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Jeanne Bliss' Blog

5 Posts tagged with the nps tag
JeanneBliss

Increasing your customer loyalty, and NPS, by investing in your front line employees

 

The latest US Net Promoter Benchmarks for 2012 are in! USAA, Trader Joes, and Wegmans, all topped the list with some of the highest scores in their sectors. So what makes these companies so effective at creating a loyal, happy customer base? A common thread between these top-scoring companies is not just how they treat their customers, but also how they treat their front line employees. Here are three ways these companies work with their front line to ultimately increase their customer loyalty, and achieve some great NPS as well.

 

1. Employees who know your customers’ lives can better serve their needs.

 

USAA was again one of the top brands in this years NetPromoter Benchmark study, with an NPS of 83 percent, the highest NPS recorded across all brands and industry sectors. One of the factors behind their success is USAA’s commitment to understanding the unique lives of their military customers.  USAA invests heavily in their new hires’ orientation, so they can truly “describe a day in the life of their customer”, even if they are not from the military or military background. USAA does this by requiring all new hires to go through basic training, right down to eating MRE’s, wearing a military helmet and feeling the weight of the soldiers packs during their extensive orientation program. 

 

2. Invest enough time in training your front line to trust them, and free them, to do the right thing. 

 

Wegmans decided to eliminate the behind the scenes rules that interfered with the customer experience when the frontline staff had a restrictive list of “do’s” and “don’ts” when serving their customers.  Wegmans instead decided to invest heavily in training their frontline, over 40 hours per year for employees, with the skills to take action on their own, free from management oversight. There is simply one rule: that no customer is allowed to leave unhappy. The result? Low employee turnover, and a NPS toping the list of the grocery sector.  

 

3. Involve your front line in your products.

 

Trader Joes develops an enthusiastic, and committed, sales force for their products by directly involving their front line in product tastings and development. Frontline employees enthusiastically run “tasting huts”, talking candidly with customers sampling new products. When the front line feels passionate and about what they are selling, they pass this passion and commitment along to the customers they serve.

0 Comments Permalink Tags: trader, bliss, benchmarks, usaa, wegmans, joes, employee, nps, us
JeanneBliss

By Freeing Employees to Do What’s Right for Customers, No Customer Leaves Unhappy 

 

Wegmans Food Markets is a privately held grocery store chain with 41,000 employees. The company generated an estimated $5.6 billion in revenue in 2010. What fuels Wegmans’s growth are passion, training, and trust. In traditional retailing, customer experiences can become stilted when the frontline staff has a list of “do’s” and “don’ts” regarding how far they can go to serve their customers. Wegmans wanted to eliminate the behind-the-scenes rules and the required permission from managers usually  necessary in retail. So the company decided to let employees make their own decisions no matter what customer situation they encounter. At Wegmans there is no rule book. There is simply this: no customer is allowed to leave unhappy. 

 

A Trained, Trusted Employee Will Do the Right Thing

 

CEO Danny Wegman believes in giving employees extensive training and experience to garner an understanding of the product and service experiences they are trusted to deliver. Wegmans invests over 40 hours per year on training to back up people’s natural instincts to do the right thing with the necessary skills to help them take action. This allows Wegmans to free themselves of management oversight. Instead, they simply trust in the decision making of the people on the floor working with customers. That could mean deciding to give away a birthday cake to a customer whose order was accidentally misscheduled. Or cooking a turkey for a frazzled hostess who bought a turkey too large for her oven.  

 

Employees with decision making authority will want to stay

 

By giving staff control over their own decisions and believing in them, Wegmans can deliver what Danny Wegman calls “telepathic levels of service.” This makes employees want to stay. The low turnover of 7 percent versus 19 percent for comparably-sized grocery store chains enables Wegmans to redirect the money it would have spent on constant recruiting to the constant development of their folks. And with that, profitability has followed. Wegmans’s operating margins are estimated at 7.5 percent—double that of its competitors. And its sales per square foot are 50 percent higher than the industry average. By throwing away the rule book, Wegmans prospers both financially and in the spirit of the people who work in its stores. Whether they’re putting away cans of garbanzo beans or sweeping the floor, everyone there knows that their decisions with customers stick.

 

What portion of your rule book can you throw away?  Is Your “Trusting Cup” Half Full or Half Empty?

