Mathias Rytz - VP of Innovation and Growth, Swiss Re Insurance
It was great to see SwissRe back at the conference this year and hear how their Net Promoter journey has progressed since 2007. Mathias shared two real life examples with us.
Example 1 in B2B:
The central team co-ordinate a web based survey process, which has a 26 week cycle from survey set-up to launching improvement initiatives. It takes solid orchestration to engage divisional teams, local stakeholders and client managers to achieve consistent high client response rates and ensure closed loop follow-up takes place.
Back in May 2007 the baseline NPS was 9 (n=285 accounts & 600+ contacts) with a good 52% response rate from 600 contacts. 9 is not a market iconic score and one the team wanted to improve upon. Pealing the onion further, the relative importance and score of four key customer experience attributes provided additional insight on where to focus.
- Knowledge and expertise
- Timeliness and responsiveness
- Contact wording
- Value-added services
The following year the next wave showed an increase (NPS 17) for a comparable sample size. The target areas that improvement teams had focused on also went up. Knowledge and expertise moved from 22 to 48 and Timeliness/Responsiveness also improved from 3 to 18. It was clear where shifts in detractors, passives and promoters had occurred.
The takeaway learning's are simple and classic:
- Data needs to be trustworthy to be actionable
- Full commitment from business leaders is a critical success factor
- Focus on a few things to improve upon that are achievable
- Establish clear ownership
- Allow sufficient time for the improvement initiative to kick in before going back to the customer install base with another survey wave.
The icing on the cake was an additional proof point that any business wants to have. Promoters paid on average 5% more than passives and 10% more than low scoring detractors!
Example 2:
This time a single Line of Business in a core market. Back in May 2007 the baseline Net Promoter Score was -3.7, again not a score to shout about in an Apple store! Cultural differences in scale response were sighted as potential factors. Again a simple correlation against NPS revealed two attributes would give the biggest bang for the buck, “Achieve objectives” and “Value-added Services” so an improvement plan was launched and focused on passives. In May 2009, the 3rd round of conducting the survey the NPS improved to 34. The distribution changed significantly. 36% Passives. 50% Promoters. Cultural differences did not get mentioned this time!
So what are the key takeaways form these real life examples and what makes teams successful in improving an Ne Promoter Score?
Do
- Secure strong buy-in from business leaders
- Establish a high degree of employee engagement – e.g Client managers must follow up within their accounts especially with detractors
- Communicate success stories out to the wider organization
Dont
- Blame the staus quo
- Focus too much on the score, but more on the improvement
- Allow time for improvement initiative to hold before going back to survey clients again
Both excellent examples of taking timely action on actionable insight. Well done!
