Net Promoter News: Apple crunches Samsung, Intuit gets fat return, Woolworths checks out customer satisfaction, Reichheld and Markey on Net Promoter best practices

Apple crunches Samsung, First Direct and Tesco Mobile on a high

Slide-deckerists Satmetrix have released the results of the European Net Promoter Industry benchmarks for this year, surveying 34,000 consumers across Europe, including 10,995 in the UK. The research covered areas such as mobile networks and handsets, banking, auto insurance, and internet service providers.

The leader this year was Apple, with an NPS of +69 (up two from last year). First Direct came in second with +62 (leading the banking sector for the third year in a row). Tesco Mobile was the top mobile network, with an NPS of +47.

In light of our (overly?) frequent reporting on Net Promoter in the mobile industry, it is especially interesting to note that despite Samsung’s recent growth, the iPhone has a significantly higher NPS. As may be expected, RIM fell dramatically from second to sixth place with an NPS of 18, and Motorola and LG finished in the bottom two places. Mobile Marketing Magazine My Customer (registration required)

Intuit gets fat return with online customers

There has been an interesting update to Intuit’s strategy of attracting new customers by providing free software to help people do their tax.  At its earnings call last month, the company claimed a nine-point improvement in its NPS for customers that went to a store last year but this year used free tax software provided by the company. This was backed up by a solid earnings report.

A chuffed boss, Brad Smith, said, “There is very few things we’ve been able to do in our 20 years to get a nine-point improvement in Net Promoter.” Of course, Net Promoter is not 20 years old, but we get the drift.  Seeking Alpha

Woolworths checks out customer satisfaction for bonuses

Aussie supermarket chain Woolworths said this week that that store managers’ bonuses are based on customer satisfaction, with Net Promoter being a key indicator.

According to a Nielsen omnibus asker, shoppers in Oz are most satisfied with the experience in Woolworths and its major rival Coles, which are also the country’s biggest two supermarket chains.

Woolworths made the comment after smaller rival Aldi was reported to have paid another survey company – Canstar Blue – thousands of dollars to say it had a five-star rating for most satisfied customers (based on results from Canstar Blue’s own survey). Herald Sun

Reichheld and Markey on Net Promoter best practices

Rob Markey and Fred Reichheld, authors of “The Ultimate Question 2.0: How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World,” are writing a series of posts in Forbes on Net Promoter best practices. The first post summarizes key tasks in the development of a comprehensive Net Promoter system. Forbes

In brief

• UK family entertainers Essenden has announced that 18 months after implementing Net Promoter surveys, the company is ranked 2nd out of 172 UK customer-orientated companies for exemplary service as measured by Market Force. This was backed up by a healthy financial performance, details at the link: 4-traders
• Self-styled “digital finance company” Wonga has announced a company record NPS of +78 in addition to its remarkable growth that we touched on last week. This score compares favourably to Wonga’s +73 NPS reported in May, but as in May, we’re left guessing as to where the figure comes from. Open Wonga

Net Promoter News: Oooh Matron! UK Gov’s NHS rollout, Everything Everywhere go NPS, Net Promoter in Mad-Men land, Shoretel +63

Carry On Rating… UK Gov’s Hospitals Scoring Rolls Out

A few weeks ago we mentioned that UK Prime Minister David Cameron has announced Net Promoter will be used to rank NHS hospitals by patient satisfaction across England.

According to an article this week, the surveys have collected around 21,000 responses in the initial phase, with the first league table set to be published within two months. But there has been some resistance to the move, with some leaders within the health system finding it distracting and time consuming for staff, and some patients feeling that they did not like the question because they are wary of giving a “black and white” answer.

These complaints notwithstanding, the rollout is gathering steam – good news for patients and families fed up with a lack of care and accountability in the health system. Indeed, according to the opinion piece below, “few would argue NHS patients would not be happier if more attention was paid to improving the experience of care.”