Wegmans.jpg


 

Wegmans decided that no customer should leave unhappy. They trust  the people serving customers in their stores to interpret what that means.

 

        • How would you rate your intent and ability to trust the majority of your employees? Or do you manage to the minority?
        • Can you identify just one rule you can throw away?
        • How would your employees say you are doing?
        • Do employees rave about how you trust them today?
        • How does your decision to free employees to deliver what’s best for customers compare with this beloved company?
        • Do your decisions for trusting your employees to do the right thing earn you “beloved” status today?
        • What do you need to do differently to move toward earning the rave of customers and employees?
0 Comments Permalink Tags: b2e, wegmans, nps, employee, trust
JeanneBliss

CEOs no longer need to be convinced of the importance of developing relationships with profitable customers and keeping them around. What they need now is a way to accomplish this feat. Some are considering the creation of a C-level position to drive the action. However, beyond the notion that it’s a good idea, not many know how to structure the Chief Customer Officer role and its place in the organization. Here are some thoughts to help you proceed.

 

Suggesting a CCO may seem frivolous to leaders who believe they already focus on customers. There’s often a proliferation of tactics and projects underway…the problem is they don’t amount to anything significant for customers. So first decide: will leaders be okay with someone (other than themselves) driving consensus on customer strategy and deliverables? You may be saying, “We have consensus now.” I’m sure that you’ve had some good meetings, but how much of it stuck? When they were over, did everyone return to their respective corners and business as usual? Getting company alignment is tricky. You may need someone full time to ensure it exists for your direction with customers.

 

What about sustaining the work? After the first and second meeting of what I call “the funky task force” on the customer work, people start to lose interest. You know these meetings. The kick-off has forty people at the table, some who clamored for an invite. One month later, six regularly show up. And the person who got the job to run the task force layered on top of his/her “regular” job? Well, they’re losing interest fast. Driving this work needs hard-wired participation. Do you have headcount and staff time commitments to drive it forward?

 

Now to the roadmap and action plan: let’s discuss the sticky wicket of “how” to move past the hoopla of meetings and empty commitments. Do you have a central roadmap that everyone follows on how you’ll drive the customer work and measure progress? I didn’t think so. How about consistent metrics everyone agrees to? We have metrics galore in our companies and of course the ‘customer’ is now on our scorecards. But these are typically neither clear nor connected down to the operational level.

 

Roles and responsibilities and holding people accountable are a slippery slope in the customer work. This is about the hand-offs between the silos. Most companies need a task list that clearly states what each part of the organization will do and when to get the priorities accomplished. But most don’t have one. Do you?

 

Is funding customer projects like pulling teeth? This may be due to duplicate spending across the organization. Everything is pitched as an individual program from inside the silos. At planning time these investments are often vulnerable in the first round of budget cuts. Why? Because each project shows up as a one-off tactic. There’s rarely an annual plan for understanding and managing customers as a key corporate asset - determining how many were lost and why and pooling resources to keep and grow profitable customers. Why? Because it’s no one’s job to do this job.

 

And finally, does the hoopla have any chance of sustainability as things stand now? Are leaders committing to customers, but not changing the metrics or the motivation to realign business priorities? Is the back-up position still about counting sales but not counting customers? For what actions are the most “Atta-boys” doled out? The customer work will not emerge as a priority of the organization until people’s success and career paths are tied to their accountability for how their actions impact customers. How far along are you with this? Are you heading in the right direction?

 

Most leaders wouldn’t refute that any of these actions are important. They want them to happen. They’ve always wanted them. Their failure has been in assuming the company could miraculously defy the laws of the silos to make them a reality. Separate motivation, the metrics and the mechanics have stayed firmly rooted in each silo. And they will continue to stay there until someone duct-tapes the silos together in a unified and executable customer plan. Is it time you established a Chief Customer Officer to connect your company for customers? Here are the questions to help you determine if the time is right, and if you have the support required to make the role a success:

 

1. There is someone in our company who clarifies what we are to accomplish with customers.

  • YES there is
  • NO there is not

Implementation Tip: Agreements need to be established with functional owners across the organization. The CCO or executive leadership must not do this in a vacuum and then try to “throw the brick over the wall” to those leaders to rubber-stamp.

 

2. There is a clear process to drive alignment for what will be accomplished.

  • YES there is
  • NO there is not

Implementation Tip: The best CEOs drive people into discussion and probe for agreement or dissent. They make it okay to disagree and debate until there is commitment and alignment.

