[...]Net Promoter Measures The Wrong Thing (or Why I Don’t Like United Airlines) » UIE Brain Sparks[...]…

Surveying customers and obtaining your NPS score is only one part of the equation. But let me ask you, Jared Spool, if United Airlines had ‘closed the loop’ by having someone contact you to discuss your score, would you have raised the point with them that you are only remaining loyal because you feel trapped? If you say yes, that clearly shows that ‘closing the loop’ with NPS is just as vital as obtaining the score itself, as United would then be aware they have a problem (particularly if a number of customers also feel the same way)

Also on this, our company surveys customers using NPS periodically, and immediately after interation with our contact centre staff. We then contact them to find out as much as we can about their experience. More often than not, we reveal concerns from customers about such problems as phone wait times or silly mistakes – things that customers wouldn’t outwardly lodge a formal complaint about. This allows us to monitor NPS trends, movements and what customers are saying. This includes surveying the same customers before and after discussion, to see what difference closing the loop has made. You’d be surprised how many customers are thankful that someone has contacted them at the very least to say “Hey, we got your feedback and thank you”

NPS is so much more than a score out of ten.

However, I do agree that the Gallup CE11 score helps you to better understand the nuances of a customer’s CE score and what is contributing to the score given. Gallup has tied customer and employee scores to profitable companies much like NPS has. It might also give you more insights and be easier to extract actionable findings.

Essentially, it’s as Darragh says in that a score of 7 or 8 is irrelevant. The 9s and 10s are counted up as Promoters, the 0-6s are subtracted and that’s the Net Promoter Score.

Obviously when somebody has to pick an arbitrary score against a product or service it will be inheritly flawed, however I think it is a good tool to gain quick insight as it’s likely more people will spend the time to answer one questions as opposed to several (11 in your example). This allows for a bigger sample size, which ideally translates to a more accurate measure.

Also NPS doesn’t measure loyalty of customer but it’s leadership in something. The NPS score aims at aligning customer expectations and business goals.

On a scale from 1 to 10 I would give a 10 for NPS surveys and I recommend NPS scores to any organization that needs to improve their overall performance and align their goals. At work we used it as part of weekly department ratings: as result it got the company humming within 8 months because everyone worked more focused.

The NPS is designed to gauge how many of your customers would stay loyal to you in the short/medium future regardless of the quality (good or bad) of the competition, i.e. a 9 or 10. And the NPS does a fine job of producing this statistic.

NPS isn’t measuring how warm and fuzzy a company makes you feel. People are fickle, the competitive climate always changing – just ask Reed Hastings. But when your score begins to fall, you can start to ask the right questions and *maybe* right the ship before there’s a total disaster. It’s a simple, single question test for how well you’re doing relative to other options.

Specifically, if United is doing just well enough to ensure their popularity, there is little motivation to innovate on their way of doing business.

Suggest there is merit in all businesses reassessing what a customer “relationship” means, how they “value” that relationship and the way in which they “score” the health of that relationship.

For example, one reason retail is hurting – http://www.theage.com.au/small-business/managing/blogs/the-venture/and-the-winners-for-poor-customer-service-are–20111212-1oq94.html because there has to be a compelling reason to get me in the shop in the first place, otherwise its all too easy to buy online.

What does it mean for a business to build and nurture a relationship that is meaningful and respectful?

rgds,
Dan