Net Promoter as a Marketing Tool: Make comments work for you

One of the most rewarding aspects of collecting customer feedback is when you get a positive comment, especially  a glowing unselfish recommendation from a customer that can be passed around the team as sort of virtual “pat on the back”.

“Very easy to use the web site and delivery was extremely quick”

CustomerGauge clients can experience a continuous stream of customer comments, many of which can be published each day to external web sites as testimonials. We show here the latest site to go live with customer comments, Philips Online Store (featured above, also in Dutch, French and other languages). Companies like Philips are surveying hundreds or thousands of transactions each day with CustomerGauge, and depending on their Net Promoter Score are able to use about 15% – 25% of the comments  as positive praise for the service.

“I found the whole purchase and delivery of my iron gratifyingly easy and the product is proving excellent. ”

We offer several ways of showing these comments. The Philips example above is served from an XML feed of comments (available as an API from CustomerGauge) and published with some special code on their site to filter the country and language elements to the relevant pages. Another client uses our RSS feed to publish comments to an intranet site, and also shows the numbers in a dashboard with other key metrics.

CustomerGauge also offers a Testimonial Publisher that allows you to easily publish comments on your site in an i-frame. This is straightforward to implement on any site, with just a line of code. You are able to select which comments you which to use with just one click, and if needed edit the text (for example to hide any personal details).

Whatever way you choose to display positive comments they are likely to make prospective customers feel more confident about buying. A number of comments updated recently is as important as the content. And as with all comments, we recommend you thank customers when they have left you a kind message.

“The whole experience buying was easy & stress free. My headphones arrived swiftly & are comfortable to use. I am a great fan of Philips as I am still using the iron I was given as a wedding present in 1971. It has been in use daily & despite needing a couple of new flexes over the years has never once let me down. Well done Philips!”

More ideas:

• We also can help you Twitter your comments (internally or externally).
• Using comments internally from a post last year (Reasons to be cheerful, part CG).

Details as ever on request.

CustomerGauge XML Comment and Net Promoter Score API

This is v1.0 of our standard CustomerGauge XML comments and Net Promoter® Score API (Application Programming Interface). We have made it as simple to use as possible for widest possible use. See also our other feed documentation on our support page.

Using the XML API

You could use this to:

• display comments on intranet or external sites
• update internal systems and dashboards
• update CRM systems with score and comment using customer number as lookup

Available Fields

We provide in the feed as standard:

• Net Promoter Score (0 – 10)
• Customer Comment
• Translated Comment
• Customer Reference Number
• Various segments (country, store, channel)
• Date of comment/Score
• Product SKU (if available)
• Useful plain-english description of feed source if re-used in other places
• Date of feed
• Link to comment detail page in CustomerGauge

Security

It is available in secure mode (default) or open (no security). We are able to simply configure it depending on frequency of update and security needs.

Standard feed is secured with User Name and Password, using CURL in PHP or similar.

URL example: http://www.c1-gauge.com/sites/RSS/xxxFeedSecure.xml

Username: myfeed

password: mypass

Using the API – PHP example

Example using PHP:

<? PHP

$ch = curl_init();
$user = ‘Acme’;
$password = ‘Acme1FeedExample’;
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, “http://www.c1-gauge.com/sites/RSS/AcmeFeedSecure2.xml”);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, “$user:$password”);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_ANY);
$output = curl_exec($ch);
$info = curl_getinfo($ch);

curl_close($ch);

echo $output;

?>

Once configured, you can test it using a testing page:

Testing page: https://www.cg-express.com/test/CurlPassword.php

API Format:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″ ?>

<channel>
<title>CustomerGauge Comment API</title>
<description>CustomerGauge API</description>
<link>https://www.c1-gauge.com</link>

<item>

<title>10</title>
<link>https://www.c1-gauge.com/sites/categorising.php?RAND=145XXXXXXX/link>
<description>The whole experience buying was easy &amp; stress free.  My headphones arrived swiftly &amp; are comfortable to use.   I am a great fan of Acme as I am still using the iron I was given as a wedding present in 1971.  It has been in use daily &amp; despite needing a couple of new flexes over the years has never once let me down.  Well done Acme!</description>
<translatedComment></translatedComment>
<country>UK</country>
<channel>Public</channel>
<store>Acme Online Shop</store>
<commentDate>2010-08-06 </commentDate>
<pubDate>2010-07-20 17:27:13</pubDate>
<category>AcmeSHS390/10;</category>
<source>Testimony for customer ID 145XXXXXXX from Acme Online Shop, powered by CustomerGauge</source>
<guid>https://www.c1-gauge.com/sites/categorising.php?RAND=145XXXXXXX</guid>

</item>

…etc

Please contact us for details on help with setting it up and configuring.

