Net Promoter Community

We were lucky to have David Speakman, chairman of Travel Counsellors, with us today to share his humor and his thoughts on how to succeed through trusted relationships.

Before I summarize some of David’s key points, it’s worth highlighting that his team of independent work-from-home travel counsellors earn some of the highest Net Promoter Scores in the world at more than 90% (94% based on their most recent data post-travel). At this level of performance, they have the travel counsellors call up any customers with a score of 8 or below, and their standard for excellence is the perfect 10.

David’s entertaining speech gave us a glimpse of how they accomplish this.

The Business Concept for Travel Counsellors

A serial entrepreneur, David started his career as a grocer, opened a couple of restaurants (one a great success, one not), and started another travel agency, all before the concept for Travel Counsellors was born.

When he decided to get back into the travel agency business, he designed the business model for Travel Counsellors from scratch. He didn’t want a big staff or lots of overhead and phone bills, but he DID want to inspire people and he wanted people to be their own bosses.

Their unique formula creates that autonomy for their independent travel counsellors to be successful, by getting the core support they need from a central team in the UK that provides training, systems, processes, and the other key business needs.

The company has grown from a start-up to a network of more than 700 independent counsellors that generate more than £310 million of sales turnover.

Hiring for the Right Traits

An opening video told the story of one travel counsellor who recounted her sense of pride in serving her clients. As David put it, “You have to spend the time to get the right people into the business.”

They have found that the best travel consultants are team players, they want to belong, and they are family-oriented. They learned through trial and error that the right profile was not someone who wanted to start their own business, but instead someone who is passionate about service and making a personal connection with the customer. What Travel Counsellors did was to remove all of the hassles of running a small business, and handle this overhead so that counsellors could do what they like best: build relationships.

Relationships Are More than Service – It’s about Emotion

David describing his philosophy for creating emotional connections that go beyond “transactional service” to the heart of what makes for a trusted relationship with the customer. In the age of our technology economy, David pointed out some of his favorite quotes, including:

“Emotion is the one human ability that cannot be automated.”

“Companies need to understand that their products are less important than their stories.”

They analysed what really makes the difference between the most successful travel counsellors and the average ones. From this, they developed a list of 13 Golden Habits. They have made these Golden habits part of the management software that is provided to every work-from-home counsellor, reinforcing behaviours that help them build and sustain strong relationships. The company also compiles a book of stories about the good work of its counsellors to further reinforce the Golden Habits.

But it’s not just about culture. Their management software also embeds and tracks the value of referrals. For each travel counsellor they keep track not only of the number of referrals they get, but also who those referred customers are, and the value of travel bookings from referred customers over time. This helps them to truly understand the network effect of word-of-mouth recommendations and referrals for their bottom line and for the travel counsellor’s personal business.

How to Differentiate: “Don’t super-transact, super-relate!”

David illustrated the difference between transactional vs. relational models of interaction with these comparisons:

• Shopper vs. Customer
• Demands customer service vs. Looks to trust someone
• Short-term customer vs. Long-term customer
• Fear of not getting the lowest price vs. Fear of making the wrong choice
• Looks for price vs. Looks for expertise
• Does not value your service vs. Pays what you are worth
• Does not want a relationship vs. Wants a trusted friend

The bottom line: you want to create a relationship so that people trust you. “It’s not about the money” was David’s big message. If you do the right thing, then the money comes to you. If you get the relationship right, then you will get the money right.

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The Proof is in the Programme: Incremental Steps to Success
Marc Berendes – Head of Enterprise Solutions Europe, Abbott Diagnostics

Moving from a traditional market research approach to NPS around 2007 based on reading “The Ultimate Question” and the threat of merging with a major global organisation.

