Rounding out the Hi-Tech track, Tabitha Dunn, Director of Customer Insights for Citrix Online - the home of such celebrated projects as GoTo Meeting, GoTo Assist and GoTo Webinar - shared some insights about how NPS can be a driver of corporate priorities.

In the case of Citrix Online, the driver was product development and innnovation.

Tabitha gave us a veiled look at the projected numbers for a top-secret new project coming from Citrix Online. We were able to see the projections, but we don't know what the product is...yet. We got the distinct impression that the new product might hit digital shelves in about a month or so. Exciting!

Tabitha took the time to answer a lot of participant questions -- so much so that we had a mic runner in the room the entire time, but here are a few top-level take-aways:

• Make sure you ask what people really want. And when you ask, get to the bottom of why they want what they want. Delivering on the wrong want/need can deliver low NPS scores. Tabitha gave the example of Citrix Online's customers asking for a smart phone client for their GoTo MyPC product. On the surface, it appeared that people wanted to be able to visit their computer desktops from their smart phone. But, when asked why they wanted to be able to do this and pointing out that the screen would be very tiny, etc., it turns out that users wanted to be able to access files in case they forgot them while traveling, for instance. (I personally think that some sort of file transfer product is what Citrix Online is launching in a month or so - some sort of GoTo MyFiles or something - but I can't be sure and certainly have no inside knowledge of such. It would be a good move for them though.)
• Tabitha said, "The 'money' question is: how can we get from a 5 to a 10?" Meaning, the true value to a company's NPS program lies in figuring out how to drive improvement.
• After seeing the various financial models and NPS/CX programs they've built, I chimed in and asked how long it took them to achieve what they've done. Her answer: 11 months and 2 full-time active team members. Wow, way to go Citrix.

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Steven Nicks from Satmetrix helped us think of a successful program in terms of 5 key questions.

Q1 How does program design impact our ability to take action?
Foundation: organizational alignment, executive commitment
Infrastructure: technology and business process
Action: Operational and strategic improvements
Results: retention, repurchase and referral

There are traits that determine success:

-->NPS is used to drive operational changes
-->NPS is central to core strategy
-->The goal is to create promoters

You need to think how customers interact and the channels they interact through so you can design the right listening posts.

Q2 How does survey design impact your ability to take action?
Typical surveys start with questions...better approach is to start with dashboard design and all reporting needs. You should understand how your business is going to consume data.
Three things to keep in mind:

• know your stakeholders
• understand your segmentation
• let your dashboards be your guide (avoid group survey design).

Q3 How does sample strategy impact your ability to take action?

Key thing around sampling is representation. Make sure it maps to your business. You also don't want your sampling to impact your score. Trustworthy data are essential for executive support and actionability. The things that make data trustworthy are asking the right questions of the right customers at the right time.

The standard to judge data...are you willing to make decisions based on the data?

Q4 How does the closed loop process impact your ability to take action?
You need to design your closed loop process around a clear plan of action. Although 100% closed loop is ideal, that often is not feasible. You should look at:

• which customers do you want to follow up
• who does the follow up
• when it should occur (within 48 hours)
• what happens after follow up and
• how should follow up be handled.

Q5 How does technology impact your ability to take action?

Map out your program and use that map to figure out where you need technical support. Start with process design.

A general question that came up:

How do you get the right contacts?
- In B2C..billing and end user are same, so less of an issue. Sometimes need creative strategies to gather email.

- In B2B..use carrot and stick. Sales needs to be involved. As carrot, educate the organization to value the sales team by showing the info they can get. The stick is to show publicly the gaps in contacts in team meetings.

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The presentation from 1-800-Got-Junk? was an energized session focused on profitable growth with loyal customers. And, when these guys talk about profitable growth, they know what they are talking about; this organization has gone from $2 million to $107 million in less than 10 years.

For 1-800-Got-Junk? a satisfied customers is not enough, they have to be raving fan and they are passionate about making sure this happens with every contact.  These guys realize that anyone can haul junk but only a few organizations can do it exceptionally.

How do they do it?

1. Their leadership is completely bought it and is prepared to weave into the fabric of the company.  So much so, their executive team actually makes NPS phone calls so they can hear their customers’ feedback.
2. Making sure that the teams with good NPS are recognized.
3. And on flip side, they hold their team members accountable if they are not meeting their NPS objectives?

To manage this all this, 1-800-Got-Junk has created a very sophisticated process/management reporting portal that allows all their team members to access customer data and feedback. This provides their teams to interact with their customers on a personable level at each encounter. When you can remember your customer’s cat’s name, you know you are building loyalty and passion about your business.

They also use their technology to get their promoters to actually recommend real time by providing immediate access to Facebook, Twitter, etc., at the time they are providing their feedback. Great idea and something we all should do.

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It is hard not to be impressed with how eBay collects, analyzes and turns customer feedback into action. By creating cross-functional “Agile” teams, eBay has found a way to take feedback and quickly use it to positively impact their customers.

These Agile teams use a variety of data collection methods that ensures that real issues are uncovered.  Specifically, they interact with their customers through; mail, on-line chat and phone to ensure that they get a holistic view of customer requirements. This is really smart since each one of these methods of data collection has its strengths and weaknesses.

This ongoing feedback helps eBay manage the changing demands of their customers that are becoming more and more sophisticated. This feedback is provided to a variety of service and product organizations that then reevaluate objectives and processes. That means agents provide better service, managers provide better coaching and product managers are more innovative. That is how businesses change and get better.

However, what I found most interesting is how the Agile teams start with an in-depth analysis, which is conducted from the customer perspective. This is a key step.  Almost always, when there is a systemic customer issue, the root cause is unclear communications. As we all know from our own purchasing experiences, policy documents are arduous and written from the company’s perspective. Therefore, these documents are almost unreadable, and are almost always add unnecessary confusion for the reader. For whatever reasons, companies never spend enough time developing materials for the customer that is concise, clear and complete.

eBay’s team fixed this problem by using sound information design to rewrite their material by using a more graphical approach and simply answering the key questions asked by their customers.  As easy as this sound, it is not, and eBay deserves credit for taking this action. And their NPS scores went up.

The eBay team also impressed me by how they developed an IT solution that engaged the customer real time.  By “mining” key words that point toward a potential policy breech, they present their customers with easy to read “rights” and “wrongs.”  That is not only efficient but will lead to reducing detractors to their business.  That is smart.

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