Net Promoter News: No alarm for SF Fire at 79, Ambassador spoils us at 70, Bank Montreal trouve 39. Steamboat chairlifts 82

Net Promoter News 9 June 2010

San Francisco Fire Credit Union hits 79

Grow your Net Promoter Score, reports the CreditUnions.com,  and see an increase in new business. According to the informative article “The Successful Near $0 External Marketing Budget” San Francisco Fire have have tracked Net Promoter Score since 2004, and now bases all staff incentives on the score. With “…focus on the member [the SF Fire] creates word of mouth,” says CEO Diana Dykstra. A useful table shows the link between rising Net Promoter Score and gross new member growth. In 2009, NPS climbed to 79, with new members rising to 14%. And with not a dime unwisely spent on marketing.

Wall Street News – NPS in the K10s

Ambassadors Group (NASDAQ: EPAX) Q1 2010 Earnings Call

Peg Thomas, President of student-tripster Ambassadors Group confirmed on the Q1 2010 call “our Net Promoter scores today are at 70%, in comparison to a score of 62% at the end of 2009. Source: Seeking Alpha

Intuit (INTU) Q3 2010 Earnings Call May 20, 2010

Bookkeeping softer Intuit won’t go into NPS details, but on the Q3-2010 earnings call Brad Smith, CEO shows confidence that analysts know about NPS:  “…continued improvement in our product and our continued execution in terms of our online marketing capabilities are showing up in terms of improved net promoter scores. And as you know, net promoter scores are a pretty good indication of which way retention is going to go.” CFO Williams added “Revenue per customer exceeded last year’s level, driven by fewer promotional discounts on QuickBooks and a better product experience as indicated by improved net promoter scores.” SeekingAlpha

SAVVIS (SVVS) – Q1 2010 Earnings Call

CEO James Ousley of server polishers Savvis pulls out NPS (but no numbers): “we continue to see the results of our efforts in client care outreach. This is reflected in our improving Net Promoter Score rankings.” Freiberg adds “[With Net Promoter] you’re reducing your churn, you’re increasing the stickiness of what you have and the ability to put more than one product into a customer, really for us, drives better margins because a lot of the value-added services may not necessarily take additional square-feet space in a data center.” SeekingAlpha

Franklin Covey, Co. (FC) F2Q10 Earnings Call

Robert Whitman of trainola Franklin Covey was proud of “very high net promoter score from our customers in the customer loyalty practice” (although that is the one place you would expect to find a high NPS – Ed). SeekingAlpha

BMO Financial Group / Bank of Montreal Q2 2010

Reported in the Canadian BMO FinGroup earnings press release: “Our continued focus on the customer experience is reflected in our high loyalty scores. Our retail net promoter score was 39 for the second quarter of 2010, compared with 40 in the first quarter. Our retail net promoter score remains very strong compared to the scores of our major competitors.” MarketWire

Net Promoter in the News

QVC with NPS Asker

Gina Deeble from UK home shoppery QVC discussed NPS at Gartner CRM Summit UK stating “75 percent of QVC’s customers would recommend” with around 100,000 reviews a year.  Using NPS and reviews  helped QVC find issues they would not have known about – product examples include an ice cream maker that initially sold well,  but, in fact, the product was so bad “it was hurting QVC’s brand reputation,” so quickly discontinued selling the product, and canceled future orders. Some good tips on how QVC communicated to customers, and worth registering to read. 1to1Media

In brief

Thank you Quantix, a UK based server polisher for telling us you “have been given” Net Promoter of 34″ which is “miles ahead of industry standards”. Congratulations, but some more detail would have been helpful. Self Puff, RemedialMathPR

SatMetrix phones it in with Hoffman: From Tom Hoffman’s blog – Deborah Eastman, Chief Marketing Officer at Satmetrix, discusses how NPS has evolved and how companies are applying it to improve the customer experience (podcast) – 1to1media

