Three Winners Have NPS in Common

info@netpromoter.com — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:04:18 GMT

Forrester Research recently announced the three winners of its first Voice of the Customer Awards at the company’s Customer Experience Forum in New York City. Chosen from among 40 applicants, the winners were a U.S. division of Experian, the credit-services firm; the Progressive Group of Insurance Companies; and the client insight division of Vanguard, the investment company. I am usually a bit skeptical of awards like this. The grading can be quite subjective, and there is always the natural human temptation to give special treatment to friends and clients. But I think these three firms truly do deserve recognition for their dedication to listening to customers and taking actions to earn customer loyalty.

One reason to take the awards seriously is that all three companies are dedicated practitioners of the Net Promoter discipline. All have participated in Bain’s NPS Loyalty Forum meetings over the years, and all have attended the Net Promoter Conferences sponsored by Satmetrix. The firms’ applications and acceptance speeches testify to the importance of NPS in establishing a rigorous process for listening to customers and in measuring results. (The applications can be viewed at the Forrester links listed at the end of this blog entry.)

For each of these companies, Net Promoter provides both the fundamental framework and the metric to convert good intentions into measurable progress. I hope other firms will examine and consider adopting some of the best practices that have been generously shared by Experian, Progressive, and Vanguard. While their lines of business are very different—credit information services, property and casualty insurance, and mutual funds/investment services—the common themes of how to build customer loyalty remain consistent. All of the firms 1) carefully track which customers are promoters, passives, and detractors; 2) learn the root causes for the ratings through careful listening and analysis; 3) establish priorities and take action based on these insights; and 4) measure the impact of their actions through regular Net Promoter Score updates. This is the basic process for improving customer loyalty in any business.

Kudos to Forrester for putting a spotlight on these excellent company examples!

Here are the nomination forms from the winners. They're worth downloading!

Experian

Progressive

Vanguard

Fred Reichheld's Blog

Three Winners Have NPS in Common