Net Promoter News: The Love Edition – A Romance starring Toyota, Facebook, and Emirates

This week we have something slightly different for the Net Promoter News – the Love Edition. In keeping with Valentine’s Day conventions, each story this week is presented as a love story. Enjoy!

Love story #1: Customers break Toyota’s heart, Toyota falls in love with NPS, customers want to kiss and make up

Whoa – this one is almost a soap opera romance.

In the Netherlands, Toyota was struggling with unrequited love – it was trying to nurture relationships but even “satisfied” customers were leaving (perhaps they thought of Toyota as just a “nice guy”?).

Then something unexpected – but very exciting – happened. Toyota fell head over heels in love with Net Promoter. In an effort to prove that its love was more than a fleeting romance, Toyota embedded (get it?) Net Promoter throughout its organisation, from its training programs for anyone in a customer-facing role, ratings, newsletters, and, most romantic of all – a wall of fame in the restaurant.

Toyota devoted itself to Net Promoter – thinking about it, talking about it, acting on it across the organisation. And that love is now paying dividends as customers who used to think Toyota was just the nice guy unworthy of serious emotional investment have discovered that a passionate dedication to the customer was always hiding under the shy exterior. Frankwatching (Dutch language)

Love story #2: Fans that love brands on Facebook 

LoudDoor, a Facebook Insights preferred marketing developer has unveiled Net Promoter-based research of over 15,000 Facebook pages that shows which pages have the most loyal fans.

You might assume a swoon-inducing consumer multinational such as Disneyland, Apple, or Starbucks would lead the way, but you’d be wrong. In fact, the most loved-up brand on Facebook is not even a consumer brand, it’s a non profit – St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Following number one, more predictable names emerge, with Facebook and Google rounding out the top three. Money, as Paul McCartney succinctly noted, can’t buy love – but it doesn’t hurt.

The top 20 pages according to LoudDoor are:

1.    St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

2.    Facebook

3.    Google

4.    Walt Disney World

5.    ALDI USA

6.    Xbox

7.    Starbucks Frappuccino

8.    Google Chrome

9.    Duncan Hines

10.  Adobe Photoshop

11.  Tim Hortons

12.  Hershey’s

13.  In-N-Out Burger

14.  Dove Chocolates

15.  NFL

16.  Portillo’s

17.  BRAVO

18.  Disneyland

19.  Dollar Tree

20.  AMC Theatre

For methodology and other details check out the original article on MediaPost

Love story #3: Kuwaitis love Emirates, McDonald’s, IKEA, and a bunch of other brands

Uh oh. Things just got weird, didn’t they?

Actually, it’s not that Kuwaitis are confused – they’re just spreading their love around! Research by Service Hero (which reported on apparent cultural biases in the Kuwaiti market a couple of weeks back) has revealed the most loved brands in the market.

The top three across all categories are a microcosm of globalization at work, with UAE brand Emirates Airlines picking up the gold, American brand Caribou Coffee the silver, and local restaurant Mais Alghanim the bronze. When it comes to customer experience, love might not be blind. But it sure does cross borders. Zawya

Pillow talk

• Inavero has announced its Net Promoter-based Best of Staffing list for 2013 (in the US). For the full list of winners, check the link: Best of Staffing
• Mobile gamer Gamewagon has announced that 85% of its customers are Promoters. PR Web

Looking for someone special

• Customer Insights Program Manager (Net Promoter Score) Mebourne, Australia
• Net Promoter Score [NPS] Coordinator, ISGM, Melbourne, Australia

Net Promoter News: Apple’s sweet and sour Chinese growth, Facebook goes Net Promoter-esque, Telstra not making decisions based on NPS, yet

Apple’s sweet and sour Chinese growth

Citing an “inside source,” tech  blog MiCGadget reports that the NPS for Beijing Apple Stores is below +40, which is not so great considering that in 2011, Apple’s 320 global stores had an average NPS of +72, with leading stores as high as +90. The post suggests the relatively low scores in Beijing are due to factors including an inadequate number of in-store customer service professionals able to cope with huge crowds, which has been caused in part by the challenge of finding, negotiating for, and securing suitable locations to open new stores.