IMD, leading executive teachery and MBAmonger adopts NPS: Jim Pulcrano, IMD executive director says “We still need to make more effort in our post-programme work with participants and companies, [...] and [with] all of our improvements efforts, I believe our efforts with NPS (Net Promoter Scores) will help us immensely.” GenevaLunch

Fast Company: NPS is a silver bullet: “There’s really only one way–to get as close to the paying customer as humanly possible. If there’s a silver bullet, it’s the Net Promoter Score–a research metric, but a breathtakingly intuitive one.” FastCompany

NPS helps career prospects: Seen on the job boards – Better World Books, the “online bookstore with a soul,” is seeking a Chief Operating Officer to help us change the world through a new form of capitalism focused on people, planet and profit. [...] Actual experience of driving and implementing a NPS (Net Promoter Score) culture a real plus.” Send in your CVs here.

Steamboat Ski area surveyed 3,000 skiers to gauge net promoter score of 82 percent. The spokesmen said Steamboat had a Net Promoter score of 80 percent in 2008-09 and 79 percent in 2007-08. Source: SteamboatPilot

And finally, Portland Development Corporation undertook a Net Promoter asker among the city’s tech community, which prompted the headline of the year: “PDC survey suggests software developers like Portland, but there’s room for improvement”. But not all the askees were happy, not least with the methodology: “they asked multiple choice questions which potentially had answers other than the options presented on the list, which caused me to answer questions in a false manner” complained one. The PDC boss summed up the result rather glumly: “We may have to take a bit more of a hands-off approach”. OregonLive

Net Promoter News: Centrica +3, 10Ks from eBay, Nokia, HomeDepot – plus FaceBook stuff, Sony NPS-Man, Kamp skore

Net Promoter News 3 June 2010

Centrica supply Net Promoter Dashboard

Centrica (the Company Formerly Known as British Gas) come with plenty of customer experience baggage. To their great credit, they are reporting their Net Promoter progress by publishing on their site a chart and downloadable numbers. They also list goals: “British Gas’ NPS at the end of 2009 was -2, placing us equal first in the league table of major UK energy providers with three other suppliers. Our target for 2010 will be to increase this score to +3.” An example of transparency that we look forward to seeing more of. Source

Zuckerberg: Privacy down, NPS up!

Facebook’s privacy controls have been heavily criticized recently, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg is confident users care less about sharing data, more about possible subscription fees. And he knows this because he tracks what he calls “a special metric”, which most others call Net Promoter Score. “We’ve seen no meaningful change on the stats on any of that stuff,” which is how he refers to people quitting the ‘Book.

“Whenever we make a change, the net promoter score always goes down. But it will usually recover to a higher place than it was at before,” he continued. “So when we started rolling out these changes after f8, our net promoter score went down. And we thought it was because of the privacy issues. But what we found was that it actually went down because we made changes to our news feed…” Interesting reveal there – we would dearly like to see some more stats on how they are surveying people. And whether they gave permission. Maybe its not just hubris though, as yesterdays “Quit Facebook Day” apparently was a flop, and did not result in a significant amount of “that stuff”. VentureBeat and Forbes

Sony’s NPS-Man

At a recent conference, Sony Canada opened up about their Net Promoter journey. Excellent tips from Wayne Ground, CIO of the Canadian division, explaining how it was not initially driven by executives, but after getting daily reports, the president was quickly on board. Customers are invited to complete online surveys on call center interactions, website visits and retail store visits. They have sent more than 100,000 surveys with a response rate of 23%.

All detractors gets a follow-up contact from customer support. Promoters also receive a follow-up — a coupon for future Sony Canada purchases. The promoters who receive coupons tend to use them, and sales transactions with those customers are 40% higher than the average purchase.

Additionally, the company started to capture email addresses at the in-store locations. Once in-store managers and sales reps realized they were being evaluated, they caught on to the program pretty quickly, Ground said. The follow-up contacts have really made a difference: “When we phone back the day after they send in a survey, customers are blown away,” Ground said. “They can’t believe someone actually read it.” Source: – SearchCRM.com

Sage grows Net Promoter

Sue Swenson – CEO of Sage North America opened Sage Insights ‘10, and revealed how it is “Maximizing existing assets“. Sage has climbed 10 points in its Net Promoter score, which quantifies customers’ “willingness to recommend to others.” It’s also boosted renewal rates from 90 percent up to 97 percent. Customer value comes from not just product functionality, EVP marketer Palsule said, it comes from how easy Sage is to do business with. Source DestinationCRM

Phones 4U Pay on NPS. Probably.