Customer loyalty journey in a B2B business:

• Buy-in from stakeholders was key first step to getting started despite initial resistance at Exec level, based on the need to understand their customers.
• Build a core of champions across the organisation to drive the programme.
• Transactional NPs focus initially piloted with the service line but then expanded across the customer journey (to include sales, delivery, quality of product)
• Closed loop process in place from the beginning which include email alerts and 72 hour response
• Changed the mind-set to drive a customer centric culture moving away from a product centric culture
• Success only achieved through the commitment of the country managers
• Institutionalise the NPs programme by using  the champions at country meetings to relay feedback and subsequent actions and success
• Gain buy-in from internal detractors – very important to get this sorted out by aligning all departments and functions
• GM annual bonus plan linked to NPS
• NPS is part of all management goals from 2010 – this has made a fundamental difference because decision informed by the voice of the customer based on commentaries
• Focus on NPS training across the organisation plus new joiners, service and sales training
• Aligned the sales organisation to the new NPS mind-set
• Customer satisfaction has led to increased profits to the extent that it has generated additional finding for R&D
• Communication across the organisation to make the programme real
• Communication back to the customers about the programme
• Cultural differences exist and the results vary widely – no clear reason behind this.
  • The NPS programme has led to several improvements across the organisation, including quality improvement, service delivery, product changes, packaging
  • Sales force reorganisation to be more responsive to the customer needs through NPS
• Changed and built trust across the organisation – customercenticity is now global and the journey continues

Robyn Weeda Stephenson, Director, Program Management Office, World Wide Support and Customer Experience, Consumer Division Symantec

Gerlof returned this year to share with us his 2010 game plan.

Ball is a worldwide player in the packaging & beverage can market. Ball supply global, national and regional brands including Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Carlsberg and Nestle. In Europe alone, 800 truck deliveries are made every day and for some clients a truck arrives every 3 hours. In fact a staggering 1.6billion beverage cans a year! If I was to put these end-to-end they would stretch way past the end of my garden, having already circled the earth 6 times.

So in this price focused volume market, how is Ball able to distinguish itself from the competition, and position itself to provide a full range of services, while increasing margins in a sustainable way?

In 2009 Ball launched a customer VIP (Value Improvement Relationship) programme based on NPS. Ball use Voice of Customer data to get close to their customers and understand what their customers expect and really want. Gerlof explained how they use this to engage employees to listen & take action all in an effort to add value and move their customer relationships from satisfaction to loyalty.

Capturing VoC at an account level is what enables Ball to take action on the key NPS drivers and relative importance for that account. Ball now have 80 improvement initiatives running. A complete contrast to the old method of asking customers a 96-question survey that took almost an hour to complete and provided a Powerpoint deck the width of a telephone book!  Account level feedback is far more actionable and Ball now has 80 improvement initiatives in progress.

The VIP logo has also helped. Everyone within Ball Packaging and customers alike knows this internal branding. Both are also familiar with the logo and what it stands for, so it helps drive up participation. Today was Gerlof’s 36th presentation this year. You have to keep communicating. The more you do it, the higher the chance employees will stay engaged. The same goes for the Board of management. You have to feed their interest and involvement. A theme we heard about from other speakers at the conference this year. At ball the Mgt team review the NPS and progress every month. The NPS (currently 35) is less important than the trend.

So what are the key learning's so far?

• Closing the loop with customer immediately after taking the survey
• Communicate and communicate again
• Celebrate success – If a customer gives you a 10
• Take action at the account level – Key NPS drivers can differ significantly by account
• Right customers right service – Not all services to all customers
• Keep the board informed & maximize their participation

Finally, service excellence creates loyal customers and loyal customers are prepared to pay a premium for a high value service. “At contract re-negotiation a loyal client always come back and are always prepared to give us the last chance on the final contract price, said Gerlof”

They do what it says on the tin!

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Marc Berendes, head of Enterprise Solutions at Abbott Diagnostics in Europe, explained their journey rolling out Net Promoter in a business-to-business setting.

Abbott has 72,000 employees worldwide, with a broad range of healthcare related products from diagnostic instruments to pharmaceuticals. The company started its Net Promoter programme in Germany and the UK and has expanded it to 36 countries within the diagnostic division during the last 2 years, and now is using it globally.

