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.