Net Promoter conferences are so often focused on highlighting success, that it was a brave and refreshing change that Arti Ots started off his presentation with the shocking reality that, despite adding NPS to compensation from the outset, Net Promoter scores dropped across the first year of measuring from +1% to -7%.

Arti Ots is the Marketing Director at Elion, the top telecoms company in Estonia. To add a little flavour around the company:

• Elion are the #1 provider of broadband, telephony and IT services
• They are the world #2 in provision of IPTV
• With a revenue of €200 million, and 1,300 employees, they belong to the TeliaSonera group of companies

The main driver for implementing their program in 2007 was the increasing cable competition and Elion wanted to focus on providing low price broadband and high quality TV.

With implementation came immediate linkage to compensation - including an annual bonus work half-a-months salary for a 5 point jump in NPS across the first year. As mentioned, this didn't happen and no-one got a bonus.

Elion quickly realised that there was too much focus on process and not enough on people. Arti and his colleague, who held the COO position, focused on an overall review of both the transactional and relationship elements of their program.

This led to a focus on:

• Awareness
  • Seeing the value chain through the customers' eyes
  • Understanding the key issues
  • Understanding key team level success factors
• Responsibility
  • Compensation was linked to weekly, monthly and annual targets
  • Quality forms introduced
  • Cross functional work groups to take hold of improvement planning

The results have been exceptional - by moving the focus to a more transactional based approach, Elion have uncovered the key pain points for customers as being Problem Solving and Sales. Despite the rough start, Elion have really learned from the insight and are making great strides in fixing these customer issues. Scores around problem-solving have risen from -12% to +17% and in sales have reached a staggering 30%.

Well done Elion! And thank you, Arti, for sharing the story - all of it!

Download presentation

So the question that Christophe is trying to answer is, once you've bought a company - how do you ensure you get ongoing value from the investment? Or in other words, and to use Christophe's golfing analogy - how do you become Ben Hogan or Arnold Palmer with repeatable, attractive performance over time?

The research done comes from a wide number of industry areas, B2B, B2B2C, global data and was focused around 3 key themes

• What are the drivers behind returns for PEG funds?
• Can you prove the link between NPS and these drivers?
• And if so - how do you get started?

The best private equity companies do not just go into the acquired company and strip out resources or simply cut costs. What they try to do is:

• Leverage the assets - increase the equity stake
• Multiple expansion - improve value from purchase to exit point
• Increase in operating value - EBITDA

But the world has fundamentally changed. It's harder to get investment funding, and difficult to focus on expansion. So the critical driver becomes increasing the operating value. Getting value is harder, cutting costs won't achieve it.

Over the years, Bain have built up factual proof points that NPS does link to the drivers behind returns for PEG funds that focus on Growth, Share-of-Wallet and Market Share. Using examples from the Private Equity world, Christophe clearly demonstrated that higher regional NPS scores led to significantly increased sales and that Promoters spend a higher Share of Wallet, and poor customer experience provides advantages to your competitors.

But by making the right decisions and using NPS as one of the critical drivers, a PEG could realise a 94% return on equity across 2 years!

So how to implement NPS?

• Use NPS during the due diligence phase
• Use NPS post acquisition to driver longer term value and optimize investments

The program will then drive insight and action for key functional areas and business themes including:

• Innovation
• Relative competitive performance
• Marketing
• Sales Process
• Correct business definition

And this will drive the Ultimate goal: creating a repeatable and selling operating model.

Be a Ben Hogan or an Arnold Palmer!

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.