Mobile News reports on the fiendishly complex compensation scheme from High Street SIMmery Phones 4U. The scheme has so many “ifs” and “buts” it takes four paragraphs to summarise. NPS excerpt: “Phones 4U sales consultants will now have their full commission entitlement paid out if the store hits a Net Promoter Score of 37.5. Previously, stores had to achieve a score of 35 for consultants to receive full commission.” Mobile News

Temkin on Take-Up.

Bruce Temkin of Temkin Group blogs about how executives are using NPS: 400 people took their recent survey. Key numbers: 43% are using Net Promoter Score (NPS), and 65% of those people think that it has had a positive impact on their company. Temkin

Wall Street News – Our regular review of the 10-Ks

eBay Inc. (EBAY) – Q1 2010 Earnings Call

Chief Online Gavel Swinger John J. Donahoe called out how eBay is “…becoming a more customer focused company. We are driving improvements to our user experience and we are measuring our success with three customer oriented metrics; net promoter score, velocity and market share. I have tied a portion of our leadership compensation to customer satisfaction.” SeekingAlpha

But the public knew this already, as eBay’s top goals for 2010 were revealed in a tweet by their corporate blogger, Richard Brewer Hay. Having seen a poster in a stair well in San Jose he posted an image of it on yfrog. The goals include 1) Increase eBay’s Net Promoter score by 10 percentage points. Source Tamebay

Nokia Corporation (NOK) – Q1 2010 Earnings Call

Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo talked NPS on the call, referring to C3 with Ovi Mail: “Since January there have been 10 million downloads [...] Consumer engagement is very high. In addition, feedback on the user experience has been very good with a double-digit positive net promoter score since we launched.” SeekingAlpha

In contrast Parks Associates research of the basic phone market called out some bad news for Nokia. Their Consumer Decision Process research of CE product buyers showed Nokia, once the unequaled leader of the U.S. mobile phone market, last year fell to the bottom of the list of brands of basic mobile phones that people would recommend, as measured by Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Basic Cell Phones by Brand, Q3 2009:

• Samsung 32%
• Motorola 26%
• Basic Cell Phones 21%
• LG 18%
• Nokia 7%

Parks Associates

The Home Depot, Inc. (HD) Q1-2010 Earnings Call

Frank Blake, boss of DIY shedder Home Depot explained on Q1-2010 call called out customer service as key to success: “Last year, […] we re-trained every associate in the company on our customer service expectations. […] We’ve seen consistent improvement in our net promoter score […] in the first quarter, 600 basis points over last year, even as our transactions increased 4.2%.”

Analyst William Truelove from UBS is one of the few bankers we have seen ask about customer service (so for that he gets our “Analyst of the Week” prize) and quizzed EVP Ellison further “…Did you have any kind of service metrics from the customers?”. Marvin Ellison shoots back “Frank talked about the net promoter score […] We get roughly 100,000 customer surveys per week that we look at […] trying to make sure that we have incremental improvement week over week, month over month.” SeekingAlpha

From another source we learn that Home Depot net promoter score (a score measuring customer loyalty) is almost 70%, an improvement of 800bps in the past year, (Shareholder Meeting 20 May 2010)

Hertz Global Holdings, Inc. (HTZ) – Q1 2010 Earnings Call

Mark Frissora, Hertz CEO called an increase of nearly 8 points in NPS “Our net promoter score rose 790 basis points in the US or 18%, reflecting the appeal of a newer fleet and the addition of popular new car classes.” We estimated Hertz NPS at around mid 50s last year (http://customergauge.com/2009/02/net-promoter-news-hertz-drives-26-in-europe/) so that may put them in the 60s – firmly in the Cadillac class. SeekingAlpha

Other news:

BMW forecourter up 66%

UK BMW seller Vines reports a 66% year-on-year increase in its Net Promoter Score results, as computed by Mondial. Vines BMW (or Mondial) say they have gained insight into its customer satisfaction levels, and using this to predict future business growth. Note of caution: the math is provided by a PR company, and based on that, it’s unclear if that’s and impressive 66 NPS points up (impressive only because it must have been a low base) or a 66% increase, i.e. 10 to 16, (equally non-impressive). Still, they pepper the text with superlatives, “massive” and “huge” so that must be good then. Source

Kampground Skore

The fantastically named RV Daily Report tells us that Kampgrounds of America has added yet another guest feedback service for its franchise owners to help them improve service and drive camper nights through increased referrals, based on Net Promoter Score. KOA’s new on-line camper feedback survey offer KOA owners near-instant feedback from their guests following their stays – so far 9,200 surveys have been completed by the campers. RV Daily Report

Worms turn election strategy, also business?

In a few hours, the United Kingdom will vote in the most closely fought election in years. The most memorable moments have been due to the introduction of the TV debates, and the now famous “worms” that accompanied the first one. Pundits delighted in showing how the audience reacted to favourably to Nick Clegg. After the debate, it became clear that the two main parties adapted their communication strategies based on the wavering red, blue and yellow lines on the screen.

In fact this continuous audience monitoring is not new.  Back in 1946, TIME magazine reported that the Gallup Handheld Hopkins Televoting device was wowing movie moguls in Hollywood (we wrote about it here). A handheld device allowed cinema-goers at preview screening to dial “like very much” or “very dull”, which drew a red line on a chart as a staffer noted key scenes in the movie. Most films were not significantly altered but the reaction made a difference to the way they were marketed  (sounds like the politicians have been doing the same).

Dial M for Measurement

Customer feedback has also been used in business for years. Waiters have always asked diners what they thought of service. Unfortunately, “And how was the meal, sir?” is  just not a very scientific way of collecting feedback. Firstly, waiters can be quite intimidating, and secondly, you have a unreliable way of getting feedback to the proprietor. Like a turkey voting for Christmas, the server is hardly likely to admit “Customer says service was awful…”.

To make feedback more scientific, companies have invested in consumer research – but it’s expensive and can take time to process. Lack of common standards mean that one company’s results are hard to compare to another. And small sample sizes (like in the TV Worm example) can result in error. Finally, customer feedback can end up in the “Market Research ghetto” – giving useful strategic information, but rarely used to solve operational customer issues.

Last weeks Economist magazine had an article on firms focusing on customers: “...shareholder value should give way to ‘customer-driven capitalism’ in which firms ’should instead aim to maximise customer satisfaction’. [...] Paul Polman [boss of Unilever] said ‘I do not work for the shareholder, to be honest I work for the consumer, the customer’…“. It is clearly becoming a boardroom priority – so how can business better tune into customer needs?

Many companies, including Philips, Vodafone, Canon and Electrolux have found the most effective method is real-time customer feedback through direct sales. Using a tool from CustomerGauge, these companies invite their online store to answer a one-page survey after each transaction, which asks for  feedback and a 0 – 10 recommendation rating. They have standardised on the Net Promoter (R) methodology, which is simple to communicate to front-line staff, and allows benchmarking against other companies. Between 10% and 30% of all customers respond, many with comments that are used to shape the business.

In doing so, they are getting real-time feedback with a numeric score they can systematically graph and track (like the worm) and written customer feedback they can match to that customers history. Recently, one of these companies responded to customer comments by changing packaging on products and printing manuals in larger type which had a positive effect on their Net Promoter Score. Another succesfully re-launched an almost forgotten product that was highly rated by customers, who were acting as evangelists and introducing friends. A recent CustomerGauge innovation is digital signage to show comments coming into the business as they happen.

These companies have already found best practices which include

• responding to customer feedback within 24 hours (even the most unhappy clients respond positively to this)
• routing comments to department managers (and more junior staff members who are empowered to solve problems)
• and weekly review meetings where projects are reviewed a prioritised on the basis of customer sentiment.

The good news for customers is that real-time sampling of transactions like this is becoming more widespread, and businesses are waking up to its potential. Executives know customers can “sack” them and defect to the competition immediately. That is unlike the winning party on Thursday, which might be able to last around four years before being subjected again to the worm of customer opinion.