 

3. We have a roadmap for the customer work and know where progress will be measured.

  • YES there is
  • NO there is not

Implementation Tip: Establish a team with at least one person from every operational area. This group needs to get into the ramifications and work involved in getting the priorities done.

 

4. Clear metrics exist for measuring progress which everyone agrees to use.

  • YES there is
  • NO there is not

Implementation Tip: Pick a few key metrics that everyone understands, knows their roles in and can follow. The large score cards we have all created have become almost meaningless because they are filled with so much data.

 

5. There is real clarity of everyone’s roles and responsibilities.

  • YES there is
  • NO there is not

Implementation Tip: This is about the handoffs between the silos. Make sure that there is a task list that clearly states how the organization must come together to get the priorities accomplished.

 

6. People really participate and care about the customer work.

  • YES there is
  • NO there is not

Implementation Tip: This requires a commitment from each functional leader on the headcount and staff time they will contribute. Create a formalized team where 25 to 50 percent of people's time from areas throughout the company is dedicated to the customer work.

 

7. Appropriate resources are allocated to make a real difference to customers.

  • YES there is
  • NO there is not

Implementation Tip: The key here is to have an organized annual planning approach that dedicates time to the customer objectives and customer investment. To achieve success, specific actions with defined parameters of what needs to be accomplished must be identified.

 

8. There is an understandable process for people to work together.

  • YES there is
  • NO there is not

Implementation Tip: This work is as clear as mud. It starts with a high-level frenzy that in the blink of an eye has people going back to business as usual. The process for how the work will be defined, reviewed, executed, and rewarded has got to be laid out clearly.

 

9. The work is considered attainable.

  • YES there is
  • NO there is not

Implementation Tip:. What I learned is not to abandon strategy but to dole it out in bite-size pieces. You need to know the end game. But then you need to bridge the gap between strategy and execution so people can work it into budgets, priorities and planning.

 

10. A process exists for marketing achievements to customers and internally.

  • YES there is
  • NO there is not

Implementation Tip: When you don’t tell people internally what’s going on with the customer, it’s all white noise to them. No report equals no action. You must make a point of marketing back to both your customers and internally inside the organization.

 

11. Recognition and reward is wired to motivate customer work.

  • YES there is
  • NO there is not

Implementation Tip: The customer work is not going to seem important until people start to be publicly commended and rewarded for it. Make every company gathering an opportunity to call out customer achievements and reward people for them.

0 Comments Permalink Tags: nps, customers, roadmap, experience, strategy, relationships, transformation, investment
JeanneBliss

Want to make sure your Customer Experience Work Stays on Track?

Manage these Seven Inhibitors of Customer Experience Work Success

 

1. Starting with a mantra, not an action plan.

  • Often companies decide that they want to get some early traction by telling everyone to “focus on customer experience”  What happens next is that people realize this is a big corporate priority and begin taking actions, making plans and creating new scoreboards and taking action.
  • This proliferates the silo based approach to actions that is contrary to the discipline of experience development and management.  A lot of action occurs, executives get a “false positive” that action is occurring and traction is happening, but it eventually stalls out because the actions don’t aggregate up to improve complete end to end customer experiences.

 

2. Not first defining the customer experience and gaining alignment on the path of actions.

  • This is similar to first point, but I am stressing it separately because defining the experience consistently and gaining alignment has major downstream implications if it is not done correctly and if the time is not done to get alignment.
  • The organization needs to agree on the stages of the experience and the definitions of success.
  • The importance of this is because we want to give leaders a new language set for which to ask and drive the business, and we want to establish the key cross-functional metrics for the development of key KPIs for priority touchpoints.  This is critical also to database management, as the stages of the experience interrelate to one another.
  • Without creating this framework first, the risk is to experience the same failure as what happened when (most) corporations around the world rolled out CRM.
  • They automated current processes without rethinking the business.
  • The business of customer experience is about redefining the operation of the business to be driven from the customers’ point of view on how they experience the company.
  • This new attitude and approach to talking about and managing the business is key to achieving the cultural transformation.  It’s only when we drive the experience from this vantage point, and hard-wire this approach into language, leadership and operations that it will become sustainable.

