You're pushing all the right buttons and your customers are more than likely to recommend you to their friends, family, colleagues and even their parish priest? But between being willing to recommend and actually doing so, there's a gap that is not easily bridged.

After all, the payoff for generating positive word-of-mouth and recommendations for your business can be big. Word-of-mouth is validated as the largest influencer in B2B and B2C buying decisions. A recommendation from a peer is the strongest medium money can buy.

But to move from "likeliness to recommend" to "active recommendations", every business needs to do more than delight its customers. It needs to be worth talking about. The harsh truth is that - as a customer - no matter how much I like you, I will only talk about you if it makes *my* conversations more interesting. If it increases *my* prestige of being "in the know". If it makes *my* friends laugh, or smarter, or happier.

Achieving this takes planning. But having been involved in two Management Centre Europe projects which among other things looked at this challenge, I have learned that it can be done. One was the redefinition of the Lexus Customer Experience. The other, the introduction of storytelling at Gemalto.

Here is what I learned:

STEP 1. Look at all those who can talk, not just the customer

In our drive to get customers to become promoters, it is easy to forget that there are others out there who can also speak well of our brand or business. They are the "influencers". The faceless group of people who say good or bad things about your brand, regardless wether they ever used it. But they are not to be disregarded. Some research even suggests that non-users may be more active promoters or detractors than actual customers. So when setting up programmes to identify and activate promoters, don't just stop at the customer. Include "everyone" who is exposed to your brand or business.

STEP 2. Dig for the emotion

To get people to talk about your brand or business they need to be passionate. And passion is an emotion. But people don't always tell you what they feel, even when asking all the right (NPS) questions. For example, in automotive, half of the women entering a showroom feel intimidated about the prospect of having to negotiate with a male. But unless specifically asked in the right way, hardly any of them will volunteer this information. Still, whithout that deeper, emotional, level, there will be no passion, and hence no real conversation. That is why you need to complement your NPS research efforts, with insight research that digs beneath the surface and uncovers the true emotional triggers.

STEP 3. Script a "talkworthy moment" at every step of the customer journey

Customer journeys shouldn't be "too scripted", but it does pay to include "remarkable moments" at every step the customer takes. This is not necessarily the proverbial "moment of truth" which helps your customer deepen their engagement with your business. Is a typically a small moment which is remarkable enough that people actually think it is worth talking about. For example, at Lexus UK they once had a woman's favourite doughnuts waiting for her, 3 years after she last visited the dealership. While no doughnut ever sold a car, in this case it did make a great piece of conversation.

STEP 4. Bring in the Storytellers

Sometimes people need a hand. Not everyone is equally gifted in telling passionate and relevant stories, even if they are about events that happened to them. Also, unique moments sometimes need amplification to be heard by more than the people involved. So once you have something remarkable happening, capture it. Bring in storytellers to structure it in a narrative that is easily retold. Create compilations which can be circulated through the business. Make your business' stories spreadable. Lexus once did this by compiling a Book of Legends. At Gemalto we did a global story hunt. And of course the classics like FedEx, Ritz or Nordström need no further mention.

STEP 5. Don't forget your staff

Finally, there are the people that work in your business. If you are a large corporation, their recommendation impact, and that of their friends and families, can be massive. Running the numbers in past projects I've been involved in, we have seen staff WoM affect upto a million individuals. The final step (or is it the first one?) is therefore be to make sure that the people who work for your company actively promote your business everywhere they go. Not because you tell them, but becaus they are willing, skilled and able to do so.

Lenna Mariana's session on Benchmarking your NPS performance raised a number of old chestnuts about 'The Score' and the need to understand the context of your market and your territory.

One of the counter-intuitive things about NPS for newbies is the concept that a negative score can be good. Negative always has to be bad - right?  Lenna's summary of the Satmetrix cross-cultural benchmarks in Europe really drove home three key messages for me:

1.     You need to understand your score in the context of your competitors. This is particulalry important as in some markets, the market average may be a negative NPS score BUT if you have an above average NPS score you can typically expect to out-perform competitors who do not. In fact the study by the London School of Economics identified some interesting trends here.

