Net Promoter Community

Sometimes the term Net Promoter can seem to get in the way of a really great idea - the idea that happiness is a business model; that the best way to grow your business is to make your customers smile.

Yes, smile. Forget for a moment arcane discussions about the metric itself or the corporate babble-speak around associated business processes.  And look at Net Promoter for what it is; a business ethic that is based on the simple premise that doing business for good (delighting customers) is good for business (organic growth).

Take Chris Askew, from Lenovo who is up on stage now, talking about Lenovo’s Customer Delight Program that has substantially increased the number of smiling customers (NPS up 16%) all whilst trimming costs by 15%.  Chris’ words could be those of the great philosopher John Stuart Mill, author of On Liberty, and who developed “the greatest happiness principle” - that when faced with a choice, we must first consider the likely consequences of potential actions and, from that, choose to do what we believe will generate most pleasure.  This is the moral code that Lenovo follows - and as a result Lenovo is growing their business by making customers happy, and receiving some 39,000 gifts per month from happy Lenovo users.  And it is also this moral code (utilitarianism if you want a label) of maximizing customer happiness that is at the heart of Net Promoter.

So, take the cue from Lenovo if you want a cocktail party version of what Net Promoter is all about - it’s about making happiness your business model.

Anna-Marie Fielding, who is Head of Customer Experience and Business Intelligence at BUPA International, gave one of  the most engaging and authentic presentations at the Net Promoter Conference (earning her three rounds of applause in the same session).

Only seven months into her business’ NPS journey, she provided us with an update on the lessons her organization had learned along the way, and the journey that was a head.  For a full review of what she had to say, I refer to her presentation, which you can find at Net Promoter Case Study Library.

This goes into the ways in which BUPA discovered that focusing on “non-claimants” was at least as important as focusing on those that did bring in claims.  Also transforming the process of pre-authorisation into a positive experience, had instant impact.

But for me, the most remarkable things in the presentation went beyond the insurance industry.  According to Anna-Maria, 95% of companies collect customer feedback, but only 50% tell their staff about it (and in the end only 10% act).
To avoid this same mistake, BUPA has focused a large amount of attention on the people in the organization.  These were encouraged to actively engage in the business and the Net Promoter programme.  Feeding back customer information.  Encouraging people to identify new ways in which they could “act better”.

And asking the – not so rethorical – question: Would you Recommend You?

Because it is only when the people in the organisation truly engage with the idea of customer centricity (beyond the NPS metric), that change can start to happen.

Martyn Christian, Director, Demand Programs Marketing & Communications, IBM UK & Ireland

Martyn began the presentation focused on FileNet, a company acquired by IBM in which he ran the customer loyalty program. Some of the challenges faced by FileNet was that customers were becoming increasingly concentrated – meaning this was a business based 75% on renewals, sales teams were hunters, not farmers, and likewise their enterprise solutions did not have good brand image and packaging.

Martyn discussed the types of survey processes they followed, but more importantly he also focused on the commitment of executives that really drove the program. While in the beginning their goals were specific to increased revenue and profitability, the NP became a critical business metric as well, showing over approximately a 4 year timeframe an improvement from -6 to +20%. For those of you tracking your own NPS, you realize this shift is hard to do without a great deal of focus.

Martyn attributes this great success in which they created a community of positively focused customers as a key differentiator and most likely made them an attractive acquisition target for IBM.

All was not rosey, however, Martyn also depicted some of the trials and tributions – a few of these:

• That people generally dissent at first
• That you have to actively engage the organization, not just hope that it happens,
• That you have to have a lot of patience.

While FileNet collected customer feedback through surveys, they also followed a multi-pronged strategy for customer experience improvement – including customer case studies, internal evangelism, creating a loyalty council, creating sales tools for distribution to prospects about their focus on the customer.

In addition, FileNet focused as well on making customer feedback part of the organizational scorecard, especially for organizations that did not seem as committed to the customer.

Some of the biggest wins, Martyn attributed to their program . . .