 

3. Not breaking the work into actionable pieces and not understanding what “success” is.

  • Initially the work on the customer experience journey should be considered successful when “enabling infrastructure” actions occur, such as:

    • Aligning the databases to be able to manage customer data to know the value of the customer asset
    • Engaging leaders in personally becoming connected to customers’ lives by calling customers, visiting employees
    • Teaching the organization the competency of working together across the silos to solve and improve one (or two) customer experiences end to end
    • Changing the communication from leaders to drive customer experience accountability

  • What often happens is that instead of building in (and celebrating) these new competencies so critical to the long termed sustainability – is that people want to attach a score.

    • “We will be successful when our satisfaction rates are x” or “we will be successful when our net promoter score is y”

 

4. Attaching early metrics to outcome metrics rather than operational metrics people can impact.

  • It’s very enticing to jump to the outcome metrics such as survey scores.
  • The challenge with this is that the outcome of a survey score is impacted by numerous factors, not all of which can be impacted by areas of the organization who are given the outcome metrics as their performance score.
  • It’s more powerful to, for example, identify the operational KPIs that people can impact
  • If the outcome metrics are added to early, before the underlying processes and culture change and coaching and development are put into place – people WILL want to achieve great scores – but they will rely on involving the customer in helping them to achieve a better score (follow up – any reason you can’t give me a ten?, etc.)
  • They will also focus on actions so minute that it might move the needle a little on the score, but the overall approach to sustaining that skill or even building that skill is compromised.  It’s very hard to sustain this type of “go get a good score” approach.

 

5. Not having executives engaged in the effort.

  • Often executives will say that they want to focus on the customer  experience – but they hand off the work to a department or area to work on.
  • This work is not like a typical project.  Setting up a great project plan and executing on tactics and actions will get the infrastructure built (such as VOC systems) but it won’t drive the change in culture and the development of cross-silo competencies.
  • Leaders must commit to being personally involved – beyond a perfunctory monthly “check in” meeting.  They need to engage in the process of the work.  Without executive involvement driving the new prioritization, driving out the actions that are in the way and giving people permission to work together – it is hard to sustain this work.

 

6. Not having clear communication to the organization that walks people constantly through the roadmap, and actions, and behaviors to model.

  • It’s not enough to do the work behind the scenes. The organization needs to be constantly kept up to speed on what is happening and what it means to them.
  • As new decisions are made that focus on customer experiences – people must be kept apprised of these decisions – and given permission to model this type of decision making.
  • Leaders must emerge as constant communicators of why we are taking the actions we are.
  • The organization must be kept up to speed on actions and successes.
  • Without this constant communication and “permission setting” and “decision guidance” the organization will view the cx work as another in a long string of exercises or programs that will go the  way of the others – away.

 

7. Taking actions based on what they think, not based on understanding what customers need.

  • Many companies, especially those long entrenched in their business, believe they know what customers need.
  • Even when they do research, they make the research about “validating” their plans rather than beginning open minded and asking the customer about their lives and what they need.
  • This approach will compromise the outcome of the new experiences that are built – and in some cases will completely backfire.
  • The recent Walmart case is a great one to bring up.  Walmart did “research” and got from it that customers said that they wanted less cluttered stores.  So they set upon a plan (led by a past Target executive) to declutter the aisles, etc.  Then they asked customers if this what they wanted.  It backfired.  They have lost millions on this.  Look up this example --- it’s a good one!
  • Customer experience differentiation comes when the experiences are based by truly understanding customers’ needs – rather than beginning with current processes and asking customers what they like or don’t like.  Many companies fall into this trap – from experience building to customer satisfaction scores that indicate that “they are doing ok”.  Customers are forced to react the box of the experience you are currently giving – they aren’t given the change to really talk about what they need.
0 Comments Permalink Tags: nps, action, kpi, transformation, metric, experience, bliss, voc, roadmap, customerbliss, customer_experience
JeanneBliss

How Zappos “Does” NPS

Posted by JeanneBliss Sep 10, 2010

As a Zappos Insights VIP Panel participant and host, I recently hosted the Webinar: “The value of Net Promoter Score” with Fred Reichheld.


Zappos is getting 80s and 90s in their Net Promoter Score system, which Fred said in our webinar together, are “in the stratosphere.”  So what I’d do in this post is give you a bit of background on how Zappos “Does” NPS:


Here’s how Zappos Asks The NPS Question


This is done in Two Different Situations; after an order, or after Speaking to a Customer Loyalty Rep:

 

On a scale of 0-10, 10 being the highest score, how likely are you to recommend Zappos to a friend or a family member?  If you had to name one thing that we could improve upon what could that be?

