Net Promoter News: Voxeo’s Customer Obsession, Sprint Nextel, MetroPCS awkward on NPS, Dutch Travel Counsellors get gongs, NetDimensions adds NPS Dimension, RSC Boss +67

Voxeo outlines three major NPS-inspired initiatives

Interactive-voice house Voxeo has been driving other interesting initiatives in an effort to make the company even more customer-centric – a few weeks ago we noted with interest that it has embedded Net Promoter deeply into the company’s service mindset by tying results to employee bonuses and asking customers to rate their support calls.

In a very readable post on its corporate blog this week, Voxeo has taken the informative step of outlining three major initiatives that have been inspired by Net Promoter customer feedback. In brief, they are:

1. Become a trusted adviser for clients’ businesses: Voxeo has entered into a number of partnerships that allow it to expand its offerings and areas of expertise, in addition to its employees being available to share their industry knowledge.
2. Rather than simply letting its customers know about new Voxeo products first, the company wants to put in extra effort to educate them about product changes and enhancements long before they occur.
3. Voxeo has introduced local web hosting servers in all US datacenters and augmented the business continuity information stored offline in its network operations.

We were amused by the slightly scary team name “Customer Obession Team”, but no denying the focus is there. For more details, pop over to Voxeo Talks.

Sprint Nextel and MetroPCS Communications Execs on Net Promoter Scores

Earlier this year at its Q4 earnings call, Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse discussed the company’s strong Net Promoter momentum and noted that Sprint was the only one of the four major US carriers to show sequential improvement. Sounds promising, right?

This week Hesse once again brought up the company’s Net Promoter Score at its Q1 earnings call (slide 10 if you want to join in at home), mentioning that “Sprint is the only one of the four major wireless carriers to show improvement year-over-year.” We’re not sure if this is exactly the same thing, but analysts have noted that its earnings were something of a mixed bag. We look forward to the next call and seeing if a similar Net Promoter quote is offered once again! Seeking Alpha Sprint Nextel

American mobile phone service provider MetroPCS also brought up the metric, with a somewhat awkwardly-worded comment that in Q1 “the transition of our customer base is important as mature users now benefit from our new handset selection and remained loyal to our brand. We believe this loyalty continues to show itself in positive Net Promoter Scores that demonstrate the true viral nature and impact of our service in the communities that we operate in.” We’ve tried to sift the jargon but still not sure – does it simply mean the company has positive Net Promoter Scores? Or positive momentum? We’ll keep an eye out for more info. Seeking Alpha MetroPCS

Travel Counsellors Netherlands picks up three gongs

Family-owned travel operators Travel Counsellors have been awarded with ‘Best Travel Agency Group,’ ‘Most Popular Travel Agency’, and the overall award for the highest customer service score in their first appearance at the Zoover Awards (also known as the Netherlands National Travel Awards).

This very impressive result is not without precedent – in fact, Travel Counsellors regularly attains stratospheric Net Promoter Scores of over +90.

The company proudly talks about using Net Promoter® Score. From their site: “Two weeks after booking all customers are sent a simple question ‘How likely is it that you would recommend your Travel Counsellor to your friends and colleagues?’ “. If you’re curious to discover a little more about how the business has been so effective a creating arguably one of the most customer-centric operations globally, check out the link to see group chairman David Speakman discuss why he is a big advocate of creating a relationship-based approach to a transactional industry (video). Source:  Travel Blackboard

NetDimensions adds Net Promoter Dimension

Learning technology supplier NetDimensions has unveiled a North American professional services portfolio aimed at maximizing clients’ value of their NetDimensions Talent Suite investment.

Commenting on the launch, Art Faccone, VP of professional services noted: “We are implementing the Net Promoter Score client satisfaction methodology across all client engagements in North America. Our goal is clearly to keep growing our differentiator, especially in an industry that is renowned for low satisfaction levels.” San Francisco Chronicle

RSC’s NPS stands at +67

Rental equipment provider RSC has announced its 2011 Corporate Social Responsibility report with a commendably detailed self-puffer. The release discusses its key initiatives and how these link back to stakeholder value, and notes that based on more than 23,000 customer survey responses in 2011, RSC’s Net Promoter Score was an excellent +67. Market Watch

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Net Promoter News: AmEx cashes in, Apple’s in-store asker, Nokia talks up Asha’s NPS, SoDA pops 51 plus NPS Everywhere

American Express: Tracking Net Promoter all the way to shareholder value

A fascinating interview this week with Jim Bush, EVP of world service at American Express outlines how the company has used Net Promoter to propel it to the leading position for financial services brands in terms of customer service in the US, and how the company is tracking its Net Promoter improvement all the way to its shareholder value.