Marc explained the process for building internal confidence and buy-in around Net Promoter. Getting key executives to buy-in was the first step. “I know my customers,” was often the first reaction. But they were able to overcome this by illustrating the importance of using NPS to motivate change throughout the organization. Each country’s General Manager selected an NPS co-ordinator from their team, and a network across the division was built up over the course of 8 months.

Then it was time to get to work. They started with a pilot programme focused on the service experience, but they quickly expanded to get a more complete view of the overall customer experience. They also put in place a follow up process for Detractors that engaged front line managers and process leaders. The country co-ordinators also stepped forward to work on systematic improvement opportunities and present to country leadership teams on improvement actions.

Abbott Diagnostics also found that sharing success stories internally was a key motivator. They built momentum by communicating about small, relatively easy changes that made a meaningful impact on the customer’s experience. For example, they implemented a simple change to their packing materials to make it easier for the customer to open the package. Customers also said that the product shelf-life was too short. But on further investigation, they learned that the real issue was delivering the right amount on a more frequent basis to ensure that products would not expire before the need for use.

Communicating effectively with customers during times of change was another key learning. When Abbott Diagnostics undertook a sales force reorganization, the first unit to implement it saw a drop in NPS of nearly 30 points. As they followed up, they learned that the real issue was not the organizational changes per se. Those changes were sound and were the right business strategy. The missing piece of the puzzle was communication. Customers were not adequately informed of the changes, and in many cases they had developed trusted relationships with their account contact and were concerned about what might happen next. They took this learning from the first country and used it to implement the reorganization in a more proactive fashion in other markets, with successful results.

Encouraging A Creative Approach to Problem-Solving in the Call Centre

Jura Schoeder, EU CS Customer Loyalty Supervisor, EU CS Service Development , eBay International AG

Jura starts by giving us some key statistics on eBay....apparently you could have bought a town in Texas for over $4 million or if you're quick a women’s handbag...one sells every 3 seconds! (with Lady Thatcher for over $75k).

Unlike other companies eBay Customer Support typically has 2 customers...the buyer and the seller and  either is trying to explain eBay's process to one or other or 'police' between the two...tricky.

So how do you 'close the loop' with these two customers and ensure them that contacting Customer Support is a good experience and not a negative one as results previously found.

Jura shared their approach from a recent pilot specifically aimed at improving the customer experience for customers at this touchpoint.

The Pilot had a number of key areas:

• agreed to call back time to discuss the customer query
• a call back 'tracking' sheet with pre-defined areas to populate and cover off during the call back
• time set aside for agents to review the query and be fully prepared for the call
• training and support on key messages around eBay policies so explanations are clear and more customer friendly

The results?

Well customers were surprised and delighted to get a call back at the scheduled time...further proof on the obvious notion of delivering on a promise!

By ensuring agents were well prepared in advance they were able to fully respond to the query and in nearly all cases actually resolve the query on the call, increasing 1st time resolution

As a result of the above NPS on this key touchpoint improved dramatically from a minus to a plus and the approach will now be rolled out further.

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The Weir Group PLC, Alan Harrison, Global Lean Champion,

Weir’s mission is a “journey” of excellence and Alan’s advice to the audience is to “Think Happy”, which then translates into Customer Experience, ultimately leading to Customer Delight ... therefore always put yourself in the “mind of the customer”. Adopt a customer mindset.

Weir aim to deliver customer delight by combining NPS, specific commercial investments and lean improvement programs across their business working on the following key areas:

1. Process improvements are optimized when:
   • Weir understand what customers think about Weir,
   • Systems are integrated and include Lotus Notes and Satmetrix;
   • 6 monthly review cycles focusing on quality and timing of responses;
   • Closed loop process that is operated with urgency, across the organization, driven by county MD’s and has 100% close rate.
2. People within Weir make the difference by:
   • Adopting a problem solving mindset – how to fix, contain and prevent problems from occurring again,
   • Driven by a core HQ team supported by NPS champions within each country,
   • Correct mix of tools applied with 80% dedicated to soft tools (People & Mindsets) and 20% hard tools (process fixes),
   • Focus on training people in the “Why NPS?” and they will figure out what?, where? & how?  Themselves.