With regards to patients wary of giving a “black and white” answer, it is also important to note that the basic Net Promoter question of whether or not a person would recommend a service to their friends and family is just a starting point – follow up questions need to be asked to uncover insights which can enable an organisation to implement change for the benefit of its customers. We are very interested to see how this turns out – stay tuned for more in the coming months! Health Service Journal Health Service Journal (Opinion)

Everything Everywhere puts money where its customers are

Everything Everywhere – the company that runs both Orange and T-Mobile in the UK – has announced it is investing GBP 50 million in an effort to provide customers with specialized staff who will be experts on individual handsets and operating systems.  The new approach follows trials which showed dramatic improvements in the resolution of issues at first point of contact and “double digit” increases in Net Promoter Scores (no word on scores, samples, or if the research was internal or third party however).

This is of particular interest to us here at CustomerGauge as it follows a number of companies we’ve reported on this year which have experienced significant improvements in Net Promoter Scores after making investments in customer service training (as opposed to outsourcing or cutting costs). Among them are American Express, EdgeWave, Enterasys, and Overstock.com

In related news, Everything Everywhere claimed it is ahead in 4G plans because its rivals “are too busy focusing on cost efficiencies, instead of innovation.” Are you an Everything Everywhere customer? Let us know your experiences below! ComputerWorldUK

Net Promoter in Mad-Men Ad Agency Land

In B2B Net Promoter News, Steve Parker, MD of MediaVest said the agency uses Net Promoter as a key measure of its relationships with media owners. Twice a year, MediaVest holds an event where they invite 150 media owners into the agency in order to tell them their story – with the price of entry being that the guests need to give MediaVest a Net Promoter score. The reason? “So we can start measuring the strength, depth, variety of our relationships,” he said. “We do the same with client service – we use Net Promoter as a key measurement of our relationships with our client service.”

The interview followed a presentation at Media360 by managing director of brand and customer experience at British Airways Frank van der Post, who discussed the challenges and importance of trying to track the value of marketing activity in the age of big data. MediaWeek

Intuit builds game plan on free advice

A few months back financial software provider Intuit announced that its customers were returning higher-than-expected Net Promoter Scores, due in part to free tax advice they were receiving from the company.

In its latest earnings call, the company claims that there are 40 million US taxpayers who currently prepare their taxes with assistance, but would be prepared to do it themselves digitally if they had the right tool. With this insight in mind, the company created a strategy built around attracting more of these taxpayers by providing free assistance. The company believes that this has helped improve its overall Net Promoter Score for its TurboTax product offering – and also helped increase its acquisition of first-time tax-filers, which grew by 34% this year. Seeking Alpha

Shoretel moves to Net Promoter

According to Peter Blackmore, CEO of unified communications provider Shoretel, the company has ranked above its competitors for eight years in a row in customer satisfaction. But in an effort to continue to improve its service offering, in the last 12 months the company has adopted Net Promoter – for which he claims the company has averaged a score of +63 for the past 6 months.

This is a high score in any industry, and it appears to be backed up by business performance. According to the same transcript, Shoretel is one of the few companies to gain market share in the last quarter, and is looking at a “very good” performance for the current quarter. Seeking Alpha

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Net Promoter News: No alarm for SF Fire at 79, Ambassador spoils us at 70, Bank Montreal trouve 39. Steamboat chairlifts 82

Net Promoter News 9 June 2010

San Francisco Fire Credit Union hits 79

Grow your Net Promoter Score, reports the CreditUnions.com,  and see an increase in new business. According to the informative article “The Successful Near $0 External Marketing Budget” San Francisco Fire have have tracked Net Promoter Score since 2004, and now bases all staff incentives on the score. With “…focus on the member [the SF Fire] creates word of mouth,” says CEO Diana Dykstra. A useful table shows the link between rising Net Promoter Score and gross new member growth. In 2009, NPS climbed to 79, with new members rising to 14%. And with not a dime unwisely spent on marketing.

