New Headquarters for CustomerGauge/Directness

We are pleased to announce that due to further expansion CustomerGauge/Directness has today moved to a new larger headquarters. We are now based in the Y-tech complex in Amsterdam, a short walk from the Central Station. Our new address is:

Van Diemenstraat 182B
Amsterdam 1013CP
The Netherlands
Telephone: +31 208 20 21 60

Map / Directions

We hope to welcome you to our new offices soon.

Net Promoter News: Customer-centric KO’s sales-centric, Dutch telcos fail to shine, Intuit finds surprise NPS benefits, Home Depot improves NPS, EdgeWave finds an edge

Why customer-centric beats sales-centric

A couple of weeks ago we briefly touched on employees and how all too often they become the forgotten linchpin of great customer service. But nurturing an internal environment that produces great customer service is not as simple as rewarding staff for meeting sales targets. In fact, according to Professor Moira Clark, Director of the Henley Centre for Customer Management, rewarding sales may be a mistake, because instead of nurturing a customer-centric environment, you will instead nurture a sales-centric environment that may create short-term spikes in sales at the expense of the long-term sustainability of your customer relationships.

Instead, she advises that a customer-centric environment is nurtured best by having “systems, procedures and rewards in place” to inspire staff. It may be that you reward them for good customer service, satisfaction or meeting a target Net Promoter score.

How are you inspiring your staff to be truly customer-centric? Please let us know in the comments below! InternetRetailing

Dutch Telcos leaving customers underwhelmed

A Q4 2011 analysis of customer sentiment across the Netherlands has provided mixed news for mobile operators. On the one hand, there was some significant improvement by major players KPN and Vodafone Netherlands which increased their scores by four and five points respectively. But on the other hand, the best major player, Vodafone NL, recorded an NPS of -14 – significantly shy of Ben, which once again led the pack with the only positive score, of +5.

And despite these improvements, market average rose by only one point, from -20 to -19, with T-Mobile Netherlands and Telfort falling to score lower than the market average.

Among the fixed-line operators, Delta and XS4ALL received the highest Net Promoter Score, although both remained in negative territory.

Shout out to Dutch telcos: Customers are calling, but is anybody home? TelecomPaper mobile operator fixed-line

Intuit returns double digit growth, finds surprise benefits in NPS

American financial software provider Intuit is the latest company to discuss its Net Promoter results at its earnings call. According to CEO Brad Smith, customers have been returning higher-than-expected Net Promoter Scores for free tax advice they are receiving from the company.

This might sound pretty obvious – if you are offering a free product that your customers find genuinely useful, it comes as no surprise that this particular product will register a higher-than-average NPS. However, what was more interesting for the punters out here in Net Promoter land was that the high score for Intuit’s free tax product had a knock on effect across the entire business – dragging up the NPS across the whole product range.

While Intuit did not provide actual scores, the company grew revenue at a double-digit rate in its fiscal second quarter. Coincidence? We think not. Seeking Alpha

Home Depot announces improved earnings, Net Promoter scores

US home improvement giant Home Depot surprised the market this week with a 32% jump in earnings during Q4 2011. A bottoming out of the US housing market was cited by analysts as a possible reason for the jump, but buried deep inside the earnings transcript was another hint – a 130 basis point jump in satisfaction for the overall store to an extremely impressive +70.7, and a 290 basis point jump for the pro area. Seeking Alpha

EdgeWave finds an edge in customer service

We have spoken before on the importance of following up with your customers to let them know that an issue or suggestion they made has been acknowledged. Following 94% customer satisfaction rates and “industry-leading” Net Promoter Scores, online security firm EdgeWave has done just that and launched a customer rewards program in order to thank their advocates – not just with words but also with benefits that customers will use.

We read about this initiative via an EdgeWave press release, and as can often be the case, one of the most interesting tidbits of information was almost lost way back in the last paragraph. Please allow me to indulge myself (just for a moment, I promise!) and highlight a tangible point of differentiation that customer-centric businesses including EdgeWave (and Enterasys) offer:

“While many competitors have moved their technical support centers offshore, EdgeWave is committed to keeping their customer support in the US and staffing their centers with service-focused, product experts.”

Executives: We know the temptation to cut costs and outsource is great. But surely the temptation to cement relationships and develop long-term trust, advocacy, and growth should be greater? MarketWatch

Case Study – Dörken MKS Systems: How a technically focused business started a systematic approach to Net Promoter with CustomerGauge

Dörken MKS Systems produces and configures surface protection for the automotive, wind, construction and aviation industries under the brand name DELTA-MKS®, and in 2011 started a Net Promoter® project with CustomerGauge.

