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:
- Client focus
- Leadership
- Excellence
- Aspiration
- 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.
