Richard took us through a history of Net Promoter. Net Promoter was a revolution when it appeared. It took off because it was a metric that mattered and was tied to financials. More than a metric, it was an action-oriented philosophy…going beyond historical measurement techniques. It was a tool that engaged employees and got them excited. We sometimes forget it was also a great tool for getting insights about the business…when we mined the data from detractors and promoters. We got all this from Net Promoter, and it was a great success.
But there were lots of changes--the technology wave started to happen…mass usage of email, huge quantities of data, cloud became a buzzword, CRM came of age, and closed loop processes were implemented on a massive scale. Management started holding employees accountable for customer experience. But 10 years is a long time, and a lot has changed. We are in an interesting age today...
LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc all scale massively every 60 seconds. But customers in this social environment have a different attitude…they have a manifesto. They want a say, they want to connect with others, they want to communicate openly with you, and they want to do business with ethical companies. Customers are online and mobile...mobile social networking penetration is around 20-35% globally. The power of customer input has grown and is more immediate due to tweeting. The influencers have also changed…they are now people who are followed vs just *rich*. There is also an age divide...youth are uber-connected. There is a rich-poor divide. Now customers shop around and have a higher tendency to switch. Cultural norms are all out of order also. 50% of CRM projects fail. Still only 4% internet commerce. 50% Facebook customers less likely to buy if businesses don’t respond on their Facebook page. So, major disconnect...customers with demands and companies struggling to keep up. There are also lots of ethical problems—example of Tripadvisor with the fixing of ratings, so cannot claim to be independent any more. Now companies need to move to move to a *participation* model of 2-way communication. Social media can be a mechanism for sharing value. There has to be 2 significant mindshifts...NPS has to be faster, in a mobile world. We need to reorient ourselves. We have historically built our internal NPS processes with a Ptolemaic view...the company is driving the agenda and is at the center of all the engagement. But customers want to be the center of the universe...companies need to revolve around customers.
Companies are not in control...just like a Fisher Price steering wheel. We need to put customers in the driving seat. Activated promoters will mean we will look at who is actually promoting. These promoters are now an incredible asset...they bring higher lifetime value and more profitable customers. We are going to have to listen to customers when and how they want. We won’t be just concerned about detractors, we need to mobilize promoters. We need to move from structured data to a universe of vast, crazy unstructured data. Structured data must live with the unstructured. Think of structured as the backbone and unstructured as the flesh around the backbone. There has been a lot of work done over the past year figuring out how to link standard NPS with social NPS. Richard thinks this is the best of times for CX professionals. We should be giddy with excitement...there will be a wave of innovation around the field of customer loyalty. We need to all get on board with Net Promoter 2.0!