Weir’s are still on the journey and they have already learnt a number of important lessons, including:

1. Once you ask customers for feedback you must do something about it – they get back to every customer,
2. Quality of incoming responses is critical to validity of analysis and improvements,
3. Must be top manager led and championed.

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Christophe De Vusser, partner in Bain & Company’s Brussels office, kicked off the afternoon today with a fresh new angle on why delighting customers can delight investors too.

He gave us a view of how to use NPS to accelerate sales, in the context of private equity firms post-acquisition. The first half of his talk was a great introduction to the mindset of private-equity investors, and how NPS can fit as a strategic tool to build value based on operating fundamentals.

Christophe described the 3 main ways for private equity firms to make money from their investments.

1. Increasing leverage
2. Improving P to E multiples
3. Increasing earnings (either through top line growth, margin improvement, working capital management, or a combination of these)

For the past several years, while money was cheap, most private equity firms were making money using leverage and expansion of P to E multiples. But in the current environment, with debt being harder to come by and multiples being lower, this has focused investors instead back on the core business. Today, they need to demonstrate increased operating value based on the underlying business fundamentals.

This third strategy is not easy to accomplish, but it is now the critical driver for making a return on investments in private equity. Cutting costs is tempting, but this doesn’t typically give the level of returns that investors are looking for. The key, instead, is to demonstrate sustained relative market share growth, and to demonstrate that you have a repeatable growth model to sustain this.

NPS is an excellent tool to accomplish this according to Christophe. It usually starts by demonstrating how a change in NPS (by shifting more customers into the Promoter category), will link to underlying growth, share of wallet, and market share.

Christophe showed several examples of companies that have made this link between NPS and market share growth.  One example he gave was of a company that was losing market share relative to its main competitor each year. By implementing an NPS turnaround programme the trend shifted back in favor of the company. They did this by understanding the criticality of showroom design in driving NPS and sales volume. Based on this insight, they invested in re-vamping over 1000 showrooms around the country, allowing them to turn around market share growth relative to their main competitor.

NPS also helps companies decide where to invest internally to get the improvements. If a company wants to invest in sales acceleration, is the right answer to add sales people, to expand advertising, or to take a different approach? What will drive the fastest improvement in NPS and business outcomes?

Christophe showed a compelling analysis of “visit frequency” in a sales environment. They looked at how often sales people had visited each customer and found a very interesting relationship between frequency of visits and the customer’s NPS. Not surprisingly, the salespeople who did not visit got customer NPS values of -35% on average. At one visit this increased to 20% NPS, and with 4 visits the NPS increased further to 56%. Interestingly, when they reached 9 visits, the NPS dropped back to 38%. This insight helped them understand how much additional investment was needed in sales capacity, but also, how to balance frequency of visit and account loads across the sales team.

Knowing the drivers of NPS is key to accomplishing these turnarounds in performance. Private equity investors love this because it is about re-allocating spending within the company instead of having to make additional investments. Christophe stressed the importance of analyzing drivers, not in a vacuum, but relative to competitors.

How do these changes relate to investor returns? As Christophe explained, these fundamental trends in customer buying patterns and relative market position change the assumptions future owners will make when valuing the company. And there’s nothing like that to put a smile on an investor’s face.

Thank you, Christophe, for this fresh new angle on NPS economics.

Define Delight - Then Get It Right

Shaun is a great presenter, very energised and engaging - and he won maximum brownie points by promising the audience that he wouldn't keep them from the drinks reception for too long!

Shaun kicked off by looking at how the market has changed in terms of it's sophistication. What once were differentiators are now simply tickets to the party. In order to improve retention and growth, functional performance is not enough. You need to create an emotional connection.

To understand how to define delight, Shaun introduced the following equation:

Value = (Product Quality + Service Quality) / (Price and Hassle) - delighting customers means that you have to go above and beyond customer expectations.

So be very careful with the way in which you communicate your brand promise. To live up to customer expectation and go beyond it, you need to ensure that your customer experience at every touchpoint delivers on the brand promise; design with care!

