The room’s full overflowing - standing room only to hear Gavin Sugden, Market Intelligence Manager for mobile operator T-Mobile, talk about the T-Mobile experience of deploying Net Promoter.

Gavin’s talking about T-Mobile deployment of Net Promoter Score in the UK. At the heart of the initiative is a competitive NPS tracker conducted with a random sample of 3000 consumers by phone every month.

Interestingly, the T-Mobile tracker measures the NPS of T-Mobile and key competitors, reporting scores relative to category average to provide a competitive benchmarking. Smart.

T-Mobile has implemented a 3 step NPS strategy - Communicate - Understand - Act

1. Communicate - first communicate adoption of NPS internally across the business simply and clearly, emphasizing that the initiative has senior level buy-in, and that improvement to NPS should be a key goal of all T-Mobile initiatives.
2. Understand - identify key drivers of NPS with diagnostic research - interviews with detractors and promoters, and correlation of NPS with satisfaction and brand research.

Gavin presents key advocacy (NPS) drivers for T-Mobile:

• Brand Relationship (innovative and forward looking, involvement and knowledge, perception as a big confident brand, customer service and value for money)
• Customer satisfaction (service, network coverage, value for money)
• Tariff Popularity (popular tariffs)

Based on understanding of NPS drivers, Gavin explains how to T-Mobile put together a 2 step action plan

Step One of T-Mobile’s Net Promoter action plan is to deliver on expectation priorities with a set of improvement initiatives that focus on getting the basics right.  The KPI here is a reduction in proportion of customers who are detractors - who can have disproportionate negative influence on growth.

Step Two of NPS strategy is surprise and delight customers with initiatives that deliver on the key drivers of recommendation. The KPI here is an increase in proportion of customers who are promoters - who will drive organic growth through loyalty and referrals.

    3.  Act - implement action plan.  Act - implement action plan.  Gavin is not giving away any company secrets here about the specifics of the action plan ;-( but he emphasizes the importance of ongoing monitoring of the action plan on the NPS.  Gavin is warning of the ‘hockey stick effect’ that can occur when new initiatives are rolled out - a short term dip in NPS reflecting teething problems in delivery - and an expectation/experience disconnect.

Gavin is wrapping up with a summary - is talking about the importance of setting up NPS forum to share learning across the business and to continuously evolve T-Mobile’s NPS strategy and action plans.