 

 

 

 

Wall Street News – NPS in the K10s

Ambassadors Group (NASDAQ: EPAX) Q1 2010 Earnings Call

Peg Thomas, President of student-tripster Ambassadors Group confirmed on the Q1 2010 call “our Net Promoter scores today are at 70%, in comparison to a score of 62% at the end of 2009. Source: Seeking Alpha

Intuit (INTU) Q3 2010 Earnings Call May 20, 2010

Bookkeeping softer Intuit won’t go into NPS details, but on the Q3-2010 earnings call Brad Smith, CEO shows confidence that analysts know about NPS:  “…continued improvement in our product and our continued execution in terms of our online marketing capabilities are showing up in terms of improved net promoter scores. And as you know, net promoter scores are a pretty good indication of which way retention is going to go.” CFO Williams added “Revenue per customer exceeded last year’s level, driven by fewer promotional discounts on QuickBooks and a better product experience as indicated by improved net promoter scores.” SeekingAlpha

SAVVIS (SVVS) – Q1 2010 Earnings Call

CEO James Ousley of server polishers Savvis pulls out NPS (but no numbers): “we continue to see the results of our efforts in client care outreach. This is reflected in our improving Net Promoter Score rankings.” Freiberg adds “[With Net Promoter] you’re reducing your churn, you’re increasing the stickiness of what you have and the ability to put more than one product into a customer, really for us, drives better margins because a lot of the value-added services may not necessarily take additional square-feet space in a data center.” SeekingAlpha

Franklin Covey, Co. (FC) F2Q10 Earnings Call

Robert Whitman of trainola Franklin Covey was proud of “very high net promoter score from our customers in the customer loyalty practice” (although that is the one place you would expect to find a high NPS – Ed). SeekingAlpha

BMO Financial Group / Bank of Montreal Q2 2010

Reported in the Canadian BMO FinGroup earnings press release: “Our continued focus on the customer experience is reflected in our high loyalty scores. Our retail net promoter score was 39 for the second quarter of 2010, compared with 40 in the first quarter. Our retail net promoter score remains very strong compared to the scores of our major competitors.” MarketWire

 

Net Promoter in the News

QVC with NPS Asker

Gina Deeble from UK home shoppery QVC discussed NPS at Gartner CRM Summit UK stating “75 percent of QVC’s customers would recommend” with around 100,000 reviews a year.  Using NPS and reviews  helped QVC find issues they would not have known about – product examples include an ice cream maker that initially sold well,  but, in fact, the product was so bad “it was hurting QVC’s brand reputation,” so quickly discontinued selling the product, and canceled future orders. Some good tips on how QVC communicated to customers, and worth registering to read. 1to1Media

In brief

Thank you Quantix, a UK based server polisher for telling us you “have been given” Net Promoter of 34″ which is “miles ahead of industry standards”. Congratulations, but some more detail would have been helpful. Self Puff, RemedialMathPR

SatMetrix phones it in with Hoffman: From Tom Hoffman’s blog – Deborah Eastman, Chief Marketing Officer at Satmetrix, discusses how NPS has evolved and how companies are applying it to improve the customer experience (podcast) – 1to1media

IMD, leading executive teachery and MBAmonger adopts NPS: Jim Pulcrano, IMD executive director says “We still need to make more effort in our post-programme work with participants and companies, [...] and [with] all of our improvements efforts, I believe our efforts with NPS (Net Promoter Scores) will help us immensely.” GenevaLunch

Fast Company: NPS is a silver bullet: “There’s really only one way–to get as close to the paying customer as humanly possible. If there’s a silver bullet, it’s the Net Promoter Score–a research metric, but a breathtakingly intuitive one.” FastCompany

NPS helps career prospects: Seen on the job boards – Better World Books, the “online bookstore with a soul,” is seeking a Chief Operating Officer to help us change the world through a new form of capitalism focused on people, planet and profit. [...] Actual experience of driving and implementing a NPS (Net Promoter Score) culture a real plus.” Send in your CVs here.

Steamboat Ski area surveyed 3,000 skiers to gauge net promoter score of 82 percent. The spokesmen said Steamboat had a Net Promoter score of 80 percent in 2008-09 and 79 percent in 2007-08. Source: SteamboatPilot

And finally, Portland Development Corporation undertook a Net Promoter asker among the city’s tech community, which prompted the headline of the year: “PDC survey suggests software developers like Portland, but there’s room for improvement”. But not all the askees were happy, not least with the methodology: “they asked multiple choice questions which potentially had answers other than the options presented on the list, which caused me to answer questions in a false manner” complained one. The PDC boss summed up the result rather glumly: “We may have to take a bit more of a hands-off approach”. OregonLive