Remember though, that customer experience depends on your people - your people are your brand. Shaun mentioned that from research done on correlations between Employee NPS and Customer NPS - this reaches as high as 85%. Internal communication is key.

As is external communication. Marketing messages need to change - there's too much noise out there and consumers are switching off. Above the line marketing could soon be a thing of the past - don't we need more experience marketing?

Experience marketing means that you know what your customers are doing and saying and you are communicating with them in a way that makes most sense to them.

The best companies are doing all of this - they often set high expectations, but continue to deliver against and above them. And guess who the examples included? Apple, First Direct, Virgin Atlantic, Zapos...

And O2 - time for Simon to take over!

O2 have put customer experience into the marketing department - because it's all a part of living the brand. Which probably explains why O2 are the leading mobile operators in the UK.

Upon de-merge from BT Cellnet, O2 focused on:

• 2002-2005: Building foundations
  • A fresh start and new opportunity
  • A desire to deliver the best customer experience
  • Focus on the basics
  • Have formal governance of a distinct program to measure customer experience
  • Adopt clear success measures

Having achieved success in the first set of goals:

• 2005-2006: Breaking through
  • There was realisation that customers were being attracted but were not staying - there was nothing different being offered
  • They saw the opportunity for disruptive change
    • Challenge the customer perception
    • Change the investment in the industry to what counts to customers
    • Change the operational patterns internally
    • Put customers at the heart of what O2 do

And this has driven the customer promise and the customer plan:

• 2006 onwards: Sustained leadership
  • Reward loyalty
  • Invest in the front line and sales experience
  • Best products for the right target markets
  • Engage employees
  • Embrace efficiencies

And it has worked - brand perceptions of O2 outstrip the other main operators, and have been the only operator to grow in a difficult economic environment. O2 have created the emotional link with their customers and are fulfilling on the brand promise.

They defined delight - and do seem to be getting it right

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Bettina Schmidt-Smylla Head of Market Development + Marketing

Making Happy Happen, is ultimately common sense, says Tim Kaner. With positive customers, you drive revenue growth and profit. And Net Promoter is a key tool to making this happen.

Sony's first ever product, providing technology to meet customer needs, was a rice cooker. This is a perfect example of the concept "necessity is the mother of all invention" and Sony absolutely aim to understand what people want, and why.

The Net Promoter program at Sony started with the "Customer Viewpoint" and the importance of "Learning to Listen". Embedding these concepts into the organisation is the most important step to developing a successful program. Without engagement from the business, at all levels, then the program would simply be paying lip service to the idea of customer-centricity.

The insight from the program has been heavily driven from the customer's perception of the customer corridor:

• I want
• I choose
• I buy first time
• I use
• I need help
• I need a repair
• I buy again

By viewing the data by product, by country, by function - but with the overlay of the customer perception, the central NPS team have helped to ensure that the program does get embedded.

As Tim says, if you are marketing TVs in Latvia - then that's the feedback in which you are interested. And that's how Sony have driven the engagement in the organisation. Consensus-driven, the Sony culture has been led by leaders walking the walk, not just talking the talk. And by adding in the KPI of customer centricity into compensation plans, they've helped answer the employee question of "what's in it for me?"

One of Tim's key pieces of advice was to ensure that you are clear about what you want people to do. Keep it simple "KIS" is key to engaging employees in taking action. And make sure the competitive angle is about self improvement.

To be successful, use the right tools and resources, listen and act on what the customers say and align with your existing approaches to customer management.

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Richard tried to shake us from our corporate slumber by challenging us to exceed customer expectations in some unique way.

Entire industries tend to do things a certain way out of inertia, and find it hard to break out of these standard operating procedures. Why is that? Is it feasible to build massive competitive advantage by doing things differently? Richard suggests that companies can’t create this "game changing" type of innovation from day-to-day executional improvements based on customer feedback. It's a broader strategy about transforming what customers expect in your industry.

As we are in London, Richard used a London Tube analogy…how can you “mind the gap” between what customers expect, and what they want. Most companies operate around the level of expectation. Very few successfully get to what customers want, and even fewer figure out how to exceed that high bar.

