NPS
Posted by Hank on Oct 1, 2008
At a past HDI conference, I listened to a presentation on Net Promoter Score (NPS). It is an intriguing idea — companies that do well on a one-question survey have better customer relations, grow faster and are more profitable than other companies in the same industry that don’t score as well. Companies using NPS include General Electric, Dell, Intuit and American Express.
Sometimes the NPS question is referred to as “the Ultimate Question”. The question is: How likely would you recommend us to a friend or colleague? (on a 1 to 10 scale, where 10 is extremely likely) Based on how this question is answered, a score is calculated that takes into account promoters (high scorers) and detractors (low scorers). For details, take a look at www.netpromoter.com.
Our Customer Care Manager, Chris Thompson, is tasked with contacting customers, asking the NPS question, and following up to address any concerns customers might have. For example, Chris went through a period where several customers gave us a score of less than 10 because our report writer could not produce some of the reports they wanted. Chris organized a conference call between those customers and LaDonna Beauregard, our Vice President of Development. Based on that call, LaDonna increased the number of fields available for reporting.
We find that using the NPS methodology serves as a mechanism for us to unearth problems that we might not hear about otherwise. It also gives us a baseline to see if we are improving over time or not. As we grow, it is a challenge to maintain the same level of quality customer relationships when we were much smaller. NPS is one tool we use in our efforts to stay in touch with our customers.