Net Promoter News: Labor Finders work 63, JUNK clears 80, Schwab long on 46, NPS Comes out of Closet at 80

News that the  world of market research seems to be coming to its senses. This item caught our attention:  Not Part of the Future: Long Surveys. Money quote: “One current element of market research that is not probable or preferred is the LONG survey.” (source). Another from the superbly named Bad Research; No Biscuit asked “What in the world can you learn from a sixty minute survey that you can’t learn from a 5-minute one?” (Just Say No Already).  Finally in this group: “Customer Sat. studies used to be overtly long and terrifying – until Bain, McKinsey and BCG told all the CEO’s of the world that the only thing they should care about is the single question on “How likely are you to recommend?”” (source).

Our stand on this: The survey of the future will be a Net Promoter survey and like have Two Questions, tops. Oh wait – the future is here today! Best example: “pure Net Promoter implementation: two questions using simple, clean interface and minimal hassle for the customer!” Source: Vivmag, Survey hall of fame and shame)

Satmetrix publishes Net Promoter Leaders

Satmetrix released 2010 Net Promoter Industry Benchmarks for the insurance, financial services, airlines, telecommunications, technology, retail and online services industries. Some highlights: USAA 81, Apple 78, Amazon.com 71, Trader Joe’s 68, Wegmans 67, Costco 66, eBay 65, Facebook 65, Jet Blue 64, Google 63. Other notables: Insurance: Geico 41. Health insurance: Cigna -28.

Retail drill down: Amazon’s score drooped from 74% to 71%, eBay improved from 61% to 65% and Barnes & Noble pushed from 58% to 59%.  eBay and Amazon had just 5% of their customers categorized as detractors. Among multichannel retailers, both Best Buy Co. Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s online stores had higher NPS scores than the bricks-and-mortar stores with scores of 45% and 46%, respectively, compared to in-store scores of 29% and 41%. Conversely, Target Corp.’s in-store score was 52%, compared to its online score of 44%. Widely covered here (RW), here (own) and here (IR)

Company Results

Labor Finders at 63.

200 branches Labor Finders International, largest privately held industrial labor staffer in US beat all-comers in Inavero/CareerBuilder Best of Staffing 2010 NPS smackdown. Inavero claim staffing industry averages Net Promoter score of 40%. Labor Finders clocked in a score of 63%. Source – self puff

PrintAudit impress at 76.

The Canadian print management outfit PrintAudit self-scores NPS 76. Run o’the mill self puff with zero details on methods, but a quite impressive page with 250 testimonials on (some looked like they might have been politely persuaded. No matter, still some achievement).  Source: Horse’s mouth.

Any Old Iron?

Brian Scudamore’s 1-800-GOT-JUNK junk removal business with 250 franchises is a word-of-mouth driven business. He explains NPS-led philosophy and posts a score of 80. Company drills down NPS to franchise, even to the truck level. Source

Schwab brokers 46

Charles Schwab go long on NPS with a new high of 46, leading the Brokerage and Investment sector. Source

Fight! PEER1 vs Allcomers

Hoster PEER1 says its NPS is 36, trouncing the rest of the IT services industry’s lowly 7. In a confrontational statement MD Dominic Monkhouse calls out his rivals: “To improve transparency over service quality PEER 1 Hosting believes all serious hosting service providers should measure and publish their Net Promoter Score“. No mention of sample size or details, natch, but we like the way this one is going. source

Out of the Closet at 80

Wardrobe-sters California Closets (New England Franchise) have been measuring their Net Promoter Score. Striving to make a difference in their customers homes and lives, they have found a convenient tie rack to tidily hang their NPS of 79.9. Source: CupboardLove

ABB Engineers Customer Experience via NPS

Bill Black, Group Senior Qual and Ops Excellence Veep at ABB yaks about customer confidence best practices for maintaining and improving customer confidence in a podcast, highlighting how they use Net Promoter Score as a key customer sat. measure. Advice on external/internal satisfaction, plus how to turn around a drop in confidence.  Source

Award for best use of decimal points in an NPS Press Release

Ski Butlers (seen around this parish before) got a new NPS score. 86.39 percent. Loving the precision! Source: BadMathbyPRpeople

And finally… Zappos sues Disney

We racked our brains for another suitable April Fool on Net Promoter but struck out this year due to lack of creativity.  But I was taken in for a few seconds by the “Zappos Sues Disney” article. The meat:  “Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, says it’s just one battle in his efforts to prevent companies from making misleading claims. The lawsuit alleges that Disneyland’s tagline of being “The Happiest Place on Earth” is “clearly false, deceptive, and confusing to the marketplace”,and cites internal Net Promoter Score (NPS) metrics that suggest that the designation should be given to Zappos.com, Inc“. ‘Nuff respec for this prank, Hsieh, but we’ll beat you next April 1!