Among the insights:

• In the past, 75% of customer service training was on how a transaction was completed technically. Now, training focuses on how to create the relationship and build it through humanity, conversation, and engagement,
• No scripts. When a customer calls American Express, the Customer Service professional is presented with a customer profile and other relevant information. This allows the care professional to leverage the power of their personality to build a human relationship suited to the particular customer.
• The company sees a 10% to 15% increase in spending and four to five times increased retention from promoters.  In addition, due to streamlining, operating expenses associated with service have been reduced. And even better, since the height of the financial crisis, the company’s stock has considerably outperformed the industry’s index.

Finally, a personal reflection by Jim Bush on his time in the role offered some interesting insights into what motivates a market-beating customer service professional. As with many people, he initially thought of customer service as a back-office operation. But as he considered the millions of interactions the company has with customers, he realized the following truth; “If we can unleash the power of that customer-facing organization, think of the value we can create.”

Not just for your customer, but for your bottom line! CNN Money

Steve Jobs on Customer Service

Steve Jobs famously once said “It is not the customer’s job to know what they want.”

But despite a significant number of punters taking this to mean that Apple doesn’t focus on what customers think, the brand actually uses Net Promoter to track customer sentiment very closely. A Business Standard article this week touches on how Apple uses Net Promoter to fine tune customer service in-store, noting that when customers make a purchase they receive an electronic receipt and sometimes a Net Promoter survey. Any negative responses are followed up by store managers, and results are aggregated and share internally. Customer service is not the reason the brand creates category-defining devices again and again. But it does take customer care extremely serious.

The article also mentions LEGO Group – which collects scores across both online and offline customer service touchpoints. Scores are distributed through the company monthly, and follow-ups are made on all negative responses. Since 2005, scores have improved 26 per cent. Business Standard

Nokia gives earning call, reiterates Asha NPS

In brief: Yesterday Nokia gave its Q1 2012 earnings call, and once again mentioned that its range of Asha smartphones has the highest Net Promoter Scores for any of the company’s mobile phone products. According to CEO Stephen Elop, this was due to the fact that Nokia “delivered consumers more aspirational designs and experiences.”

This may be so, but will it be enough to put a dent in Android sales, let alone Apple? It’s something we’re keeping a close eye on, so stay tuned! Seeking Alpha

SoDA gets Net Promoter Score, claims Outstanding Member Satisfaction

Another non-profit group has adopted Net Promoter as an important metric according to a Virtual Strategy.  The Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) announced in a PR bragger their recent 51% Net Promoter Score, with 60% respondents falling into “Promoter” category.  Chris Buettner, SoDA Director of Operations said he was pleased with the results, but was not complacent, and wanted to evolve the programs based on the results. Virtual Strategy

Net Promoter now available Everywhere says CustomerGauge

“These days, everyone is responsible for customer experience” says a senior Electrolux executive, “It’s not just the property of the research department or a customer service team”. Responding to challenges like this has resulted in the new platform from CustomerGauge who this week announced their “Everywhere” Net Promoter® solution, delivering customer feedback and scores to everyone in the organisation, on desktop and ipad devices.

Comments are delivered in real-time, with the screen updating as customers respond. New features include performance boost with a claimed one million records graphed in around a second, more ways of slicing and dicing data, and language options with German and Italian available already. Wilkommen, Benvenuto! CustomerGauge

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CustomerGauge announces Customer Feedback Everywhere

Net Promoter News: Scottrade Invests in Loyalty, Reaps Windfall, Kohl’s and Macy’s are NPS Catwalk Queens; Walmart a Fashion Disaster, Dell makes Inspired Acquisition, Execs *Heart* Net Promoter

Scottrade profits from high customer service returns

Scottrade has announced to the world that it scored the highest in customer loyalty in the brokerage and investment category in the recent US Net Promoter Benchmark Study by Satmetrix.

