Deb Eastman, Chief Marketing Officer of Satmetrix, covered how managers can design a Net Promoter Score (NPS) program for action Friday afternoon. The well attended session included B to B and B to C Net Promoter practitioners from a wide variety of industries, including Financial Services, Business Advisory Services, and Telecommunications. In her ebullient style, Deb captured the attention of this audience, focusing on the topic of driving action at all levels within an organization.
She identified three levels of action taken within an organization to improve the customer experience, and that all three must be present to take full advantage of the NPS program. These are:
- Executive Team: Executives are required to identify and support changes to strategy that will have an important impact on the customer experience. Executive leadership makes such changes possible.
- Management: Managers must be involved in the process of optimizing the performance of their people and processes to enhance the customer experience. Managers also are involved in the role of monitoring and coach groups to improve overall performance of individuals.
- Customer Facing Roles: Customer facing employees, whether sales, service, or support teams, must be given direct customer feedback about their individual performance.
Executive Team
The Executive Leadership will review customer feedback about the overall customer and identify the key areas for improvement or differentiation. Specific initiatives can be identified which will make important improvements to all customers, or to large customer segments. These initiatives are typically identified and discussed in annual, or bi-annual customer experience meetings where analysis and recommendations are presented from an accumulation of NPS and other Customer Touchpoint data.
For example, BT InfoNet identified that their implementation process showed room for improvement. By improving the initial customer installation process, overall growth of the company exceeded double-digits, which outpaced their industry.
Management
Managers are responsible for monitoring the NPS results of their teams, identifing best practices among top achievers, and coaching low performers. Many organizations utilize a system of real time dashboards, that can be configured for each manager's role and scope. These dashboards typically integrate customer feedback information with other operational Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Deb gave the example of how Experian was able to double their NPS and achieve double digit revenue growth by providing Department and Sales Leaders with dashboards of results and the ability to make and track action plans.
Customer Facing Roles
Deb discussed how providing Customer facing teams with real time customer feedback enables these employees to change their behaviors and deliver an improved customer experience. Closed loop follow up processes also provide the front line with the ability to solve the issues of detractors. These are the fastest improvements any company can make to their NPS, as your teams are interacting with customers every day.
Companies such as Sodexho have been able to improve client retention rates by 46% through closed loop action plans that involve the front line. Client retention is hugely important to many firms with high customer acquisition costs or long contract cycle times.
Questions about this blog can be sent to Paul Pakalnietis by emailing to: paulp@satmetrix.com.
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