Headquartered in Herdecke, Germany, it has regional branches in the US, South America, China, Korea, and Japan. The company provides  high level of technical service and products that meet exacting standards and complex specifications.

The case study describes how the Net Promoter project was implemented for their two-tier channels, together with CustomerGauge partner in Germany JSW Consulting.

Originally implemented in order to understand customers from a neutral standpoint, the survey succeeded in providing Dörken with successful results and useful feedback. And underscoring the fact that the company is a leader in its field in terms of customer service, at the end of 2011 it won an industry award for Best Professional Supplier in the category of “Substance and Semi-Finished Goods.”

Commented the Dörken Project Manager: “Immediate feedback was great from within the company and people were really curious to find out what their customers had said.” 

We are pleased to have such a technically advanced client in Dörken MKS  with excellent client focus.

Net Promoter News: GOOG v AAPL, TW Tel- Tell NPS, The 10 Ways, Lawyers get the metric, E-ON Excellence

Google v Apple: Which is more innovative?

Google has a lot of fans, but according to a new book, it is arguably not at the cutting edge of innovation.

In What Matters Now, management expert Gary Hamel outlines four mental models found in organizations and advances a theory that only organizations that put innovation at the heart of what they do are true leaders in delighting their customers. Google doesn’t make the cut because instead of putting innovation at the centre of the business, it works on a model where only 20% of employee time is ostensibly used for innovation purposes. As supporting proof, he notes that after more than 10 years (several lifetimes in internet years) its original business model still generates 90% of its revenue.

In terms of true leaders, What Matters Now cites Amazon, Salesforce, and Apple as examples where the entire organization is devoted to continuous innovation and finding new ways of delighting customers. So what is Apple’s secret? Well if everyone knew that we’d be communicating telepathically with our machines by now. But we do know one thing. Apple is one of the leading exponents of Net Promoter Score. Source: Forbes

tw telecom talks up Net Promoter Score

If continuous innovation is indeed the key to delighting your customers and encouraging them to become advocates of your brand as Gary Hamel suggests above, he has some evidence here to support him. At their Q4 2011 earnings call on Feb 9^th, fiber-pullers tw telecom CEO Larissa Herda released an impressive set of financial results, which she put down to two things – strategically releasing new products and that the company recently increased its Net Promoter Score to its highest level ever.

“This key metric not only measures our customer satisfaction and loyalty, we believe it played a key role in propelling our revenue growth in 2011,” said Herda.

Also this week, the CEOs of Tucows and Rackspace Hosting both mentioned Net Promoter in their earnings calls. While both were upbeat, we are always left hanging for more when a senior executive in an earning call says something like “customer satisfaction, as mentioned by net promoter score, continues to increase,” (Tucows) or “we want to generate incredible customer outcomes, we measure this customer loyalty through the Net Promoter Score” (Rackspace).

Note to CEOs: The details always tell the story! Seeking Alpha

Ten ways to improve your Net Promoter Program

A couple of weeks back we talked about one smart cookie (David Mitzenmacher) who summarised the entire NPS process on the back of a napkin. NPS is a simple system – that’s a sign of its effectiveness and also a key point of its attraction. But there is more to the metric than simply “root cause analysis” and “closing the loop”.

With this in mind, Alain Thys, managing partner at Futurelab, has put together “ten ways to take your Net Promoter programme to the next level.” It’s well worth a look, and helps shed some light on the different ways Net Promoter can help businesses effect positive change in serving their customers. Futurelab

Net Promoter – It’s the law!

Adrian Dayton writing in the National Law Journal ponders the question “Which metrics matter most?” for lawyers. In a laundry list of measurements, Fordham University professor Silvia Hodges, suggests “a more client-focused approach, the Net Promoter Score, [...]  obtained by asking clients to report on a 0-10 scale whether he is extremely likely to hire you again or not at all likely. A high net promoter score means you’re keeping clients happy and earning referrals.” National Law Journal

Reputation Management and E.ON’s NPS Centre of Excellence

On January the 25^th in Munich, the Reputation Institute and Bain & Company hosted an event to share knowledge on, you guessed it, company reputation management.

A couple of the more interesting observations included that most people buy a product based on on what they think of the company rather than what they think of a product, and that reputation-based communications strategy only has a chance to work if it has management 100% behind it.