1. When you have high net promoters score and customers willing to talk for you, there are huge sideline benefits.  They were able to significantly increase the number of customers who would speak on your behalf.
2. They tied compensation for everyone to the program.
3. In terms of funding, the CFO owns the budget (now this one was really innovative!!).  Martyn wisely pointed out that having the CFO own budget meant that the budget was less likely to be cut and that the CFO looked carefully at ways that would enhance customer focused efforts that also had positive business impact.
4. Recognizing people internally for superior customer service

In transitioning from the FileNet story, Martyn spoke about IBM as a company that has acquired over 100 companies since 1995. Of course this can create dramatic confusion in terms of customer relationships.  One of the first moves in understanding the FileNet customer experience vs. the IBM customer experience was to understand the core overlapping customers. They found that 75% of FileNet customers were not in a relationship with IBM.

One of their strategies, therefore, was to introduce educational marketing documents referred to as CALM (customer acquisition loyalty marketing.)  With these documents, they could begin to communicate the values, expectations, etc. which opened the communication channels.  As a result, those customers that overlapped had an increase in their positive perception of the combined companies by 200%, while the neutral perceptions decreased by 400%.

The latter half of the presentation was a story of how a company that was acquired tries to get out in front of customer communications. The end result is that active dialogue can in fact create positive perception.  While some companies would use a wait and see strategy, clearly FileNet and IBM did not fall into this camp.

Matthias Lüfkens of the World Economic Forum (aka. the people organizing the Davos summit) was kind enough to replace Nils Andres of the Brand Science Institute as a speaker in the track of “Getting Your Customers Talking”.

It made for an intriguing session on the opportunities offered by digital and social media, which in the end no company can ignore. For this, Matthias took the audience on a tour of the various initiatives undertaken by the World Economic Forum’s social media team (consisting of himself), imparting valuable nuggets of advice along the way.

The most important ones I retained from the session were:

• Website visitors have become irrelevant

In the past, there was always a fascination by the number of people that “visited” a website, but today, this number has become much less relevant. People surf, mish, mash and compile their world view from a large variety of sources. If you want to be part of their reality, this means you have to place your brand where they are, and not expect them to come to you.

• Store content everywhere

But a mere presence by “having an account of Facebook or Twitter” is not enough. You have to actively participate in these environments and store your content everywhere. As an example Matthias gave his decision to also publish most of the WEF photo library on Flickr, and even make it available under a Creative Commons License.

• Be prepared to lose control

Getting out there means that good, but also bad things can happen to your brand, and the content you share. This is also the case for the W.E.F. where those opposing the Davos Summit, defame the event and its participants online. In the view of Matthias, this is however something to “live with”, and by countering it with lot’s of positive information, you can “drown out” most of the negative comments.

• Create Communities

While you cannot control, you “can” influence. That is why as a final piece of advice, Matthias advised to actively reach out to online relationships and create special communities which received privileged information in return for an open dialogue (in this Davos created a special mini-community of journalists who receive information still under embargo.

For the rest Matthias shared some real gems online, of which my personal favourite was the effort by Queen Rania of Jordania, who actively reaches out to the country through her own blog and website. Also he showed examples of how the W.E.F. gave people on the internet the opportunity to directly ask questions to the speakers at the Davos event.

All in all, this was an inspiring session, which left many of those present with an appetite for more information and action in the areas of digital and social media.

Marc Anné, Vice President, Customer Insight & Advocacy, Orange Business Services

While some of you may now Orange as one of the 50 most recognized brands in the world, perhaps you didn’t know the breadth and depth of Orange Business Services (OBS).

Marc began the presentation highlighting the complexity of Orange Business Services (global telecommunication services) serving over 3750 multinational companies around the globe.

Starting in 2006, one of the benefits that OBS has was a CEO who was a great visionary, who also believed that outstanding customer experience should be central to everything they did. As well, Marc highlighted that they focused on other core cornerstones such as profitable growth, people development and competitive advantage.

One are that Marc noted that OBS performed extremely well at was its agility in times of change. He noted as a telecommunications company, change was something they expected which had made them an extremely flexible organization. This undoubtedly makes Orange a nimble organization for any time and place.

