Rob Markey, Partner and Global Head of Customer Strategy and Marketing Practice at Bain & Company, is always an entertaining presenter particularly when the focus of the presentation is so close to his heart.
The Net Promoter Flywheel is the concept of driving employee and customer advocacy to a point where the momentum of each continues to drive the other. As Rob says, it's not entirely clear if there is a true cause and effect relationship here - where you can definitively say that the one drives the other - but it is clear that the most successful organisations have a focus on both.
The Net Promoter Score started with just 2 companies - GE and Intuit. 8 years on and there are thousands of companies using the metric but the most advanced organisations have recognised that it is a discipline - not just a score. NPS doesn't really mean Net Promoter Score anymore - it means Net Promoter System. Companies that have recognised that a metric alone is not enough, have moved forward with a whole discipline that includes a sound executive foundation, closed loop follow-up, business change processes and, perhaps most impactfully, the engagement of both employees and customers in driving a better experience all round.
Rob celebrated several companies who have really achieved a true sense of customer-centricity and who have, through doing so, enjoyed some of the highest Net Promoter scores in their industry. But this has only come to pass because they did not focus on the score, they focused on the delivery of a great experience. Think jetBlue, SouthWest Airlines, American Express.
If you don't have an army of employee promoters, how can you expect to create an army of customer promoters? When a company recognises the importance of fully engaging with their employees - there are few limits to what you can achieve.
Employee promoters are empowered, they use words like "valued", "effective" "learn and grow" and they believe in the company they serve - are PROUD to serve. Turning employees into promoters requires going beyond satisfaction. To create true employee advocacy, a company must create differentiators by providing extraordinary opportunities for purpose and accomplishment or the chance to have extraordinary teamwork and sense of affiliation.
Just look at what Zappos have achieved. Check out their YouTube channel to find out why people love working there so much - and that will help you to understand why they achieve so much customer success.
A Flywheel is a mechanical device with a significant moment of inertia used as a storage device for rotational energy. Flywheels resist changes in their rotational speed, which helps steady the rotation of the shaft when a fluctuating torque is exerted on it by its power source such as that caused by a piston-based (reciprocating) engine, or when an intermittent load, such as the motion of a piston pump, is placed on it.