While these are valid points and worthy of further discussion, there was one other nugget of information that we would love to hear more about. Energy provider E.ON is a company that takes NPS a step further than most. Not content with just running the occasional survey, it has  “an entire NPS Center of Excellence.” Furthermore, it was noted by centre director Adam Elliott that “when you have your results you have to change the whole business.”

Innovation, it seems, is the thread that runs through all NPS news this week! The Financial

Upcoming Events

Diary note: Next Wednesday 22 February join the free Net Promoter webinar: Customer Service Fire-Fighting – Basic workflow for Customer Rescue (how to use Net Promoter with automation of customer responses to turn negative customer experiences into evangelist gold). Register here.

Webinar: Customer Service Fire-Fighting – Basic workflow for Customer Rescue, and Conversion to Promoters

In this free Webinar, we will show you how to use Net Promoter with automation of customer responses to turn negative customer experiences into evangelist gold!

16.00 UK / 17.00 CET / 10.00 EST 22 February 2012 – Register Now

In today’s business environment, the laziest thing to do is lose an expensively-won customer through poor service. And although asking for opinions on product or service is commonplace, few companies react fast enough to rescue customers.

But with a simple process we call “Fire-fighting” it’s possible to respond quickly and positively to issues, and “rescue” unhappy customers. Do it well, and you can convert these customers “detractors” into “promoters”.

In our best-practice webinar, we share how world class organizations use Net Promoter and automated workflow to drive their business. These companies have learned the power of engaging these detractors to turn them into customer evangelists.  By using rules-based, automated workflow of responses, companies can quickly evaluate which customers to engage with to drive an immediate action in the organization.

 

We will discuss how you can:

• Create an automated Net Promoter “Customer Loyalty” tracking system to monitor your customers sentiment
• Devise rules based work flow to route these responses to the right person in the organization
• Use “Fire Fighting” dashboards and follow-up to ensure that these customers’ needs are exceeded
• Use industry best practices to try to turn these detractors in promoters
• And a behind the scenes look at the magic trick – “How to react fast”!

Topic: Best Practice Series:  Customer Service Fire-Fighting  – Basic workflow for Customer Rescue, and Conversion to Promoters
Date: Wednesday 22 February, 2012
Time: 16:00 London, 17:00 Amsterdam, 10:00 New York
Price: Free, to registered subscribers
Length: Approximately 20 mins
Presented by: Adam Dorrell, CEO CustomerGauge, Rob Kerner, Director CustomerGauge

Register here:

Limited spaces – don’t delay to register!

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Net Promoter News: 66% consumers switch through poor service, Telstra go NPS, CEOs chat Net Promoter, measuring “Greatness”.

Is it time for your company to adopt NPS?

Here’s a statistic that may give you heart palpitations: Research released last month by Accenture that canvassed consumers in 27 countries and 20 different industries found that 66 percent of consumers switched companies during 2011 as a result of poor customer service.

The Smart Planet article goes on to discuss the rising role of chief customer officers, and no doubt, this is an important part of improving your customer service offering.

But of more interest to us were the thoughts of Anne Bowman, chief customer officer of customer service technology and communications company Voxeo. One of her key observations is that in general companies have “notoriously low Net Promoter scores,” with the average score only +10. Smart Planet

Telstra dials Net Promoter

Ask any Australian what they think about Telstra´s customer “service”, and they will give you a list of grievances as long as your arm. And indeed, the last time the telco’s Net Promoter score was measured in 2006, it was a woeful -44.

It may or may not be coincidental that until recently Telstra was very dismissive of Net Promoter, with a spokesperson in 2010 saying “My understanding is that Net Promoter scores are a commercial measurement, and not focused on customer service.” Err, righto.

But times change, and with a new CEO (David Thodey) on board, there has been a renewed focus on the customer. Recent research found customer satisfaction among Telstra mobile customers was stable across 2011, with 65 percent of customers “very satisfied” – still trailing the industry average, but a significant improvement over 2006.

And this week, it was heartening to see Telstra announce it plans to adopt the Net Promoter Score as a gauge of customer satisfaction.

Noted Thodey; “This is a big change for this company – it really means every metric, every part of the company has got to change the way they measure. We want to get to a point where customers are not just satisfied, we want them to become promoters or they recommend Telstra to other people.”

People recommending Telstra for superior customer service – what will they think of next? ITNews CIO

CEOs Talk Earnings, Net Promoter Scores

It’s reporting season, and one thing we have been interested to see is the number of CEOs discussing Net Promoter Scores at their earnings calls.

