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 9th, 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 25th 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.
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 focuses on the experience
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
Enterasys's website: "There is nothing more important than our customers"
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
Net Promoter News: Kérastase 80, Cohiba 59, Declaration at Lords, NPS almost called Happiness Score
Study reveals evolving UK consumer habits, most advocated brands
Recent research by leading slidedeck-ologists Bain & Company has uncovered the top 10 brands in the UK according to their NPS scores, and revealed evolving consumer habits.
L’Oréal’s haircare brand Kérastase is the most advocated brand, with a Net Promoter® Score of +80, followed by Mercedes, Apple iPhone, and Redken and British brand Hotel Chocolat at equal fourth.
British shoppers are now buying across more brands than they did previously in most categories, with a few exceptions, the most interesting of which is personal technology. One might immediately assume that this is due to the influence of Apple – a brand that has managed to combine groundbreaking innovation and a powerful emotional pull. And indeed, the iPhone’s NPS ranking appears to bear that out.
However, it isn’t only due to Apple. Lesser-known Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC ranks joint seventh (alongside the iPod). In a category where innovation is fast and competition fierce (I’m looking at you, Nokia and RIM) it seems UK consumers are gravitating towards a small number of clear market leaders in the personal tech category.
Somewhat improbably, at 6th on the list was Cohiba, which reveals that the survey demographic appears to be cigar smoking fat-cats (presumably also users of Kerastase BAIN OLÉO-RELAX smoothing Shampoo for Dry, Rebellious Hair…).
That list in full:
Top 10 “most advocated” brands in the UK - (Based on NPS of 350 brands covered in the survey)
Sources: Marketing Week WARC
Fred Reichheld on happiness and business
It’s a well-known fact that the ultimate objective of NPS is to create happy customers – people who are so happy they will positively recommend your service or product to people around them. Less well-known is that happiness was so important to Fred Reichheld, the creator of NPS, that he seriously considered calling it “Net Happiness Score.” He decided against this so as not to put off hard-headed businesspeople, but maintains a well-formulated philosophy on how happiness should fit into business practices and help drive bottom-line profit – something we can all read and feel happy about! Forbes
Generate the "Wall of Faces" Fred mentions in the Forbes articles with our free utility - click on image
Safety First, Customer Happiness Second fuels NPS
We are firm believers in a customer-centric approach, which normally means customer happiness should come first. However, a philosophy of safety first, customer happiness second, has proven to be a winning formula for franchise Maaco Collision Repair & Auto Painting in Regina, Canada. In a third consecutive independent survey over the past two years, the business has received 100% customer satisfaction, and an NPS of +92.
This high level of advocacy is evident in sales figures – the franchise has achieved over $2 million in sales for three consecutive years – and other recognition, with the business being named Maaco’s Top Performer Quality Image Award for the second year in a row, and claiming top spot in its category in Entrepreneur Magazine’s Franchise 500. Leader Post
Lord’s named best sporting ground in UK
The iconic home of leather and willow (trans: cricket – Ed) continues to provide fantastic sporting events for visitors, but it has significantly increased revenues since opening its doors to corporate and private events. The key, it seems, is that each member of the Lord’s Meetings & Events Department is given a personalized training programme, with the ultimate aim being that each event should be tailored to the specific requirements of the client. It has the highest NPS of any sporting venue on an extensive UK list. ITCM