Marc then detailed their customer journey. When they started, he said they did not have a deep understanding of the customer experience. This was in part due to the mergers, which lost some of the “heart of the customer”. This phenomenon does not seem unique to OBS as organizations sometimes lose sight the customer at this very crucial time. In addition, due to the complexity of the relationships with the customers, there was a lack of understanding of who owned the customer relationship -- they had silos of ownership. He also noted that there was a lack of executive ownership at the time, and there were more spectators than doers. As well, there was little link between the customer data and core operations of the business.

So why change? One of the reasons was that they saw a clear difference in revenue growth between loyal vs. non loyal accounts so they realized that customer intimacy was critical to their growth strategy. So they launched a program called “Outstanding Customer Experience” as a transformational program for the business, not a quick fix.

Some of the core tenets of the program were that it helped them improve weak areas, yet also build on their strengths. In addition, it was a pragmatic prioritization – allowing them to focus their actions on areas that were customer priorities.

Marc also outlined two areas that the customer feedback was used for:

1. To focus at the individual customer level – addressing very specific customer issues – by business unit managers, end users etc. This focus was therefore at the account level. He noted that now more than ever in the recession, customers want reassurance and security. Therefore, it was very important to integrate the feedback into the account management rhythm and review process. In addition, OBS monitors this closed loop process very closely, making sure that the service improvement plans get the right people involved. Marc also mentioned the importance of understanding and measuring feedback from various account relationships – decision maker, end user etc – how important it was to get a “representative voice”. OBS also launched a series of initiatives around customer teaming – meaning how a global team can better serve the customer. They found by training employees on these skills, they were able to therefore have better focus on the customer, and hence improved loyalty compared to those teams that had not received this training.
2. A second area OBS is working on is improving overall end to end customer experience. In this area they are taking a broader view incorporating industry analysts, customer boards, as well as loyalty surveys. Through this focus they are making process improvements that will become part of the “natural life” of the company. By increasing efficiency, Marc emphasized that this allowed service managers more time to spend with the customer, which had an impact on customer intimacy.

Finally, Marc also showed some industry benchmarking noting that they are very good against the competition but are part of a “bad industry.” Therefore their comparison should be against ICT providers like IBM, HP, etc.

In summing up, Marc said that the key to an outstanding customer experience requires the following:

• Long term vision
• A structured approach
• Operational buy-in and focus
• Clear communication to employees to help mobilize them
• A focus on continued improvement

In terms of key takeaways, I think OBS has been able to be very focused on their customer intimacy strategy, despite complicated B2B relationships, mergers, economic changes. The story is a great one for all B2B businesses.

Guy Warren shared a fascinating story of the corporate turnaround at Misys and how Net Promoter fit in. He admitted they were up a creek without a paddle when he stepped in as the third executive of his business unit in 5 years. Their NPS was in the tank, and he had 5 written letters of complaint from CEOs in his first week on the job.

How did they approach this problem?

It was all about accepting change. As Darwin said, "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." And he pointed out that Misys had a good business, but it had not been responsive to change. Their strategy had been completely inside-out, and this filtered down to the way decisions were made.

So what did they do?

1. Values: They went to turn this on its head by focusing on the client. Thier strategy was "CLEAR"--following the acronym with these key values:

1. Client focus
2. Leadership
3. Excellence
4. Aspiration
5. Results

2. Incentives: "People are coin operated." If you tell people to improve customer experience but only compensate them on financial outcomes, they may well ignore it. So he has set out clear objectives for a 10% NPS improvement, independent of what happens with other key metrics. What does this do for them? It creates a window for people to make improvements in the customer experience, without having to base the entire case on financial data.

3. Customer Advisory Boards: They had been building banking software without direct input of banking users. That has changed completely. They now use multiple forums, including banks that are not even customers yet. This creates forums for the thought leaders in their industry to vet and influence their software development plans.