As we would expect, most CEOs who mentioned Net Promoter (Philips Electronics, Nokia, Genpact, Shutterfly among them) simply talked about their scores in general terms. Virgin Media CEO Neil A. Berkett, went a step further, and talked up the appeal of TiVo via its NPS. “If you’re a TiVo customer, you’re an advocate. TiVo customers have a higher net promoter score than non-TiVo customers, are 20% more likely to be advocates than not,” he said.

But an even more interesting comment came from Sprint Nextel CEO Daniel R. Hesse, who claimed that the company was the only one of the four major US carriers to show improvement sequentially. “And our improvement has been so significant, we have moved up two spots in the major carrier rankings in the past 2 years,” he added.

Why is this noteworthy? Naturally, we like that the CEOs of some of the world’s biggest companies are putting a focus on NPS to help improve life for their customers (and shareholders). But what we particularly like about Sprint Nextel is that rather than simply quoting a figure, by observing it against previous and competitor scores, Daniel Hesse was able to effectively illustrate the company’s momentum in terms of customer service. (Acknowledgments to SeekingAlpha)

Telstra, are you taking note?

Satmetrix unveils social media measurement tool

Long time Net Promoter slide-deckerists Satmetrix have released a new social media measurement tool they call SparkScore. The tool will analyse comments across social networks, reviews, and other platforms before calculating a score for each brand using an NPS-compatible 11-point scale.

There has been some interesting discussion on the new tool by the pundits at Mashable, Econsultancy, and elsewhere. As for us, call us old-fashioned, but we believe most B2B customers don’t really use Twitter or Facebook to badmouth corporate suppliers. Let’s see how this plays out… Mashable, Destination CRM, Econsultancy Press release

Employees – The Forgotten Linchpin of Customer Satisfaction

It probably comes as no surprise to learn that employees want to be valued – but in spite of aiming to provide excellent customer service, too often companies that might otherwise reach greatness lose focus on their employees.

In a keynote speech at the Net Promoter 2.0 Conference last week, Fred Reichheld argued that specifically employees want to be “a valued member that is part of a winning team with an inspiring mission.” In other words, to nurture a culture of volunteers, where every employee is a champion of your brand.

Said Reichheld: “I think the question is how can I help my front line team leaders build better relationships among their team, not just so they can serve customers, but also enrich their lives.” Destination CRM

Rob Markey on Loyalty and Growth

Most businesses aspire to growth, but according to research by Bain & Company, less than 10% achieve profitable, sustainable growth over 10 years. And Net Promoter guru Rob Markey, who spoke on the topic at the Net Promoter conference, noted that these companies tend to be loyalty leaders. The problem with the rest, he said, is that while 80% of execs think they deliver a superior experience, less than 10% of their customers agree.

Rob went on to outline key ways to help leaders understand NPS and discuss different lenses for viewing the metric, but what really sticks out for us is the substantial gap between execs who believe they offer a superior experience, compared to what their customers really think. It seems Anne Bowman was really onto something above when she observed that “in general companies have notoriously low Net Promoter Scores…” Net Promoter

Net Promoter – a measure of happiness, or greatness?

Net Promoter is generally known as a measure of customer loyalty, and a couple of weeks ago we noted that during the process of conceptualizing the metric, Fred Reichheld was tempted to call it a “Net Happiness Score.” In this video, Fred talks with five CEOs who believe Net Promoter does more than provide a customer satisfaction metric – and according to one, “What attracted us to Net Promoter, is we were thinking about how to measure greatness.” Conversation with 5 CEOs

Net Promoter News

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Net Promoter News: Subaru drives most recommendation at 57, KIA coming fast at 18, Detroit’s finest get a flat; Entrasys services 81; V-Rooms nix score, award themselves A+

Subaru in fast lane, KIA revs its NPS engine

Consumer-centric information portal BIGinsight.com has unveiled the results of a January survey of 9,317 consumers in the US that identifies which automotive brands enjoy the highest level of customer advocacy. It found the top five are Subaru, Toyota and Honda, Lexus and Volkswagen, in that order.

Did you notice what’s missing? That’s right – there is no US brand in the top five. BIGinsight notes that though GMC and Ford have improved since 2010, they remain considerably lower than their international counterparts. Is that the distant sound of nails being hammered in to the coffin of the US automotive industry?

