CustomerGauge Case Study - nib health funds: Checking Up On Customer Loyalty

This case study describes why  nib chose Net Promoter, how they started surveying, and where the current partnership with Genroe and CustomerGauge has taken them.

Though the company chose Net Promoter for a number of reasons, the single most important factor was its ability to help the company see itself from the individual customer’s point of view. The decision to partner with Genroe and CustomerGauge brought with it a number of investment benefits that offset
some of the external costs and also provided new tools and insights to improve customer service more effectively.

May 02, Amsterdam: CustomerGauge, a software company that brings Net Promoter® Score and customer feedback into the heart of businesses, has announced the release of CustomerGauge Everywhere – a revolutionary upgrade to the CustomerGauge platform.

The key innovation of CustomerGauge Everywhere is that it gives organisations open rolling access to customer feedback and Net Promoter® Scores to anyone in the organisation in real time, via an intuitive, user-friendly homepage that features a Twitter-like news feed of customer feedback. The page can be viewed across desktop or  iOS and Android  mobile devices.

By placing customer service at the heart of the organisation, CustomerGauge Everywhere will empower staff across organisations to solve customer service issues fast – regardless of whether they are dedicated customer service professionals or involved in other areas of the business. This innovation has significant potential to improve the customer experience and lower costs in marketing, sales and related areas.

“In the past, the big problem with customer feedback, even structured, proactively collected feedback, is that only a few people in any given organisation generally had access to this goldmine of data,” said Adam Dorrell, CEO, CustomerGauge. “But CustomerGauge Everywhere has changed that forever. We believe this could be as much of a change agent to enterprises as Facebook and LinkedIn have been to personal and business relationships.”

In addition to real time access to customer feedback and Net Promoter Scores, CustomerGauge Everywhere was created with a new architecture for delivering super-fast performance (one million records graphed in one second) and is available in English, German and Italian, with other languages soon to follow.  There are also a number of new options to drill into the data with advanced filters and date functions, and for the first time targets can be easily set and distributed by administration users. Other distribution options include real-time digital signage and integrations using the CustomerGauge API to any other system including Sharepoint or Salesforce.com.

For further details and a demonstration on CustomerGauge Everywhere, please see this short  webinar (15 mins).

About CustomerGauge

CustomerGauge is a cloud-based software solution from Amsterdam-based Directness BV, a fast-growing privately held software company founded in 2007.  CustomerGauge is designed to be the most comprehensive and cost-effective platform for enterprises to measure Net Promoter Score (NPS) and show ROI from marketing investments. The software platform has won clients all around the world, with global clients including Philips,  Electrolux, Vodafone,, and Tommy Hilfiger

Contact: adam.dorrell@cdirectness,net

Details

Language options: English, German, Italian plus more to come

In summary, CustomerGauge now has a UNIQUE ability to capture feedback and share with entire organisation EVERYWHERE, with no cost or performance penalty.

To learn more about the platform now, view the archived webinar (15 mins). Or request information and a demo – use our contact form

CustomerGauge input formats

To paraphrase Mr Jay-Z: “I have encountered nearly 100 difficulties, but loading my data into CustomerGauge cannot be counted among them”. We can help you get your data in shape to measure Net Promoter.

We offer multiple ways you can format the data – starting from a simple spreadsheet to a complex XML feed.

We can take in the data in a variety of ways – from emailing it to us (fine for a small project), loading directly into CustomerGauge, or a full integration using our API.

Details are here, now conveniently in our support section.

API v1.1.7 – now with Workflow

We just updated our API documentation to include methods of extending our firefighting workflow system. This makes our workflow tool very powerful – it allows you to pull out the status of workflow (open/closed/in-progress, plus all the notes and date information), and also to remotely update the workflow.

So if you are using an external issue tracking system like Remedy or RightNow; or CRM system like Salesforce you can do a very neat tie-up with CustomerGauge.

An example might be a transaction-triggered survey in CustomerGauge, then using Remedy to solve the customer issue. All the analytics and reporting are in CustomerGauge, problem is solved in Remedy. Alternatively CustomerGauge can serve as the Net Promoter measurement tool for your helpdesk.

This API can bring Net Promoter measurement into all of your forward facing customer systems – API 1.7.1 details here.

"Monday Monday - can't help that day..." This client clearly shows Monday is a bad day.

Rainy Days and Mondays

Was it true? We at CustomerGauge decided to take this as an Easter challenge. We fired up our data extraction systems, and over a coffee-and-chocolate fuelled data-binge we cranked the numbers of ten CustomerGauge clients. Using nearly a quarter of a million data points we arranged the results by the Day of the Week of Survey Completion. Our aim: to see if we could spot any patterns to support the premise that Net Promoter® scores would be lower on a Monday because people feel gloomier.

