"How likely are you to recommend the year 2009 to a friend or a colleague?" If you could rate a year, 2009 would have probably got a negative Net Promoter Score. But as the business world picked up in the last few months, it seems companies have started to focus on Customer Loyalty again. So as the year draws to a close, it's time for a round-up of 2009's Net Promoter Score® News. We list all the companies and scores we covered, and have a few thoughts on Net Promoter for this year and next.

Trends:

In 2009 there was a steady increase in Net Promoter interest. Noticeably, we saw a lot of companies reporting self-calculated Net Promoter Scores in press-releases (in so-called "self-puffers". We reported nearly 100 companies through the year in Net Promoter News and expect to see this double in 2010. Biggest uptake seemed to be in B2B - with many business service companies measuring Net Promoter. Marketing press also mostly getting behind Net Promoter. And from Twitter, a quote we liked "Net Promoter is the Cliffs Notes of market research.” @celeduc

Earnings reports continue to feature Net Promoter Scores - top marks for Home Depot, CoinStar, Hertz. We saw commentary from stock-pickers on looking out for "high net promoter scores" - see CostCo below. Expect more of this, but tempered with critical examination of the numbers (just as investors question profit reports).

Job ads are starting to feature NPS as a Key Metric including RackSpace (for a SAN Storage Engineer: "Strive towards a world class target of 80% for the Net Promoter Score"). Seen similar  a few times,  which should widen the pool of knowledge.

Easier ways to get to NPS - new instant Net Promoter features in tools including CustomerGauge: Daily NPS report and customer feedback, Real-Time via Twitter,  and visualisations based on "Loyalty Spectrum Analysis"

A sign that Net Promoter is moving in to the mainstream: This year we saw NPS-Spam. SEO merchants are harvesting Net Promoter keywords to sell "male enhancement" products!

To look forward to in 2010: More rigorous reporting of scores - listing at least sample size and notes on methodology, and that PR people start to understand better   - see Standardising on Net Promoter Score Reporting. We trust more scores move out of the "Twilight Zone" of unknown origin. Companies reporting over 99: we are looking at you!

Finally, we leave you with an excellent informative (although rather serious)  video from Bain's NPS guru Rob Markey. A useful 4-minute primer to start 2010 with.

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Happy New Year from the CustomerGauge team and here's to a recommendable 2010!

Company Results

These were the scores we reported this year. Most are self reported, and perhaps have dubious value, but on a very positive note it's good to see that business is starting to use a common metric. Rigour will come later.

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