Digging a little deeper into the research offers more insights. Among the top five, Volkswagen showed the greatest jump since 2010. Subaru’s NPS has also risen, and Toyota appears to be rebuilding trust following much-publicised recalls from 2009-2011. However, Lexus has stalled.

Last but not least, one automotive brand experienced a jump of 500% in their NPS from 2010 to 2012 – KIA – although not in the top five is coming fast, going from  2.8% in 2010 to 18.1% in 2012. Maybe it’s time to invest in KIA shares…. Full story San Francisco Chronicle

Top 5 Auto Net Promoter Scores (Ranked by JAN 2012 Score)
Subaru 56.8%
Toyota  48.9%
Honda 43.9%
Lexus 43.2%
Volkswagen  40.7%
---------
Detroit (US) Auto makers:
GMC  27.9%
Cadillac 19.8%
Ford  15.7%
Chevrolet  12.3%
Buick  6.2%
Chrysler 0.3%

NPS for Usability

At a time when smartphones, tablets, and assorted tech gadgets are being upgraded almost weekly, usability has become a serious issue for many consumers beyond the bleeding edge of early adopters and tech-minded geeks. With this in mind, the gurus at FastCo Design recently suggested creating a metric for usability based on NPS.

Before we go much further, we firmly believe that NPS works because it is about the entire ownership experience. And would like to point out that if a customer is indeed a advocate of your product, chances are they are already quite comfortable with its usability. By way of evidence, last week we reported on the 10 most advocated brands in the UK. Two of these are from Apple (iPhone and iPod) – a tech brand that is the market leader at creating breakthrough products that are both user-friendly and incorporate cutting-edge technology.

Having said this, columnist and designer Roderick McMullen notes that though companies may believe deeply in the power of usability, most probably aren’t measuring it or making it a key part of their strategy. And that is why he suggests adapting NPS to usability.

After considering carefully the most succinct way to frame a question on usability, he suggests the following: “On a scale of 1-10, How confident are you using this system/product/service?”

And voila, he produces a Net Usability Score! But hey, Roderick, NPS starts at 0, not 1! FastCo Design

Mantra pays off for Enterasys’ NPS

With a mantra of “There is nothing more important than our customers”, one would expect Siemens offshoot Enterasys to have a respectable Net Promoter Score.  And this week, the network infrastructure provider announced it had achieved an NPS of +81, based on input from global customers across a number of industries.

According to customers, key points of differentiation about Enterasys include the following:

• The vast majority of the time the first person to answer the phone is the product expert.
• Product experts are highly experienced – with an average tenure of 13 years.
• Customers benefit from the simplicity of the company’s OneFabric architecture.

We were also particularly interested to note another tidbit of information. In stark contrast to the relentless drive to outsource support to call centres, the company’s support centre is 100% in-house. And this has paid real dividends in terms of customer satisfaction. Noted one client: “Enterasys’ technical support is amazing. Whenever I call for support, I gain fast access to knowledgeable engineers who really care about getting the issue resolved and being thorough about it.”

Service providers, take note! More: Smart Grid

V-Rooms reveals A+ NPS, revenue growth to match

Atlanta-based virtual data room company V-Rooms has announced revenue growth of 38% for 2011, more than double the growth rate of the industry. In a press release, they attribute this growth to their A+ Net Promoter Score, which they call a “world class distinction.”

While we applaud a high Net Promoter Score probably more than the next person, we are a little confused. Although Karen Perkins, President of V-Rooms says “We’ve put our focus on delivering the service, security, and accessibility that our customers want at an affordable price,” we aren’t really sure if the company’s NPS has improved or declined, if their surveys have helped them to change and improve their offering, or who conducted the research. Numbers are good enough for the rest of the NPS world, can you tell us what an “A+” actually is? Source

NPS on a napkin

The beauty of NPS lies in its simplicity, and nothing says simplicity quite like a diagram scribbled on the back of a napkin. David Mitzenmacher, chief customer officer at Volusion, has distilled the essence of NPS onto a napkin and uploaded a scan onto his blog.

In response, NPS guru Rob Markey noted “As the co-author of a 267-page book on the subject, I should probably find this vaguely disturbing. Instead, I’m really impressed. Nice job, Dave!” Net Promoter on a napkin Rob Markey’s response

 

Case Study: The Welcoming Host – How SingleHop Implemented their Net Promoter Score program with CustomerGauge

Some months ago Singlehop, leading US-based hosting company ramped up its customer focus by implementing Net Promoter® Score (NPS) with the help of CustomerGauge.