But while Chinese fans are only lukewarm on the retail experience, product advocacy is red hot. In fact, the lengths that some Chinese fans will go to in order to own an Apple product is the stuff of legend. There’s the punter who lined up overnight for a new iPad despite already owning one, a delightful young woman who cloaked herself in a billboard advertising for an eligible bachelor because, in her plaintive words, “my husband did not buy an iPhone 5 for me,” and most extreme of all, a student who, ahem, sold a kidney to buy an iPad. This fanaticism is reflected in sales. The Chinese market jumped from being worth 2% of Apple’s revenue in 2009 to 15% this year – a trend that looks set to continue.

Of course, Chinese consumers don’t need to go to an Apple store to buy an Apple product. They can buy products online or elsewhere. And for this reason, strong growth is likely to continue. However, with fervor for its products running hotter in China than possibly anywhere else on the planet, but only seven stores in a population of 1.3 billion, a combination of underwhelmed customers, lack of retail space, and even entire fake Apple stores is undermining the iconic brand’s explosive growth in this linchpin market. Samsung, do you smell an opportunity? MiCGadget

Facebook goes Net Promoter-ish for Promoted Posts

According to shmula.com, Facebook appears to have launched a Net Promoter-esque survey to measure how its fans feel both about the overall product and also its new Promoted Posts feature.

I say Net Promoter-esque because it comprises of 10+ questions, rather than the standard two advisable for a Net Promoter survey. It’s a little too Researchism for our taste. However, two of these questions are classic Net Promoter.

1. How likely are you to recommend Facebook to someone you know? (0 = Not at all Likely / 10 = Extremely Likely)
2. How likely are you to recommend the promote option to someone you know?

Check out the link for screen grabs and more details.  Have you seen the survey? shmula.com

Telstra not making decisions based on NPS, yet

Aussie telco Telstra said that it has not yet started making decisions from its recently-implemented Net Promoter program, yet, because it does not yet have enough data to work with.

According to Nick Adams, Telstra’s director of one-to-one marketing, “This is an enormous job we are undertaking but it is a multi-year journey and we are building advocacy into not only how we interact directly with our customers but also our decision making processes as well.” B&T

In brief

• SolutionsPT, an IT provider, announced that following from a negative NPS in 2007, the company has reached an all-time high of +45. According to the company, as its NPS has improved, the percentage of debt overdue decreased. The Guardian
• Dutch telco KPN announced it has seen a rise in NPS in the Netherlands and Belgium over the last quarter. It also said that in terms of market share it has performed to expectations in the Netherlands and strongly over the year to date in Belgium. Telecoms.com
• Fred Reichheld and Rob Markey take a look at some of the most common ways bias can creep into your Net Promoter data, and how to avoid them.  Forbes

Net Promoter Vacancy

CustomerGauge is hiring! Client Operations Co-ordinator for German clients, Amsterdam

Net Promoter News: Jet Blue does NPS b2e, NPS holds up in HBR, Nokia claims high NPS…. again – and have you been “Phliked” on Facebook?

Jet Blue uses Net Promoter to measure employee engagement

Net Promoter is generally considered as a metric to measure customer advocacy and satisfaction, but in fact, it is also a valuable metric  to survey employee satisfaction.

Jet Blue (in collaboration with consultants HCMI) is one recent company that has done just this – using Net Promoter to test how likely employees are to recommend working for the airline.

The logic is simple. Highly-engaged employees translates into higher Net Promoter scores by customers, so in order to improve engagement across its workforce, Net Promoter was adopted in combination with other metrics to identify areas where employee engagement was lagging and implement HR initiatives to improve it.

Following successful results, the airline surveys its employees continuously on their employee anniversaries. This gives the company an ongoing insight into employee advocacy and helps leadership develop and implement strategic solutions to improving training and other management decisions that ultimately have a positive impact on the bottom line.

We have discussed elsewhere that too often employees are a forgotten cornerstone of customer advocacy, so it’s fantastic to see a business of the caliber of Jet Blue use Net Promoter to proactively address employee satisfaction.  Workforce

[NB. We at CustomerGauge also measure this business-to-employee metric. We give it the snappy acronym B2e.]