2.     You need to understand your score in the context of your territory. The European benchmarks covered by Lenna show some fascinating things. For example the average score in Western Europe is lower than the 25% in Southern Europe. So if you work for a multi-national that believes in league tables, the UK team could be best in class in the UK but seemingly failing against the score for Italy where the team may only be average against their competitors. Understanding this is vital to motivating a rewarding teams correctly.

3.     The verbatim responses from customers are usually more valuable than the number. If you haven't the benefit of benchmarks for your market sector and territory, it is worth remembering that the verbatim feedback from your customers about the reasons for your score will provide the insight you need to raise your game. The Net Promoter Score without this context could actually be an unhelpful guide if you don't understand the importance of cultural and market differences.

The Satmetrix benchmarks are well worth a look for organisations keen to understand where they stand against their competition.

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.

By now we know that focusing on the customer can help you grow sales, build loyalty and even get customers to recommend you to others. There are even a growing number of people that deploy the Net Promoter Score or similar metrics as a tool to achieve just that.

But while the ultimate number can point you in the right direction, it cannot change the way your business operates. That needs to be done by your people. They need to understand why customer focus is important. Be prepared to walk the customer talk. Truly listen to the customer. Change their habits and behaviours. Even re-organise the business.

We've learned at Management Centre Europe that this is a totally different ball game. Over the past 3 years we've been involved in a variety of companies wanting to focus on the customer. We've even done it to ourselves. And while metrics are important, we found that only companies that place equal value on the mindset of their people, stand a fighting chance.

On this note, I’d like to share five success factors we've picked up along the way. The list is far from exhaustive, yet it’s definitely a place to start.

Success Factor 1: Show them the money

No matter which way you look at it, businesses are about money. Shareholders want returns. Staff wants to be paid. So any conversation about customer focus should start with the money, and the measurable profits the business can make by making customers “happy,”  plus the bonuses that can be earned by growing customer delight. Only if both the leaders and the staff of the business clearly see what’s in it for them and for the business, will they consider changing their behaviour.

Success Factor 2: Involve everyone

Customer focus is not about graphs and PowerPoint presentations. It is about having your people experience what customers are looking for. Showing them why customer focus matters. How their job, no matter how customer-remote, can have an impact. That is why it’s important to involve everyone in the business in the customer research conversations taking place. And rather than prescribe the right behaviour, encourage them to formulate for themselves what customer focus means in their job.

Success Factor 3: Adapt the KPI’s

Getting your people to understand the importance of customer focus and what it means to their job is a start. But if the KPI’s they face tell a different story, the initial enthusiasm will quickly disappear. Efficiency measures can eliminate staff time to deal with the customer. Cost controls can create bad profits. Project priority sheets can lead people astray. As a third – crucial - step businesses need to review every KPI they use. Does it encourage people to do what is right? Or does it get in the way? Is it customer-focused, or is it customer-toxic? After all, only when every KPI is aligned, will the people be able to put their intentions into practice.

Success Factor 4: Back it with leadership support

Once people are willing to do what is right for the customer and have formulated a vision of how this applies to them, they need to be empowered to act. This is where the leadership of the business comes into play. They need to allocate resources to the right places, encourage the right behaviours and forgive well-intended mistakes. They need to set the example by actively talking to customers, and doing what is right. And when processes, habits or politics get in the way, they need to be decisive and clear that the customer focus drive is not up for debate.

Success Factor 5: Break the silos

But even empowered employees can only achieve so much. After all, customer feedback typically doesn’t fit the processes and silos you have devised for your business. That is why customer focus should not become the responsibility of any given department (marketing, sales, or service). Instead, cross-functional teams should be created and resourced to understand what customer focus means across departments. And subsequently align individual parts of the organisation so they "deliver what is right for the customer and for the business."

Success Factor 6: Focus on mindset and completion

Any customer feedback system is a rear view mirror for your business. It can tell you how well your business has done and trigger improvement projects, but it cannot predict the future. Every new situation will be different and your people need to instinctively select the right actions. For this they should rely on the customer facts, but above all on a mindset in which they know what matters most, and are free to do this.

I’ll be writing more on this topic in the coming weeks, but would welcome your views either by commenting below or by getting in touch at alain.thys@services.mce-ama.com. Alternatively, I look forward to seeing you at the Net Promoter Conference.