Certainly making the link drives employees to pay attention to the program, a key goal of any deployment, but I wonder if it’s ultimately the most productive kind of engagement?

So, what about you?

One of the most exciting things about Net Promoter is that in building your NPS, you create a tremendous asset. Promoters will not only buy from you, and keep buying for you--they are are also far more likely to:

- refer business to you

- take reference calls and site visits

- provide testimonials (check out these impressive video testimonials from Intel's website.)

- participate on yoru social media sites

- say great things about you on other social media sites

- speak about you at industry events

- engage in customer co-design

- participate in advisory boards

- participate in marketing and advertising and initiatives

In other words, you have a community of highly credible sources that can help improve your sales, marketing and branding efforts in measurable ways.

I think the next great question for NPS is, "How do we organize our promoters into customer reference programs, advisory boards, online and in-person customer communities, executive forums, and other customer engagement efforts to create even more mutual value for them and for our firm?"

It’s a rare occurrence when customer service and health care are mentioned in the same sentence. At Concentra, we are changing that. Our philosophy is that the best approach to addressing the American health crisis is to provide a “retail-like” customer service with quality medical care. But getting there isn’t always easy.

In early 2007, we began collecting information from patients regarding their experiences in and out of our medical centers. Obtained through medical center surveys, online questionnaires, and patient/client forums, customers provided us detailed information about what works and what doesn’t. These comments also gave us a critical eye and a snapshot of typical encounters with our organization.

Through the collection and analysis of information culled through endless patient and client surveys, we determined that customer service deserves a place in a health care setting as much as in any discount store or specialty retailer. But more importantly, great customer service can have a positive experience on medical outcomes, and it would begin at Concentra.

By early 2008, we implemented clearly defined and measurable customer service standards based on six core components:

1. Establishing a culture of customer service
2. Patient‐focused service standards
3. Recruiting, hiring, training and retaining excellent Concentra colleagues
4. Continuous quality improvement
5. Ongoing patient and customer feedback; and
6. Periodic colleague/internal customer feedback

Guiding us through this culture change (and at the heart of the feedback we received from customers) is the use of the Net Promoter Score as a metric for both our external customers and internal colleagues. This unique number showed us the likelihood our existing customers would recommend our services to others. We soon learned that we had a lot of work ahead of us.

We collected over 6,800 comments that were transcribed, quantified, trended, and assigned as action items. This touched every element that works to create a great experience, including reduced wait times, interior upgrades, new center planning, marketing and sales collateral, clinician-patient interactions, and more. As many of these improvements and enhancements were rolled out to all Concentra Medical Centers, we continued to collect customer comments on what other areas needed improvement. Almost like to-do items on a list, we checked off one area and moved on to the next – and the positive results soon followed.

When we started this quest, our NPS was 8% – with over half our medical centers being negative.  Today, we have an NPS at 50% and no centers are negative. We continue to collect patient and client feedback, and direct them to appropriate colleagues for follow-up. And for the 25,000 patients we see every day, a mailed survey or telephone interview solicits confidential satisfaction ratings. We believe this is huge progress in a short amount time, but there is more to do.

By using customer comments, what our organization becomes is a continually evolving business model. Instead of trying to become what we think customers want, we transform to be what they desire and need. As a medical organization, where doctors and physical therapists are our “product,” we believe coupling medical care with a truly caring experience offers the best rating of all – a positive impact on peoples’ lives.

Most companies have some sort of verbiage on their website that speaks about how important providing quality customer service is to them. They talk about how their service is top-notch, A-1, best-in-class, etc. And, this used to be impressive and convincing, but the time for that has passed. We've entered a new age.

We've entered a time when people expect experiences - and consistent ones - from your brand. It is no longer acceptable for one customer service rep to give one answer and someone else gives a different answer. This is where processes and procedures come heavily into play and can be a lifesaver for your brand.

It might seem like slight-of-word or semantics, but brands really need to make the shift from a service mentality to an experience mentality. Think relationship, not transaction.

Consider how you're treated when you shop at Nordstrom. When you purchase something, the clerk walks around the counter to personally hand you the item you've purchased. No one ever reaches over a counter at Nordstrom to hand you your shopping bag - at least they shouldn't. It's simply not the Nordstrom way. When you ask someone where something is in Nordstrom, they walk you directly to the item. There's no pointing and saying, "Over there." That's part of customer experience at Nordstrom. As are their signature blue shopping bags and gift boxes.

Compare this to your experience at the local corner store where you're told that vitamins can be found, "In the back on the right," and where your bag rips before you can leave the store with your item.

You might be inclined to think that this is about a price point. It's not. In fact, price point is the sad excuse many brands make when they want to explain away their poor customer experience.

Don't fall into this trap. Brands that offer products and services at lower price points should not focus any less on creating an experience, and in fact, they should focus more. Because an experience is about the totality of what your customer feels when they do business with your company; from how they are spoken to, to your return policies, to the cleanliness of your public restrooms.

The whole point of this year's Net Promoter conference is to take a good, hard, honest look at where your customer experience program is headed. Is it helping you to do swift business in this day and time of creating stellar customer experiences or does it have you stuck in the dark ages of transaction-based customer service?

If the former, come to the conference to see how you can learn from the best about how to make it better. If the later, well, I'll see you there

I’m sort of embarrassed to admit this, but I was one of the last people in my circle of friends to get a cell phone. I was also the last executive at my company to succumb to instant messaging. And, it’s true, my wife manages our wireless network and most of the technical stuff in our house. Maybe it’s because I spend so much time consuming and creating information at work every day, that when it comes to my personal life I sort of like to be disconnected.

One thing I do enjoy is curling up for a good movie in front of the TV, true couch potato style. So when we walked past our local Blockbuster store last night on the way to dinner, the “store closing” sign really struck me. That a competitor could so quickly emerge and “bust” Blockbuster’s formerly dominant position for in-home movie rentals is a testament to the truly dynamic nature of customer expectations. If I want to be on the couch, Blockbuster got me out of the movie theater and into my home. That was step one. But why make me drive to a retail store? I’d rather just stay in my pajamas…enter: Netflix. But it doesn’t stop there. Why should I worry about fees for returning a movie late? Netflix solved that too.

A few nights ago we used the Netflix online service to watch a movie on our new “extra large” computer monitor. So while Blockbuster may be busted, Netflix can’t rest on its laurels. The Internet may yet “disintermediate” the U.S. postal service completely when it comes to delivering that little red envelope to my door. We’ll see if Netflix can stay on top of that change in the coming decade.

While I’m not exactly an early adopter as a consumer, I must admit that I’m fascinated by the big questions that come from trying to sift out “fads” from major innovations in customer experience. And all of us who work in the area of customer experience and customer feedback must be constantly on the watch for clues and innovations that customers will point us to in their feedback. It starts with commentary about what they want and where your company may fall short, but it’s more than that.

Creating a promoter is also about what your customer can get (and what they expect from you) based on other experiences they have both inside your industry and with other interactions at work and at home. And the holy grail may well come from using NPS in conjunction with other forms of smart listening to divine what the customer would aspire to (and pay for), if only someone could figure it out.

This year’s Net Promoter Conference comes at a pivotal time, at the beginning of a new decade and on the back of a pretty horrible time economically for most companies. But I think all of the churn, company failures, and restructurings have set us up for a new era of innovation as the companies that remain standing jockey for position while the economy recovers.