This strong performance is definitely unusual for financial services brand, considering the robust criticisms and headwinds the sector has faced in the last few years.

And perhaps even more impressive, the self-puffer claims not only that the company’s growth from its beginning in 1980 has been entirely organic, but that it has never closed an office or had to lay off an associate. Bearing in mind recent crises and obstacles this would be a great achievement for a company with 50 branch offices. But for a company with over 500 branch offices such as Scottrade, I think we can safely call it exceptional.

For the record, Scottrade’s NPS was +54.  Eon

Women’s clothing: Kohl’s and Macy’s are the new black, Walmart the uninspiring beige

New Net Promoter research by BigInsight that analyzed the top five US retailers for Women’s Clothing (Kohl’s, Walmart, Macy’s, JC Penney, Target) throws up some interesting insights:

• Of the five, the most heavily advocated brands by a long shot are Kohl’s, Macy’s and JC Penney, all of which are department stores (as opposed to the discount options of Target and Walmart).
• For Kohl’s and JC Penney, price and selection were the key reasons that drive shoppers to make their purchases, but for Macy’s, it was quality and selection.
• Walmart was the only retailer of the five to calculate a negative score (-10.3).

There are several takeaway here for clothing retailers. But for shoppers there’s only one: If you want to pleasantly surprise your female friends and loved ones, visit discount retailers at your peril. The BIG Consumer Blog

Dell acquires AppAssure, based in part on Net Promoter Score

Dell has announced that it is acquiring software firm AppAssure, which it says will become the company’s primary backup offering targeted at small to medium-sized businesses.

According to Brett Roscoe, general manager and of data management solutions at Dell Storage, the key factors in the decision-making process were that it was going through a huge growth phase, and that this was complemented by Net Promoter Scores that were “off the charts.”

We’re always interested to read about high Net Promoter Scores that correlate with business growth, and it will be interesting to check in on this acquisition in a year or so to see if the momentum has continued. In the meantime, this appears to be an inspired move by Dell.  ARN

Austin Benn outperforms in advocacy, falls short in transparency

This week UK recruitment solutions firm Austin Benn trumpeted a Net Promoter Score of +72 on its website, and says its nearest competitor comes in at +56.

While both of these scores are exceptionally strong, details on the site are pretty light. In the interests of transparency, we’d love to know more details on who did the work and sample size. The usual basics. (Plus, a small #fail. They tell us “*Net Promoter methodology based around customers scoring given factors on a scale of 1 to 10″ – should have used standardised 0 – 10 for accurate results).

Austin Benn – if you’re reading this please feel free to add this to your NPS CV, and re-apply for the top Net Promoter spot!  Austin Benn

A third of execs claim to use Net Promoter

According to Acxiom and Loyalty 360, Net Promoter is one of the most popular metrics used by CXOs as part of their customer retention strategies. So popular, in fact, that approximately one third of those surveyed claiming they use it – a big number indeed and somewhat higher than we may have estimated.

Perhaps in a related matter, less than half agree that they know who their most loyal customers are. Marketing Charts

In Brief: Other Net Promoter news this week

• CustomerGauge’s Australian partner Genroe discusses the three critical elements of Customer Loyalty surveys
• The Motley Fool sings the praises of Net Promoter-using cloud computing specialists Rackspace
• Costco claims highest Net Promoter Score among major department, wholesale and specialty retailers in recent survey by Satmetrix
• CustomerGauge followed up the “Monday Effect” news in last weeks Net Promoter News by looking at some data in They Don’t Like Mondays. Or Do They? 

Brought to you weekly by CustomerGauge. Browse Net Promoter News, or check out the back issues. To get a copy in your inbox sign up here.

They Don’t Like Mondays. Or Do They? Scoring Net Promoter by Day of the Week.

Does a survey completed on a Monday have a lower score than another day?

Last Friday’s Net Promoter News featured a snippet of research from UK analyst John D’Arcy. According to him “People hate Mondays. And they were taking that fact out on our survey. More people were satisfied on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays before the rate started a depressing decline to a Monday low.”

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).

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.

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

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

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

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

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