Few tears for Sears as advocacy plummets
Retail stores everywhere face continuing headwinds as the eCommerce juggernaut continues to eat away at their traditional business models (promotion: CustomerGauge is holding a webinar on Tuesday, January 29 on “How to bake retention into your eCommerce Pie”).
But despite common challenges, some retailers are evolving to meet the eCommerce opportunity (see CostCo and Walmart as potential examples), and others are in a spiral of decline that may be difficult to break.
A Forbes post this week notes that in the women's apparel category, US retailer Sears is especially challenged. Its customer share has dropped 60% in a decade, it has an ageing customer base, and perhaps most concerning of all, its NPS for women's apparel is an average of 70% lower than competitors JC Penney, Macy's and Kohl's.
To draw this out, this means that Sears is facing challenges on multiple fronts. While eCommerce proves to be a major challenge to all but the most forward-thinking of big retailers, Sears has also lost the hearts and minds of its remaining customers to the extent that even they would not recommend the brand to their friends or families. Forbes
AppDynamics' appetite for expansion
At the opposite end of the advocacy spectrum, disruptive application management startup AppDynamics allows business to transition to cloud-based architecture “within minutes” – something that has generated 300% growth year over year and earned it a rapidly growing client base. Interestingly for Net Promoter junkies, its NPS has moved in correlation, from +73, to +81 – hallowed territory where some of the world’s great brands tread.
In correlation with its steadily grown army of advocates, the company’s headcount doubled in size last year, and it has just announced $50 million in growth financing. Pando Daily
Gazelle leaps into reCommerce
Boston business Gazelle is a startup with a difference – it takes your old iPhone or Samsung for cash, cleans it of data, and sells it for a profit to a customer in a developing economy.
It sounds like a good way to get people recycling, but beyond that, the numbers are eye-popping. Gazelle chief Israel Ganot estimates that in 2012 a billion dollars of old phones and other electronic equipment was bought and sold, and the business is trading 30,000 gadgets a month. Gazelle tracks its NPS, and has a self-reported score between +80 and +85. Business Telegram
In brief
- PPC Associates has announced a self-reported NPS of +91. CNBC
- Russian mobile service provider Vimpelcom said that in 2013 “we have set a touch point net promoter score and it became part of the KPIs set that we give to our Chief Commercial Officers.” Seeking Alpha
Vacancies
- Customer Experience Analyst - Net Promoter Score Analyst, Automatica Data Processing (ADP), Alpharetta, Georgia
- Manager of Customer Experience & Project Management, Capital Access Network, Kennesaw, GA (Greater Atlanta Area)
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