Simon Lyons, the global head of marketing and communication at Aggreko, Plc doesn’t care about any of the occasional criticism of the NPS metric by academics. “NPS is directionally-correct, and it’s so simple! Nothing else is so useful for focusing the entire organization on the customer!” During his presentation today, Simon showed a disguised example from Aggreko’s actual results showing a tight correlation between NPS performance and revenue growth.

Simon introduced a number of interesting frameworks during his talk. One simple and thought-provoking framework is illustrated below:

Simon accurately stresses the fundamental difference between looking at current financial results vs. NPS results: financial results tell you how the company did yesterday/today, while NPS tells you how well the company will be doing tomorrow. Financial results are lagging indicators, while NPS is a leading indicator.

Apparently, the Aggreko board “gets it” as, according to Simon, “the white-hot heat of the board is focused on any executive in the organization whose unit doesn’t do well on the NPS score.”

For more details, read about their Net Promoter program with Satmetrix.