Richard illustrated this with some examples.

He started by describing several companies that had changed their industry by creating “great innovations” in customer experience to exceed not only what customers expect, but what they can envision on their own as “something I want.”

But I thought the most intriguing example he offered was that of RyanAir. RyanAir CEO Michael O’Leary is, on the one hand, the poster child for bad customer experience. Richard quoted one of his extreme statements about the airline’s cancellation policy:

“Say my Granny fell ill. What part of ‘no refund’ don’t you understand?”

Richard asked, “Is he really the villain of customer experience?” Expectations can be shifted not only upward based on innovations in service or product, but downward by lowering price.  Richard argued that RyanAir has been able to exceed expectations in a very unconventional way…by setting the expectations SO LOW based on rock bottom prices that customers are happy to get there safely and at a good value.

Then Richard turned to the UK banking industry. Most UK banks have negative Net Promoter Scores. It’s to the point where the government is discussing how they might legislate improved customer service. Has it really come to this? There are some notable exceptions, including First Direct, which has an NPS in the range of 40%, considerably higher than most other major UK banks. What is it that a company like First Direct can get right that is so difficult for much of this industry?

What’s the “industry standard” in your business? Richard gave these parting thoughts on how you might break away from the pack:

1. Understand your existing “zone of tolerance” and develop ideas outside of it.
2. Avoid Standard Operating Procedures that are based on industry practice, and instead focus on customer experience as a guide.
3. Think like an entrepreneur trying to attack and remake your industry through experience innovation.

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All Belron does is replace broken glass on vehicles. And they do it more than 10 million times a year -once every 3 seconds. We heard from Gary Lubner, CEO of the world’s largest vehicle glass replacement company, about their Customer Delight Acceleration Programme and how NPS fits with that framework.

Belron operates in more than 30 countries worldwide, under well known national brands such as Carglass, AutoGlass, SafeLite, and many others. More than 25,000 employees, including thousands of front-line technicians, an on the go every day at the behest of consumers and their insurance companies.

Replacing a windscreen or a side window, or some other piece of glass on a car is not a simple matter. The company has to start by identifying the right piece of glass. Gary gave one example of a new Mercedes that has 84 different pieces of glass. And that’s just one brand, one particular car! Beyond that, they must get the technician to the right place to do the work, then accurately handle billing coordinating payments from the insurance company and the consumer.

How does Belron get this complicated service right time and again? By having a singular focus on doing this specific type of work, and by focusing on service excellence.

When Gary asked how many of us had had a windscreen replaced in the past 5 years, I was shocked by the number of hands that went up. It looked like more than 50 percent of the audience! Are we just an unlucky bunch? Not really. Gary next asked how many had had a replacement twice or three times. Only 3 hands remained up when he got to 3 purchases over a 5 year period.

Why does a company that knows you probably won’t need the service again for several years bother focusing so passionately on customer service excellence? Why not just drive the costs down??

• Most of their business is done in partnership with insurance companies. For the insurers, they are dealing with the policyholders thousands of times each day, not just once every several years.
• Secondly, customers talk. Having your glass break is stressful and unplanned, so people talk about the service, both when it’s great, and when it is poor. They share this with their friends and family, and that’s why Belron uses NPS as their measure of service outcomes.
• Their company values are also a critical reason. They want all of their employees to be committed to delivering great service time and again.
• But ultimately, they make this investment because it helps them make money and grow the business.

The company’s Customer Delight Acceleration Programme has 3 key parts: the NPS programme, their “Smile” programme which includes both training and recognition, and service recovery to effectively respond when things go wrong.

They chose NPS globally as their measure of customer delight after being introduced to it by one of their business units. Why NPS? Gary likes the fact that it’s a consistent measure globally, it is simple to understand for all of their employees, and it gives and accurate picture of the voice of the customer enabling deep insights for the business.