4. Goal Alignment: Guy showed a great chart that explained how executive metrics (including NPS), flow down to individual operating targets and goals within the business. For NPS, which represents 20% of executive bonus, the core underlying metrics they look toward to manage this are customer retention and employee loyalty.

They have taken the NPS from -44% to -11% in 2 years, versus an industry average of -2%. He admits that they still have a long way to go, but they are very proud of the massive improvements that have been made so far. And this has been reflected as well in their sales statistics. Their number of go-lives on new software implementations has skyrocketed, and they are now growing faster than the competition.

A lively and entertaining session, from Colin Shaw, CEO of Beyond Philosophy, kicking off with a 'spot the gorilla' film clip - the issue being we spend so much time obsessing over detail that we can miss the big things. That's when the silly things can creep in, in times like this, and before you know here you are..charging 'bad profits'!

He also told the story of the racing driver, who when interviewed, was asked 'when you saw the accident, did you slow down?' To which he replied, no i didn't, I knew everyone else would slow down so I speeded up!

He asked, what is the experience we are trying to deliver? Most companies don't know! We need to step back and recognise that customers are human beings, and driven by emotions, and are not transactions to be processed!

So, what are the emotions we are trying to evoke in our customers? Most customer experiences today are NOT deliberate or thought through, they are consequences of many decisions the organsation has taken, So, they can come about by accident. So, is our customer experience deliberate?

Colin told a story about something my own company, Aviva, did, in the General Insurance field, a couple of years ago. There are lots of subconscious signals that companies give to customers but if you ask them to articulate them, they may not be able to do so but which do have an impact on the customers. Like pens on chains in banks!

So, we need to find ways to surface the subconscious, In the case study, a car was crashed, and then Colin's team had to go through the whole claims process. Little things then started to happen..... the first question the contact centre asked was, what is your policy number, and of course they did not know, as he was not at home! When the recovery vehicle arrived, the customer was told, we have to take you home, but the customer said I would rather be taken 5 miles down the road to my office than 100 miles to my home, but told, no we can't do that, we need to take you home, thats what the policy says!

The point is, there is an emotional journey that customers go through as well as a 'process' or physical or rational thing.

We then switched to audience voting, based on how we felt during a story Colin told us about his airline experience at the airport, involving coaches to different airports, fighting for places on the coach, having to load own luggage into coach, being counted in "there are 31 of THEM", queuing, only to be told you are in the wrong queue.

So, a very entertaining presentation, that also illustrated to me the power of stories - I guess quite a few of us will remember Colin's terrible airport experience for some time, and who knows, even tell others about it!

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Federico Cesconi, Director of Business Intelligence, Cablecom, in Switzerland - very powerful presentation on how to follow up with detractors, and improve retention. This is a huge issue for almost all organisations these days.

In 2006 Cablecom 'met' NPS - one of the few companies that started not in measuring it, but in closing the loop, before being aware of the methodology - only later did he realise that it was the NPS he was calculating. They now use the NPS question to add accuracy in a Propensity to Churn data mining model. So, for example, they found that the key moment is around 9 months in the lifecycle, so he put in place a process to contact at 7 months to score NPS, and then callbacks were triggered depending on the scores. This proved to be very successful - in 52% of cases, the customer moved from detractor to passive or promoter - 23% directly to promoters.

Now they use NPS as a quarterly KPI, but when they started one of the first things they did was to sit down the top managers and give them 4 customer telephone numbers to ring up, ask the NPS question, and then start a dialogue with them.

He also stressed that if you use NPS as a KPI it has a huge cultural benefit, as all start to talk the same language, and now people who have never been interested in satisfaction are now asking for data!

It is now so embedded in the DNA, that external advertising uses real customers in posters showing what they like about Cablecom - very cool!

They collect around 40,000 feedbacks per month, and use text mining, But then, vitally important to take the holistic view of the whole customer experience, need to overcome problem of people listening to market research but doing nothing. And what about the 'proof points'? Their analysis tells that the Customer Lifertime Value of detractors is half the CLV of promoters

Federico's final message.........despite all the technology and systems, you cannot really claim to know your customers without truly listening to the voice of the customer