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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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.
CustomerGauge In: B2C Data Import Formats (XML, XLS, TXT)
How to format data for import into CustomerGauge b2c
You can format data in several ways for CustomerGauge. For the b2c application, it is expected that there will be an automatic upload each day or week.
Methods:
- FTP (you automate sending of file to our Secure FTP site) - preferred
- Email (we supply a special email address for you to send the file to)
- Manual import (from within the CustomerGauge application you can upload a file)
- API – one transaction at a time (used for checkout or similar) or multiple record upload (coming soon)
Available formats:
- XML – preferred (DOWNLOAD example CustomerGaugeImportTemplateJune2010xml.txt) – updated 22 June 2010 with multiple ITEMs per RECORD
- CSV or TXT (see XLS download)
- XLS (DOWNLOAD CustomerGaugeImportTemplate22Mar2010.xls)
- within API (coming soon)
Typically the data file used is from an e-commerce system. Records are sometimes formatted as multiple lines per sales order (if more than one item per line). We can adjust the import template to account for that. CustomerGauge “de-duplicates” data, so you need not worry about sending a file twice.
Fields
We can accept just a few fields if available. Mandatory fields are:
- SKU
- order_value
- date_of_order
However, most clients send a very rich feed. If you can supply, we can accept around different 20 segment fields (and report on them).
Pre-Built Connectors
We already have pre-built connectors for many systems including SAP, DigitalRiver, Magento etc. Please enquire on how we can help you.
Free Webinar: The “Loyalty Robot”: Learn how to increase customer loyalty and grow online sales automatically
(How a handful of customers can make or break you…)
One of the surprising secrets of e-commerce is that a small number of customers account for a large amount of sales. In fact, on a recent sample of large sites, just 7% of the customers accounted for 50% of sales revenue. For most e-commerce sites, this means if a few hundred customers decide to return or leave, it can make a big difference to hitting sales targets. In this webinar, aimed at e-commerce professionals, we promise you will pick up some useful tips to improve customer retention.
- How to identify and segment your top spending customers
- Learn how to save money on acquisition and grow revenue from existing customers
- Build a “Loyalty Robot” to automatically develop repeat business
Adam Dorrell (Managing Director of CustomerGauge) and Melanie Otersen (ex- SonyStyle online store, Europe) will outline how to succeed using a customer loyalty strategy, and show real-life examples with impressive revenue growth.
Wednesday, 10 February, 2010.
Starting time: 17.00 Europe (Amsterdam, Paris), 16.00 London, 11.00 AM New York
Duration about 30 minutes. Free of charge, but limited places.
Mail for more info.
Register now!
Make Customer Feedback One of Your 5-A-Day
Delighting your customers starts with quick response to their comments, delivered in daily reports like this one from CustomerGauge
Every e-commerce professional tracks traffic and counts orders once a day, but rarely (if ever) checks customer feedback daily, weekly, or even monthly. Let’s look at some reasons for this, and why regular customer feedback will benefit your business.
Reasons we have heard for not taking regular customer feedback included: “not standard business practice”, “it’s extra workload”, “how will it benefit?” and “just too difficult”.
Here is what every e-commerce manager needs to know about daily feedback:
- It’s becoming the norm. World-class companies DO survey EVERY transaction for customer feedback. To mention a few: Sony, Philips, Canon, Avis, Hertz, eBay and many more. Feedback is an essential part of their daily business routine with comments distributed around the organisation. Also there IS an Industry Standard Methodology for measuring loyalty: the Net Promoter Score® - a simple, one-number approach, as understandable as page-views or profit.
- It’s not extra workload. If a customer complains in a survey, you would likely have to deal with that customer issue anyway (so it’s not additional workload, just time-shifted forward). More usually an unhappy customer will silently defect and never return. Unless you ask customers, you may never know how much business you are losing.
- It’s free consulting. Customer suggestions can help shape your business. We have seen examples where customer feedback helped merchandising give instant additional sales, and comments on manuals and packaging delivered cost-savings. In addition, positive comments can be used as testimonials on your site, which helps reassure future customers.
- It’s simple to implement. You can start a feedback project with a simple online survey tool and do it manually (actually, we started that way by doing monthly reports), but due to time lag we highly recommend that you automate it. Products like CustomerGauge have plug-ins for major e-commerce systems that automatically survey customers.
If you are still hesitant, here are some other points to consider:
Responding fast is impressive: When was the last time you had a response to a comment you made? You can transform customer experiences by responding quickly to feedback. Some large companies we deal with read and react to customer comments within 24 hours. That can turn the most hardened complainer into a delighted evangelist for a business.
Customer Focus: As a result of measuring, these same companies have become more customer oriented. Staff are bonused on Net Promoter Score, and welcome the feedback that customers give in order to improve service.
Give Us This Day Our Daily Feedback
Our customer feedback solution is CustomerGauge: a simple plug-in to your e-commerce site, paid monthly on subscription. All the hard work of integration and setting it up is handled by us. We arrange the emails, surveys (in different languages), automatic sending and reporting in real time. We deliver daily and weekly feedback to your staff by email. You can use positive comments and publish them on site as testimonials, which increase conversions significantly. CustomerGauge also helps keep your promises to customers: track open and closed customer issues with built-in workflow. And identify your most valuable returning customers with our real-time reporting.
In summary, Customer Feedback can become one of your essential Daily Metrics, tracked like your other Key Performance Indicators. You can receive it on a daily basis in your mailbox, and use metrics to check improvement. It is the business transformation you are looking for this year.
Join us today on our Campaign for Daily Customer Feedback and benefit from a January 2010 CustomerGauge offer: Free 30-day trial on your e-commerce website*
*Sign up by 31 Jan 2010. Terms and conditions apply, ask for details.
CustomerGauge adds new ways to visualize Net Promoter Score
CustomerGauge June 2009 release adds new features to this simple, cost-effective loyalty measurement system based on Net Promoter Score®*. CustomerGauge is known for its extensive business-to-consumer (b2c) surveying capabilities, particularly for automatically surveying customers after e-commerce transactions.
In this release, it adds specialised reporting for business-business (b2b) applications.
New reporting helps clients view Net Promoter Score by multiple segments and grouped by organisations. Real-time dashboards show scores and comments from individuals inside an organisation by job or function level – to give a top down view of major corporate customers. Compare results with all customers, or by all job categories. Quickly identify promoters and detractors within major accounts.
Other reporting helps show distribution of Net Promoter Scores 0 – 10 by frequency, and the evolution of detractors, promoters by week or month. Drill-downs allow quick analysis of comments in each segment. Another report makes it simple to rank Net Promoter Score in a particular segment (for example by country, or sales revenue cluster). A/B options allow experimentation to find optimum survey design.
Understanding customer sentiment is a key component of CustomerGauge. Reporting has been enhanced to provide multiple level of analysis. Simple graphs showing trends help get to root causes fast and effectively.
CustomerGauge is made for global deployment, with new enterprise-class features for multiple countries/divisions roll-out. But flexibility is also built-in to allow local management, reporting and customisation. A new global dashboard option allows roll-up of Net Promoter Scores from separate divisional instances of CustomerGauge (or even other survey tools).
With this release, CustomerGauge continues to evolve and provide a fast, effective way for enterprises to measure Net Promoter Score, priced from EUR 1500 per month.