They contact 50,000 customers per week in 17 languages, and provide the feedback weekly to all of their teams worldwide, down to the level of the individual technician. If you go into any branch, you will see their NPS scores up on the walls. It has created a “buzz” within the company. By reviewing the verbatims, each technician knows exactly why they are doing well or not. The verbatim also allows both the front line technician and their managers to share feedback with the call centre or billing group if that was the source of their reaction.

Gary showed a video of employees form their Manchester region, describing how NPS has helped them be effective in their daily work. One employee commented on his learnings from speaking with the customers who score 7 or 8. While the customer may think the service is quite good, there are sometimes small things that they could do to get a 9 or a 10. This small additional insight is the difference between good and great service. And Belron has its employees focused on uncovering this higher level of service.

Belron reinforces this through employee recognition. They set up the Belron Exceptional Customer Service Award. To be nominated for it, you have to first win the top prize in your own country. He told the story of one winner, Grant Hunter, who is a technician in Christchurch in New Zealand. In his first 6 months with the company, they got 48 customer letters praising him, and he had an NPS score of 97%.

But no service can be perfect. That’s why they also focus on service recovery. How do they deal with Detractors when something has gone wrong? This is an area where they have transformed results in the past couple of years. Gary described a turnaround in their way of thinking about service recovery, and their NPS for customers who had a complaint. At the beginning, it was mostly about controlling costs and they had too many people involved in the process to make it customer friendly. They have completely turned this around. They now speak in a different way, they assume the customer is always right to create an environment of trust, and they have one owner to ensure this goes right. They have moved their NPS for customers who had a complaint from 19 to 67%.

Overall, Belron’s NPS across the more than 20 countries where they have implemented it is at 72%. They don’t compare country to country, but have a huge focus on improving and comparing operations within each country, which has allowed them to improve scores significantly over the last 2 years since they started using NPS.

The company’s service excellence strategy is paying off. In a market that is growing between 1% and 1.5% per year, Belron has achieved compound annual growth of 12%, reaching over 2.5 billion Euros in revenue in 2009. Gary attributes this gain in market share to the fact that they are able to delight their customers. With those results, I’d be delighted too!

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Goodbye Dell Hell!

18 months ago was the point that Dell really moved away from servicing customers and started to focus on delighting customers. The concept that drives this is the demand from customers that Dell "deliver technology solutions that enable people everywhere to grow and thrive." Not products - but solutions.

In moving to delighting customers, Dell chose to use the Net Promoter metric and implement the discipline of ongoing improvement that is monitored by the central team but driven by the business. Net Promoter is simple and effective and today, the Net Promoter scores achieved by Dell are reported side by side with the share price.

The program at Dell is very encompassing. Covering not just B2C but also all of the B2B segments, the feedback gathered is very focused on the customer journey and the key touchpoints that impact customers. And this is not the internal view of the journey, but an external, customer perception of the experience.

Side by side with NPS, the central Customer Experience team have introduced the concept of a Net Satisfaction score. By drawing correlations between the scores, this actually helps the organisation to focus on the specific pain points that drive a customer towards a Detractor status. It enables the organisation to really focus on the areas that need most improvement.

Direct feedback from customers has driven the company towards providing the right choices to customers, to simplifying the products and to eliminating cost and complexity. This has been embraced across the organisation. Although 70% of the impact on NPS is driven by Product and Support, the other functions within the company are also cognisant of the need to improve. Change and improvement programs have been adopted throughout the Dell organisation, including in:

• Design
• Planning and Pricing
• Purchase and Delivery
• Service and Support

"Consumerization" is the key. Focusing on the consumer requirements, how they interact - and this includes a large focus on social media - is central to the transformation happening at Dell. Using a great example from the tech4mommies.com website, Gary was able to demonstrate how the organisation is working to turn detractors into promoters.

And it is working. The efforts led by Gary's team, with the direct support of the CEO, Michael Dell, are really changing the way in which the business sees their customers. One customer - one interaction - one promoter. And it's not just the direct business that's impacted. Dell give back to the world. From developing technical solutions for emerging countries, building learning classrooms in China and providing Breast Cancer detection support in the US - Dell is truly transformational.