Our first dataset looked promising, and surprised us. The data immediately showed that Mondays were in  fact the lowest scoring day, some 5 NPS points below the client average. You can see this in the Client 7 graph above – we show the difference from the client’s overall Net Promoter Score, and the total number of points in “Resp” (Resp = response). In this case, Monday is 4.6 NPS points below the average. (so if the overall NPS was +15.6, the Monday score was NPS +11).

Happy Mondays. Saturday Night Fever.

Then our next dataset stumped us. Client 2 showed a 6 point increase on surveys completed on a Monday. If anything, Saturday was the worst day for Net Promoter.

TGI Thursday.

We pressed on. The next dataset showed that Client 10′s customer base favoured Thursdays, but hated Tuesdays. And Sundays. Hmmm.

Uh-oh. Wednesdays, no, Tuesdays child is full of woe.

Client 1′s data told a similar story on Blue Tuesday, but had a brighter Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

I do like Mondays. And can't wait for that Friday Feeling

Here’s another example where Mondays are favoured over other week days, according to Client 5 and their 64,000 data points.

All Clients. 244,000 data points. Not so much variation over the week.

Overall, what does the data tell us? As we expected, over all the data points, there is not a significant score difference depending on which day of the week you fill a survey in. The difference is within a range of 1 – 2%, which can be put down to some variability in the data.  In short, we don’t support Mr D’Arcy’s claim that there is a “Blue Monday” effect, although his hypothesis is interesting.

But there are some patterns that intrigued us. Rather than a day of the week skew,  we believe the numbers could be explained by variability in service on certain weekdays. These may warrant closer inspection by our clients. Some notes we made:

• We did notice that for one b2b client, surveys completed at the weekend were very negative. Maybe due to system errors happening on a weekend with no-one to fix them?
• Several of these clients listed have a survey sent after a fixed number of days after a transaction – for example 14 days. So the NPS results might refer more to service issue patterns on the weekday itself. For example, weekend parcel deliveries might be less reliable than a weekday delivery.
• It could be that customer service workers are more on the ball on say, Thursdays, rather than Mondays, so the effect is more on the delivery side than the customer perception.
• One bright spark in our office suggested that this data be used to fine-tune which workday to send a survey, if a client wanted to show a higher Net Promoter Score. We quickly squashed that idea. NPS should be all about consistency – in which case it does not matter, as long as you keep repeating the same environment. In any case, instinctively we feel that it should not make a difference.

A Day in the Life

For CustomerGauge clients: we are happy to share the details of this exercise, and if demand is high enough we will create a special report to help understand Net Promoter by day of the week (sent, completed, or transaction date). Give us your feedback.

Please also use the comments to discuss your thoughts – did we miss anything? What other information would you like to see? Should we call the Mythbusters?

Information for fact-fans: Data points taken over last 12 months. More than 300 responses in each weekday bucket, with most more than 1000 data points. NPS based on standard 0 – 10 scale. Client NPS results: Min 5.6, Max 67, Average 28.4, Median 18.5, all based on continuous 7 day surveying.

Useful references: Data Dredging, Calendar Effects. See also our NPS article: “Is there a Dutch Effect?” – dealing with cultural bias

Melitta: Brewing a First-Class Blend of Coffee and Customer Service

This case study describes how their Net Promoter project was implemented for their customer relationships and customer service systems together with CustomerGauge partner in Germany J/S/W Consulting.

Highlight of the system is the automated link from the call center to the CustomerGauge system via the API (CustomerGauge Application Programming Interface). Within moments a survey is sent out to the customer, resulting in a 60% response rate.

The system has already started to make an impact. Prior to the rollout, Melitta was confident that customers had a strong emotional bond with the brand and products. But the survey result surpassed all expectations, with initial scores above NPS +50 to back up the very high response rate.

Commented Consumer Service Coordinator Christoph Sundermeier: “It’s relatively easy to nurture relationships with customers to the point where they are satisfied with your service, but it’s another thing entirely to nurture relationships to the point where customers become active promoters, so we are exceptionally pleased with the initial results.”

As coffee lovers, we are delighted to have a client with excellent customer service, and great coffee machines too. By the way, our Client Operations Manager is an absolute coffee connoisseur – and she highly recommends their machines. Praise indeed!

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.

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.

Case Study: Dörken MKS Systems. Fighting Corrosion. Maximizing Customer Service.

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.

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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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

Employee Net Promoter: e-NPS

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

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

Napier: “...we were thinking about how to measure greatness.”

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

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