Harvard Business Review validates Net Promoter 

In order to assess which is the single best customer satisfaction question between Customer Satisfaction (sometimes called CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and Customer Effort Score, researchers Matthew Dixon, Karen Freeman, and Nicholas Toman analysed 10,000 responses from 100 companies to see how results predicted customer loyalty levels, with results published in Harvard Business Review.

The results were widely different – the authors attribute this to survey bias – but they did conclude that Customer Satisfaction is not the best predictor of expenditure, while NPS is “clearly a good predictor of the individual customer’s attitudes”.

One more tidbit to note from the post – in the comments below the article Customer Effort Score co-founder Nick Toman states “CES was developed purely as a post-service transactional loyalty metric. In no way, shape or form would we advise this be used to examine broader relationship loyalty.” Harvard Business Review

Nokia Lumia 900: Hot or not?

It’s a case of “another product release, another high Net Promoter score” for Nokia. According to the company, a survey in conjunction with Nielsen has given the new Lumia 900 a Net Promoter score of +63. This follows on from Nokia reporting its Asha range and Lumia 800 both scored extremely highly with Net Promoter.

But according to another source, users do not have such a rosy view of the new handset. A survey by Yankee Group with a sample size of 111 returned an NPS of -50.

This massive difference has us scratching our heads, so we did a quick scan of reviews to see what professional opinion-givers say. Crave Online, CNet, and techradar all give the thumbs up, leaving us to wonder – why were the respondents in the Yankee Group survey so low?

If you have used the Lumia 900, please let us know how you’d rate it! Conversations by Nokia, Yankee Group

In brief: NextUC and PEER 1 claim growth, strong NPSs

• Cloud-based communications provider NextUC claimed a Net Promoter Score of +30 which it says is tracking up from the month earlier.
• Web hoster PEER 1 has claimed an NPS of +36 after growing nearly 100% in the last year.

And Finally… Have you been “Phliked”on Facebook?

Measuring customer advocacy across social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter is an emerging trend in our industry, but one that has yet to convince us as being equal in value to surveying customers with Net Promoter.

Among other things, sentiment on social media platforms is unstructured and unrepresentative, and while monitoring social conversations is definitely important, it is a reactive rather than proactive way of listening to customer feedback. We could go on, but you get the picture.

Now another story emerged to muddy the waters of hyped “social media measuring” products. Earlier this year Facebook itself announced that 5-6% of its 900 million users may be fake – that’s around 50 million profiles. And this week the BBC ran a story on scam profiles set up by robot computer programs or low-paid spammers in developing countries that inflate the number of “Likes” on Facebook.

For those in the know, the phrase du jour is “Phoney-Like” hence “Phlike”  – as in “How many “Phlikes” have you got?”

Do you think Facebook “Phlikes” are an issue? Let us know! Source: BBC

Net Promoter News: OKC Thunder N-P-Sanity at +91, HireVue, Bill.com and Staffer gongs, plus Virgin America, Apple, Kaiser Permanente lead in US paneller; Facebook, Wachovia, American Airlines droop.

Oklahoma City Thunder and Match.com go 1-2 at CRM Excellence Awards

For those unfamiliar with basketball, the Oklahoma City Thunder is an NBA franchise formerly known as the Seattle Supersonics. And for those unfamiliar with online dating, Match.com is one of the giants, with more than 20 million members across 25 countries. What do these two companies have in common? They were awarded gold and silver in the Customer Experience category of the 2012 Gartner & 1to1 Media CRM Excellence Awards, announced this week.

While some are going have got Jeremy Lin-sanity, Oklahoma City Thunder have gone Net Promoter crazy, and was rightly recognized with gold after nurturing an environment that consistently “educates, evaluates, and congratulates” its employees – a key starting point to consistently delighting customers. The franchise has improved on an already strong Net Promoter Score – from +86 in 2008 to +91 last season, and ranks as the top NBA team in overall fan experience. The team is now a champion in terms of customer satisfaction – if they can repeat the performance on the court, the fans will be very happy indeed.

