In the B2B track, we heard from Dr. Laura Brooks of Satmetrix, Martyn Christian of FileNet, and Simon Lyons of Aggreko. All of these presentations highlight key themes for success in realizing gains in NetPromoter scores that drive business results. The consistent themes of these speakers clearly demonstrate best practices that must be deployed to drive growth.

To start with Laura shares her research on the best practices observed in the Satmetrix customer base. By analyzing customers, she has found 4 key elements to success:

• Executive foundation: This is not a vision or mission statement, but a way of doing business, led from the top. This means putting investment behind it and driving change throughout the organization. This is key to realizing the value of NPS. If your leadership is paying lip service to customer centricity, you will not see the value of NPS or any loyalty program.
• Organizational alignment: We heard this as a key theme to Experian's success earlier today as Laura DeSoto shared the techniques they deployed to align the organization around delivering a superior customer experience. To what extent does every part of the organization really focus on the customer and how to you translate that to every employee's role?
• System infrastructure: You need the supporting system infrastructure to enable the collection, analysis and accountability of customer insights. You must have the systems in place to deliver data quickly to every employee and make it actionable. We heard from several speakers today that traditional market research data is not timely enough to enable the organization to quickly respond to customer feedback.
• Process integration: You must integrate the data into the natural flow of the business to truly drive customer centricity throughout the business.

Laura's presentation had much more insight into the best practices for moving your Net Promoter score. John Williams shares more in his posting "Measure Who Matters!"

http://netpromoter.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/charts.jpghttp://netpromoter.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/charts_1.jpgThe Net Promoter conference is off and running with a full house. We are sitting in a packed room with eager students ready to learn about how companies are applying Net Promoter to drive business performance. Richard Owen shared with us the demographics of our fellow attendees representing several industries from financial services, pharma, consumer goods, industrial and tech companies from all regions of the world including representatives from Latin America, Europe, North America and Australia. The buzz of Net Promoter is clearly spreading across the world.

After a warm welcome from the Satmetrix executives, we got started with Laura DeSoto, SVP of Innovation & Synergy at Experian.

Experian: Discipline and Patience Pays Off in Double-Digit Growth

Experian was faced with a mature market, highly competitive with similar go-to-market models and single-digit growth. Their goal was to differentiate their business by creating a unique customer experience. In today's economy, so many of us face this same challenge.

Laura did an excellent job of sharing their journey, and it's clear these types of programs are a journey. Fortunately for Experian, their journey is paying off. They have successfully doubled their NPS over the last 6 quarters and achieved double digit growth in both revenue and profits in a market of single digit growth. 

Some of the key lessons learned from Laura's journey included:

1. Creation of the brand promise through understanding their customer segments and crafting a promise relevant to those segments.

2. The biggest challenge was organizational alignment. Given that delivery of a superior customer experience is in the hands of each employee, employee engagement is critical. Some of their best practices included:

3. Selection of the right partners to support deployment for ongoing feedback. Experian's criteria included:
   • Reliable methodologies
   • Global sample management with the ability to segment at multiple levels
   • Security & other technology support
   • Reporting capabilities
   • Integration with Siebel CRM system
   • Linkage to business results

My key takeaways:

Alignment across the organization is key and from what we heard today, Experian took this task seriously, providing every employee the tools they need to truly embrace and deliver on the promise.

Another key learning was the patience shown by the Experian leadership. In their first 14 months, they actually saw their scores decline.

Some organizations do not have the patience displayed by Experian and therefore many not have enjoyed the benefits achieved in the last 6 quarters of double digit growth and 100% improvement in customer loyalty! Change takes time and commitment. Impacting NPS and realizing the financial benefits associated with this takes time.

In between the next speaker I'll share with you the other sessions from Das Narayandas and GE Healthcare. Stay tuned....

For more details, read about their Net Promoter program with Satmetrix here: http://www.satmetrix.com/casestudies/experian.htm