European Conference Blog 2009

Virgin Media: Neil Berkett Puts Customers at the Heart of Things

info@netpromoter.com — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:00:20 GMT

Businesses just can't afford to have too many detractors, either among customers or within the employee base. As Neil put it, this is absolutely at the core of almost any consumer buisness he has seen over the years that is not performing optimally.

Virgin Media was formed out of the merger of 42 different cable franchises. But the big challenge was that the entire industry, which was consolidating, had a culture based almost solely on financial engineering. In 2006, when they first acquired Virgin Mobile, he realized that there was a steep effort ahead because of the expectations that come with operating under the Virgin brand.

So they started their NPS journey in 2007, to drive a quantum leap in their customer experience. Their cost structure was at least as good as any competitor, but the big challenge for their business model was tenure...they were not keeping customers long enough.

How have they done?

Have driven churn down from 1.8% per month, down to 1.1% per month...and 0.35% of that was from customers who moved house from being on the network to off. In terms of NPS, they have had a 33 point improvement in operational NPS, and nearly a 20 point increase in relationship NPS.

Neil sees a direct relationship from NPS to the number of customers you keep, and also to the cost structure. So they chose NPS as the metric to embed in their balanced scorecard. They started the journey with Satmetrix in 2007, and now they have moved to the point where they are measuring NPS at every touchpoint, and also have started to measure NPS by product.

Take action on what customers say

If you are going to bother to measure what the customers think, be sure you fix them. Virgin understands this, having collected over 600,000 customer responses...and they have taken action in many areas. For example, customers are very specific about getting it right the first time. They knew intuitively that first time resolution was important, but having the measurement helped drive the change into the company. The same applies for call centre performance, but in-house and outsourced.

Think of NPS as a culture change tool

Virgin has over 22,000 employees, and he commented that NPS serves as a key focus point to drive culture change. This includes all parts of their operation, as well as outsourced service providers. It's about embedding the thinking of the customer throughout the organisation.

What about compensation?

From Neil's perspective, if you believe in customer experience and have chosen NPS as the metric, then put it into the compensation scheme. Align the organisation to the metrics that are important to you. He pointed out that you may not need to take this all the way down to individual employee level, but it is important to him that all key managment players share this goal, so that they can drive the right behaviors within their teams.

NPS is just a tool

In closing, Neil reinforced the point that NPS is just a tool. Ultimately, it's up to you to lead the organisation and run your company.

1. Don't overthink the customer's feedback.

2. NPS is an operating discipline, it's not a research tool.

3. If you're not prepared to act, don't bother asking.

4. If you don't align the organisation to your operating model, then you won't get long-term success.

5. By focusing on fixing the issues of most significance to the customer, you will get bettter

My favorite quote from Neil:

"Just implementing NPS doesn't change how you are running the business."

Why a 10 isn't perfection - its just a measure of surprise!

info@netpromoter.com — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 06:34:22 GMT

One of the things that comes back time and again at this year's Net Promoter Conference in London is the advice that the Net Promoter scale isn't an absolute measure of achievement but rather an encouragement to delight once more.

You see numbers are finite but experiences are not.

Clients sometimes ask 'what's next once you reach a 10?' After all 10 is perfection right?

Wrong? Virgin Media, ING, Philips, BUPA, Fiat - all say the same thing - a 10 on the NPS scale is just the recognition of delight - positive surprise if you like. In fact I would encourage everyone to see the NPS scale as a 'Surprisometer'.

So the challenge then become how you positively surprise next time. And that's the reality of Net Promoter. If you see it as just a metric then a 10 is job done - the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question. But if you see it as a Discipline then 10 is just an the Ultimate Encouragement to delight next time and every time. And because you can't surprise with exactly the same experience a second time, then you need to find small ways to surprise once more. So use Net Promoter as your own Surprisometer and rise to the challenege of delighting customers on every occasion.

It takes Discipline to improve your customer experience

info@netpromoter.com — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:45:13 GMT

Every now and then someone tells me they have been disappointed with Net Promoter because it didn't really do anything for their organisation. In every case so far the reason has been that they have only asked the Ultimate Question as part of a brand tracking survey. They have captured a number but not the reasons behind it.

At best this is interesting but in reality probably useless in terms of the practical difference it will make to a business.

The verbatim feedback from customers brings NPS to life. But if it's positive change you're looking for then what you really need is Discipline - or the Net Promoter Discipline. One of the fundamental tenets of Net Promoter is that it measures the difference between expectations and experiences. And the average product or service delivery chain embraces a host of experiences or touchpoints. And every touchpoint represents an opportunity to delight or to disappoint. So in reality unless you understand how you perform at every important touchpoint you will never truly be able to drive a better customer experience. That's why I believe Net Promoter works best when it moves beyond a relationship metric to a become a business Discipline that drives the ability to exceed expectations at every touchpoint. One of the companies that is reaping the rewards of this approach is Virgin Media who not only collects at least 1000 pieces of customer feedback every day but passes it on to the employee who 'touched' the customer during the delivery of the service. That's really listening to customers. In my view you have to understand the customer journey and make every employee understand their vital role in delighting customers at every touchpoint on the journey if you want to build a busines based on loyal customers who become advocates.