 9 Ashley Furniture Homestores in Southeastern US (4 in Memphis, TN; Tupelo, MS; Columbus, MS; Jackson, TN; Chattanooga, TN, and Bowling Green, KY). Our NPS department does NPS customer surveys for all 9 stores. Each month, we call every customer that received their furniture in the previous month. This means we do an average of about 3,700 customer surveys each month. We call only between the hours of 8-5 (not wanting to disturb our customers at night), and we end up contacting over 50% of our customers.
When we started NPS in August 2007, our score was 59. Our current score (surveys taken in April 2008) is 72. Our fairly swift rise in score can, in part, be attributed to the policy changes that were made because of our negative NPS customer comments. Our NPS survey asks both questions on the same call (How would you rate us and why did you give us that score). All survey information is logged into Excel spreadsheets so we could begin seeing patterns in our customer comments (compliments toward salespersons, complaints about delivery, etc). We began taking the info from the detractors and coaching our employees at each location on their shortcomings, and we took the info from the promoters and congratulated them publicly for a job well done. Not only can the NPS customer comments provide a great morale boost, but they can also provide valuable information on how a furniture salesperson, for instance, is failing to make his customer happy, or how a furniture delivery team can better serve customers. In short, NPS has helped guide many changes in policy in our company in order to provide better customer service and our score has risen 13 points in 8 months.
Sometimes its is painful to read the answers from our detractors, but we take their comments, especially the negative ones, very seriously. In fact, in January, we began following up with customers who took the NPS survey and told of a disappointing experience with our company. We began having the store managers or the warehouse managers contact the dissatisfied customers in order to offer a satisfactory resolution to the customer's grievance with us. While we still have customers who stay angry with us, this extra step in follow-up by the managers has served to change many detractors' low opinion of our company into one that is more favorable, even changing them from a detractor into a repeat customer. Our aggressive follow up just shows our customers that in our company, they come first, and we are willing to prove it to them.
Again, thank you for the article on NPS. Our company is utilizing this tool, and we have had wonderful success with it because it has put us in touch with our customers in a way that we never were before.
Thank you,
Jeff Spencer
NPS Manager
Spencer Enterprises, LLC
From Michael, NYC What the Net Promoter Score measures is far greater than client satisfaction – and is a great tool to gauge how your customers regard your company. Customer satisfaction is a point in time measure – the NPS measures "true" customer loyalty simply and efficiently.
From Mikko, Sipoo, Finland A few years back, we used an even simpler measure to track how well a large IT-project is proceeding. Every Friday, each one attending was given a piece of paper to rate a "smile", "neutral" or "unhappy". When the number of unhappies went up, that was an instant sign to search for troubles. Extremely efficient as a satisfaction and trouble finding method.
From Paul South Florida Customer satisfaction will be the catalyst for the "Brick & mortar" companies to fail.Online businesses tend to be more customer orientated due to the task of luring a customer to their website in the first place.Once a customer the tendency is to stay a customer as long as the product and CS is above the norm for the B&M companies.
http://www.sellmyinventory.com
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Great article about Net Promoter scores…we watch them closely at our company. I know we are way ahead of the industry (mortgage) with our region gaining a 90 net promoter score. Net promoter is an important measurement that the public should know about.
Kevin McCarthy,CMPSâ„¢
Certified Mortgage Planning Specialist
CTX Mortgage Company