Word of mouth is all about the money, the rest is just conversation (pun intended). That's the key takeout of this roundtable on Net Promoter and word of mouth; tell me how much a recommendation is worth, and then I'll think about doing something about it.
Part of the attraction of Net Promoter Score is its link to hard financials, but the NPS itself measures propensity to recommend (would recommend), not word of mouth (do recommend).
As it happens, recent European research has found that only 50% of promoters (would recommend) actually do recommend.
There are some really cool and effective tools for activating the 50% of ˜silent" promoters that the average business unit has (such as online communities), but before time and money is spent, it's important to know how much a recommendation is worth in financial terms (see The Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld, Net Promoter Economics: The Impact of Word of Mouth white paper by Satmetrix, and How Valuable is Word of Mouth white paper published by Harvard Business Review for calculating Customer Referral Value).
Only then can a business case be put together for activating promoter advocacy.
