High praise indeed. And with good reason. But what is Net Promoter and why is it gaining such traction in companies as diverse as Philips, GE, Aggreko, Sage and Hewlett Packard? Behind all the smoke and mirrors, Net Promoter is an intuitively simple method of measuring customer satisfaction. By asking just one question, management can assess how their customers perceive the company to be performing in meeting their needs. The resulting metric can then indicate the company’s propensity to grow.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? And in many senses, it is. But like any ‘latest, greatest’ business discipline, Net Promoter is not without its sceptics. But then so was Six Sigma, JIT and Lean Manufacturing in the early days.
So is Net Promoter any good? As a concept, absolutely. The main problems seem to come in its implementation within organisations. As with any method of customer satisfaction, measuring isn’t necessarily the problem. It’s what to do with the information it gives you that’s the problem - but only for organisations which actually think customer satisfaction is important enough to take action on.
It’s tragic Sadly, even today, there are still many organisations which perform satisfaction surveys as a form of customer PR or to fulfil some management requirement only. The whole data to information to knowledge to action cycle gets cut short somewhere between data and information. Nothing ever changes. Without actionable outcomes to drive improvement, was there really any point in spending the time, effort and scarce budget on the research at all? Doesn’t the budget deserve greater ROI?
If you’re in business to make profit and customers are your source of profit, doesn’t it make perfect sense to actually understand what it is they expect of you? Isn’t that the most logical way to sell more to them?
Even taking away the profit element, public service organisations still have an obligation to optimise performance to ensure that the services being delivered meet the needs of the people they’re intended for and deliver optimal value for every £ spent.
The Good. As a metric, the value of Net Promoter to organisations can’t be overstated. It’s intuitively simple to understand and the single question means that customers are more likely to answer. And how can you argue against the fact that it’s preferable to have more promoters than detractors? SynGro draws upon the underlying theory of Net Promoter - but only as a starting point in its process…and here’s why.
The Bad. Although Net Promoter makes much of the ‘ultimate question’, the main drawback is that it doesn’t answer the “Why” question. If you don’t know why your customers score you as they do, how do you know what to fix? Our solution tells you exactly that. It even tells you in what order and with what priority your issues need to be fixed.
The Ugly. Implementation. And it’s not necessarily the fault of Net Promoter either. For reasons such as lack of top-level buy in, lack of supportive processes and infrastructure, lack of a true customer-orientation within the organisation, resistance to change, integration to core business et al there are organisations who can struggle with implementation. SynGro can help. It’s what we do. We’ve developed our own unique solution to ensure that more of your customers become your organisation’s advocates. It’s called SynGroCAP™.
Read more about Net Promoter by downloading SynGro’s White Paper on the topic. Alternatively, contact us for an empirical study by the London School of Economics on customer advocacy and its link to growth in the UK. *Net Promoter® is a registered trademark of Fred Reicheld, Satmetrix Inc. and Bain and Company