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: Fly Me Kangaroo Down, Sport – Qantas Hops on NPS, NextUC up to/down to 29, Acer Middle East at NPS 67 or maybe 100

Flying Kangaroo hops on Net Promoter®

To say that Qantas is having a rough patch is something of an understatement. In late 2011, the airline experienced a massive industrial dispute in which tens of thousands of people around the globe were stranded for days as the entire fleet was grounded. This year, the stock price continues to plummet, recently reaching an all-time low.

Despite its many challenges, CEO Alan Joyce has remained publicly upbeat about the carrier’s prospects. Last year he claimed that the global fleet grounding was “positive” for the Qantas brand, and this week that customer satisfaction had already recovered.

Among its many challenges, Qantas is now locked in a battle for premium passengers with Virgin Australia, and this week, Joyce announced that the airline will soon allow frequent flyers the opportunity to rate the airline with Net Promoter. Ultimately, staff will likely be rewarded according to their performance. “Incentivising people for doing a good job is absolutely the way we have to go,” he said. It’s no doubt the airline has several mountains to climb in order to arrest its sliding fortunes, so we will be watching this with interest. Sydney Morning Herald

NextUC grows according to all metrics, including NPS

In a self-puffer, unified comms-hoster NextUC has outlined an impressive number of growth stats. Scan through and you will find

• metrics on rapidly rising revenue, usage, user base of it’s Microsft Lync hosted solution, and
• Last but not least, its Net Promoter Score of 29 is tracking up from the month earlier.

It sounds very impressive, and no doubt this is a company that is expanding fast. However, we are a little curious to see that NextUC claimed an NPS of +35 in February this year – not wanting to be too nitpicky, but we wonder about the dip around March/April? Market Watch

Standard Forwarding beats the standard

Standard Forwarding, a subsidiary of DHL, this week announced it has been named Great Lakes/Midwest LTL Carrier of the Year for the fourth time in a row, and that it has the highest Net Promoter Score nationwide. This is according to an annual study that surveys 2,000 shippers and identifies and quantifies the needs of LTL freight customers.  Market Watch

Acer aces after sales service – we think

In a recent vaguely worded puffer about a  Net Promoter survey from Acer in the Middle East, 67% of those who “availed of Acer’s after sales service” would recommend Acer to a friend, whereas 33% would consider recommending, with zero detractors. We had to re-read this several times to follow it. Depending on semantics, we calculate that’s either a score of 67 or 100. Very good or excellent on service, but nil points for the PR team who neglected to mention sample sizes or other details, however. Trade Arabia

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Net Promoter News: Wonga NPS +73, APR: 4214%. SurePayroll pays attention to convenience at 50+, 56% of brand owners used NPS, NextUC record month at +43

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Wonga: Legal loan shark or financial services innovator?

In stark contrast to most financial services companies, British up-and-comer Wonga claims this week that its Net Promoter Score is +73. According to CEO and co-founder Errol Damelin, “Most of the banks in the UK are negative. The Co-op has a score in the 20s while First Direct has one in the 40s — that’s a good number. Wonga, at 73%, is in Google and Apple territory, and most of the time we’re ahead of these guys.”

The company’s (self-reported) score is indeed very high, and it has grown in leaps and bounds since its founding in 2007. Damelin attributes this to Wonga’s transparency as well as the speed with which it can approve loans – in as little as half an hour. Notwithstanding its impressive growth and advocacy levels, the company has its share of detractors for the high cost of its loans and also arguably unethical advertising practices. Is Wonga a customer service leader or financial predator? For sure, it’s the poorest in society that use these high interest “pay day” loan companies, and even with a high score we hesitate to say these are poster boys for NPS…. You be the judge: The Guardian

Only 7% of US companies self-identify as customer-centric

According to a new survey released this week by the Temkin Group, only 7% of US companies with revenue topping $500 million out of 255 polled believed themselves to be genuinely “customer-centric.”

However, the survey did not reveal only bad news. Within the next three years, 49% of those surveyed want to become leaders in terms of customer experience within their specific markets. And encouragingly, 56% of brand owners used Net Promoter to gauge advocacy levels – up from 49% in an equivalent survey from last year.

If Net Promoter is being used effectively, we will be interested to check back in on this survey over the next few years to see how these companies are faring. Until then, there are plenty more stats for customer experience buffs to read up on at the link.  WARC

SurePayroll pays attention to customer convenience

The past several years has seen a mushrooming in the channels people use to keep in touch – social media, texting, instant messaging, emailing, and calling are all ways people communicate at work as well as home.

With this in mind, US online payroll service provider SurePayroll has taken the opportunity to broaden its customer service offering from simply phones and emails to encompass other channels such as IM and web submissions that may be more convenient for its 35,000 customers.

This has contributed to the company’s (self-reported) NPS in the 50s. According to Jamal Ayyad, SurePayroll’s director of customer care, other reasons for the high score are the company’s focus on working to resolve the customer’s issue on the first call, using its CRM system to identify product improvements that would eliminate the need for customers to call, and hiring people who are passionate about customer service rather than people with technical skills. 1to1media

Promoters: Just the beginning?

A criticism of Net Promoter is that while nurturing “promoters” or high levels of advocacy among your customers is all well and good, in reality how often do these promoters actually proactively advocate your product or service to the people around them?

A post this week argues that companies should move beyond promoters to identify “defenders” – customers who are already talking positively about your brand across social media or otherwise. It nominates Salesforce.com as one company which is already proactively developing relationships with these key customers by inviting them to blog, attend events, present panels, and have inside information available to them. And because this is done without financial compensation, it means their words carry a great deal of objective weight within their social circles.

For the record, CustomerGauge advises any company willing to take its customer service to a new level to proactively reach out to its promoters (including the 1% of extremely vocal advocates). It’s something we have been doing for years for a number of clients and know it can be achieved through the framework of Net Promoter surveys.  Harvard Business Review

NextUC takes KPIs to next level

Cloud communication provider NextUC has reported “record numbers across the board” for the month of April, including a Net Promoter Score of +43. The startup claimed in a self-puffer that it has recorded “100% product availability for the month, record user adoption, and record website activity.” San Francisco Chronicle

Which Companies are using Net Promoter?

In the last few years we have reported on many companies in Net Promoter News. We have a handy company index here which lists around 300 companies, some with Net Promoter scores – self reported or otherwise. It’s growing each week, and is now probably the largest source of publicly posted scores available. Use it as you need, but do remember that methodologies do vary wildly (one day we hope scores will be more standardised)!