CustomerGauge RSS Comment Feed

We provide several ways to take data out of CustomerGauge and display in Real-Time.

• RSS XML feed (described below)
• Twitter Feed
• XML API (documentation coming soon)
• Real Time Display board in browser

RSS XML Feed

The RSS feed is ideal for a simple feed of customer comments for a testimonial feed, external website or intranet application. In this format only comment, score and date is given, so it can be reasonably widely published. No customer attributable data is published (unless revealed in comment box).

For more flexible feeds we recommend our XML API feed (documentation available soon).

Configuration

The RSS feed file is generated each hour. It always shows 10 comments (the last 10 comments left, sorted by most recent). The number of comments can be adjusted on request.

Feed shows NPS Score, Comment, Date Comment Left

NPS score: <title>10</title>
Comment: <description>Great service. Thanks</description>
Date comment left: <pubDate>2010-04-13 08:04:26</pubDate>

Security

Standard feed is secured with User Name and Password. You can put in a user name/password on most readers. For automated applications (intranet feeds etc) you would use CURL at your feed reader to access.

URL example: http://www.c1-gauge.com/sites/RSS/xxxFeedSecure.xml

Username: myfeed

password: mypass

Example Feed

<rss version=”2.0″>

<channel>

<title>CustomerGauge Comment Feed</title>

<description>Intranet Comment Feed</description>

<link>https://www.cg-express.com</link>

<item>

<title>10</title>

<link>https://www.cg-express.com/sites/categorising.php?RAND=xxxxxxx</link>

<description>Great service. Thanks</description>

<pubDate>2010-04-13 08:04:26</pubDate>

<category>VODASIMO;66300</category>

<source>Comment for customer ID xxxx from xxxxxxxxx Online Shop, powered by CustomerGauge</source>

<guid>https://www.cg-express.com/sites/categorising.php?RAND=xxxxxxx</guid>

</item>

Please send comments to API@directness.net

Real Time Customer Feedback Done Right

Net Promoter Score, Verbatim Comments on a Digital Sign.

Inspired by the “crawler” (or news ticker) on SkyNews and CNN, or maybe by the “Calls Holding” message boards in call centres, we proudly present the new CustomerGauge Real Time Feedback Screen. It’s designed as a digital sign (a new buzz word that as far as we can tell means “giant plasma display” and a spare PC running Firefox or Safari). Ideal for placing in your marketing department, lobby, canteen or even boardroom.

We pack a lot of information on this screen. As a CustomerGauge client, you can survey your customers continually. As comments and scores come in they are displayed in the upper part, on a sliding carousel of the most recent comments. All the relevant transaction information is shown next to the comment.

In the “lower third” we show the Net Promoter Score® for the current week, past week, month and year to date, plus sending stats and other useful information.

It is the latest iteration of our display board, and is designed to:

• understand the “zeitgeist” by reading customer voice in real-time
• help react immediately to customer comments
• motivate staff

For CustomerGauge b2c clients, it’s a simple low cost add-on. Let us know if we can show you more.

NB: Can’t see the Flash image above? View it on YouTube.

Silent Running: Automatically looking after your best e-commerce customers

There is a moving final scene in the 1971 film Silent Running. Bruce Dern sets his robot adrift in a spacecraft to tend the last remaining plant specimens from Earth. Although it’s 40 years old, this image of a machine trusted to look after living organisms inspired recent films like WALL*E, and was perhaps a foretaste of our current age with machines looking after our health, even agricultural robots starting to grow our food.

Not so much of a stretch then to imagine a system that could look after your customers?

It’s a theme we have been developing – we recently wrote about a Simple Customer Rescue and Reward Plan and followed it with a webinar “The Loyalty Robot”: Learn how to increase customer loyalty and grow online sales automatically.