Match.com – and personals websites in general – have not grown without varying degrees of controversy over the past decade or so. However, Match.com for one seems to have a renewed focus on customer satisfaction, recently improving its email support, and investing in its customer care. According to 1to1 Media, customers that interact with Match.com customer care purchase at a higher rate than those who don’t. It must be all about a great first impression! 1to1media

Virgin America, Apple, Kaiser Permanente lead, Facebook, Wachovia, American Airlines lag in US customer loyalty

This week a new Net Promoter study across 30,000 US consumers unveiled customer loyalty leaders across 22 U.S. industry sectors and 200 brands.

Of particular surprise was how Facebook is perceived this year. Despite an incredible run on almost every metric you could imagine and a much-hyped IPO, the social network lost 21 points compared to last year’s benchmark, to fall to +31. Facebook has consistently proven doubters and naysayers wrong, and we would hesitate to predict and kind of sharp change in its growth trajectory or performance. However, the size of the fall does have us wondering – is Facebook losing a little mojo?

Elsewhere in the tech world, usual suspects Apple and Google both continued their stellar performances, with Apple scoring +71 for its hardware and +68 for software, and Google achieving +56.

Also of interest:

• Major health insurers were viewed poorly by many customers, with an industry average of +4, though Kaiser Permanente bucked the trend with an NPS of +33. For life insurance, State Farm led with +28.
• Financial institutions have copped a shellacking in the American press over the past few years, and this is reflected in their Net Promoter Scores, with seven banks having more detractors than promoters. The worst was Wachovia, at -15.
• American Express scored +43, ranking top among credit cards for the fifth year in a row.
• Despite the sluggish economy, Travel and Hospitality had some clear winners, with Virgin America the top airline at +66, and JetBlue Airways at +64. American Airlines lagged at -5.
• Auto glass repair specialist Safelite AutoGlass led the auto service and repair sector with +48, beating Goodyear into second place by more than 25 points.
• Telecommunication providers continued to struggle. Verizon, the highest scoring Internet service provider, had an NPS of just +18.

Source: SatMetrix / Market Watch

Bill.com hits customer service nail on the head

This week, online business billing and payments service Bill.com announced an 8 point jump in its Net Promoter Score over a nine month period, and though it does not announce its actual score, says it has now surpassed companies including American Express and Google (which presumably means at least in the high 50s, according to figures in the article above).

The company attributes this to an increased investment in its customer service offering, and goes to considerable trouble to outline the steps it has taken in this area in an admirably-detailed piece of self-promotion.

The full details are available at the link, but there were a couple of interesting points that really jumped out.

The first regarded the introducing new users to the technology. Many people experience difficulties when learning a new system, and recognizing this frustration, Bill.com created a “New Customer Success” team to walk users through the technology step-by-step. According to the company, 90% of customers that use the service become active users, and 98% of are satisfied with it.

The second thing that jumped out was a much smaller detail. The company uses two spokespeople in its release. The first is the CEO, Rene Lacerte. And the second is Kathleen Long, who has the still-unusual but increasingly common role of “Vice President of Customers.”

“When asked, ‘Have we resolved or made a plan to resolve your issue today?’, 93% of customers now say ‘yes’,” said Long. Now that’s a tough figure to beat! Market Watch

HireVue ratchets up new business, promotes Net Promoter Score

A few weeks back we took a brief look at the US HR industry and the role it is playing in slowly turning around the economy.

One company, HireVue, has brought a new dimension into the recruitment game, by providing a digital platform to recruiters so they search prospective talent by browsing and streaming interviews whenever and however they want – even from a smartphone.

It’s a very strong concept, and the company has just announced triple digit sales growth, 70 new enterprise customers, and numerous product enhancements, with all this backed up by a strong NPS in the +40s.

With this kind of growth, there is no doubt that competitors will emerge with other innovative ways to connect recruiters with the right talent. This will be a very interesting space to watch in the near-term future, and as innovation continues to develop, let’s hope HR and recruitment can play an increasingly effective role in driving global economies out of a standstill! Market Watch

Staffing Industry Analysts gives gong to best staffing firms

In more US awards news, global advisor Staffing Industry Analysts announced the winners of the 2012 Best Staffing Firms to Work for, winners being divided by size and selected using Net Promoter Score.

The winners included LiquidAgents Healthcare, TekPartners/MedPartnersHIM and Collabera Inc. Full details: Bradenton.com

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

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!