We wanted to share our current thinking on how you can build “robotic” systems to enhance the e-commerce customer experience. The key elements:

• • automated customer surveys to understand voice-of-customer and Net Promoter® Score in real-time
  • automated customer segmentation by lifetime value
  • automated customer segmentation by loyalty (using Net Promoter Score)
  • process to help customers needing immediate response
  • clustering customer issues together for longer-term strategic fix
  • close-loop monitoring of results (Net Promoter Score and other metrics)
  • Responding to customers with updates on your actions

You could roll-your-own solution, but we believe CustomerGauge has all the parts you need to start this now – and we have proof points from our major e-commerce clients including Canon, Philips and Vodafone.

It’s all in a presentation you can download here: Building your own e-commerce Loyalty Robot (PDF, 8Mb) – or you can watch/listen to the archived webinar here.

When you are ready to add some “Silent Running” on your e-commerce site, we would be delighted to help you.

A Simple Customer Rescue and Reward Plan

We’d like to share a short 6-step plan for customer retention, based on some years working in e-commerce. We’re going to find some key customers that you can rescue, and others that you can reward. Then help you reach them and increase sales.

Step 1. Segment your customer base. Rank your customers by amount of spend, then make the cut at a suitable point – somewhere like 10 – 20% of your total customers.  You’ll probably be aware of the 80-20 rule (sometimes named the Pareto rule) which helps explain how a small number of customers are responsible for much of the sales (20% customers drive 80% sales). In the case of e-commerce, it’s often more extreme. We found on some sites that around 10% of the customer base brought in 50% of the revenue (and even more profit if you take into account acquisition costs). When you do the analysis, you may find it’s just a few hundred customers who make a sizable contribution.

Step 2. Identify your loyal customers. Survey your customers using the Net Promoter® Score question. You can find out how to do it in our 2-minute guide to the Net Promoter Score.   Ask “Would you recommend us to a friend of colleague?”, with a 0 – 10 scale. Use the results to understand who in your customer base are “promoters” or “detractors”. You may get up to 30% of your customers responding, so this is a very good way of dividing up the base. Don’t forget to ask for customer comments.

Step 3.  Draw up the matrix. See the chart above. On one axis, plot customer spend (or value). On the other, loyalty. In the top boxes you should have a manageable number of customers who represent a sizable portion of business, divided into those who would recommend you (promoters) and those who would not recommend you (detractors).

Step 4. “Customer Rescue”: Find the customers who are most at risk from defecting: High value customers that scored low ratings. If you do nothing, you risk losing repeat sales, or lose them to a competitor. At worst, they may warn their friends from buying from you. By reading their comments you can understand what the issues are. Don’t waste time – divide up the numbers and get your team on the phone to them within 24 hours of harvesting their comments. Failing that, personal emails will do. Acknowledge any problems, apologise if needed, and ask what it will take to put it right. Often, customers will make allowances for errors – and if you can surprise them by over-delivering on a fix, you may even turn them into evangelists.

Step 5. “Customer Reward”: Identify the high spenders who rate you highly. These are customers who are likely to make a repeat purchase, and with luck, bring you new customers. So give them the tools to do so. In the excellent book  Creating Customer Evangelists (Huba/McConnell) you can get some good ideas on how to turn customers into referral machines – offer new product information, ask for product feedback, give small gifts. Surprisingly, there are more effective actions than  financial incentives.

Step 6. Automate and track the progress. This retention model is not a one-off task – the successful companies bake these process steps into their sales DNA, and monitor which actions are most successful, while reducing the number of detractors. Keeping a customer is far cheaper than finding a new one.

Do the hard work, easily

Yes, you can do all the above steps using manual analysis. You can do it for next to nothing with low cost survey tools, if you have spreadsheet skills and plenty of time.

However, there is an easier way: CustomerGauge automates all the steps for you: segmenting, surveying, reporting, closing the loop. By integrating with e-commerce systems, CustomerGauge can survey every transaction with the Net Promoter Score question, and can often reach 30% response. Thanks to special reporting, the system automatically ranks customers (and repeat orders) by value, showing results in real-time, and providing call- and email-lists for actions. CustomerGauge even tracks open customer issues with internal workflow, and reports on returning customers.

Now all you have to do is come up with some creative ways of keeping your best customers recommending you to others!

Learn for free

Our upcoming webinar  “Learn how to increase customer loyalty and grow online sales automatically” on 10 Feb 2010 has additional resources on how to keep customers. Details/sign-up here.

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