 

-OR-

 

During your last interaction with us, you contacted a member of our Customer Loyalty Team. On a scale of 0-1-, if you had your own company that was focused upon service, how likely would you be to hire this person to work for you?  Overall, would you describe the service you received from (insert name of customer loyalty rep) as good, bad or fantastic? What exactly stood out as being good or bad about this service?

Zappos.png

Zappos Also Practices “Internal NPS” With Employees.


Every month, every employee gets a short survey asking how happy they are in their job. They’ve nicknamed this “The Five Second Happiness Survey.” There is a place (just like NPS) for open ended feedback, with every single comment personally responded to. The scores and feedback are emailed to all “Zapponians” and changes are made to the company and policies based on what employees say.


Their internal questions are the following. The questions are not exactly the same wording as NPS, employees answer with three choices: 1. definitely, 2. sometimes, and 3. not at all. But the discipline of follow up, identification of issues and making things right is at the heart of this practice. And at Zappos, it works!

  1. I believe that the company genuinely has a higher purpose beyond just profits.
  2. My role in the Zappos Family has real purpose – it is more than just a job.
  3. I feel that I am in control of my career path and that I am progressing in my personal and professional development within the Zappos family.
  4. I consider my co-workers to be like my family and friends.
  5. I am very happy in my job.

 

Zappos Most Importantly Practices With Rigor, the Basics Net Promoter:

 

  • They recognize the importance of NPS. The process of customer feedback is seen as mission critical.  It’s embedded in Zappos’ company values and culture. Fred said that “Net Promoter is a litmus test that means you have you lived up the golden rule and made your customers lives better.”
  • A clear measurement process has been established. For Net Promoter to go beyond just another survey score that’s being chased because it’s on someone’s scorecard, this has to be about saving customers and improving customers’ lives.  This means systematically categorize the promoters and detractors with a measurement process that is understandable and reliable.
  • They close the loop with detractors and with promoters. Zappos is passionate about connecting with detractors. They solve the problem. And they hold Promoters close, actively communicating, tweeting and engaging with them. You need a system for activity of engagement or response with the customer and internally. “Don’t let the data just sit.”

 

If there is a breakdown in the system, and these 3 elements aren’t addressed, then NPS strategy won’t be meaningful, effective or gain traction in driving business decisions. For example, if the executives of a company make bad choices that hinder the employees as they try to create promoters—the NPS scores will reflect that and it shows a lack of internal commitment to NPS.


Finding the Right Rating Scale for Your Net Promoter Effort.


In our Zappos Insights webinar, I asked Fred about the 0-10 scale. Zappos practices using a 0-10 scale, but you may be like many of my clients who are struggling in their transition from a traditional CSAT survey with a different scale. I have many clients transitioning over to NPS, and this is always a big conversation—and a bit tricky. Reichheld discussed the rating scale that’s best suited to the Net Promoter question. He said using a 0-10 scale (vs. a different rating scale) is ideal. This system is the easiest to use, the best way to measure and interpret data, and finally, to compare the results. However, Fred also said that beginning with a different scale is not a calamity – as long as you are practicing the basic principles that make Net Promoter successful. 
In a 0-10 point scale, there is a distinct difference and there must be a very deliberate intent to give a company a “Promoter” score (a 9-10) versus a 1,2,3,4. When the scale is lower, such as a 1-5 scale the perceived difference is more difficult for customers to discern and it’s harder to discern inside the company—those Detractors who need immediate closed-loop contact and those Promoters who should be connected with to keep their passionate connection with your company.


The Best NPS Practitioners Collect The Measurement In Two Ways – Just Like Zappos Does.

 

 

  1. Measure NPS around transactions that are most vital (transactional NPS). Measure at one touchpoint for an operationally relevant measurement that offers feedback on performance at that key moment of truth.
  2. Execute a top-down NPS. Set up an anonymous survey and contact existing customers to ask the NPS question—rating the overall customer/company relationship. At the same time, ask questions about the scores they would give to your competitors. This will give you a view from the highest level. Are you growing an army of fans? The results will also let you compare scores with your competitors.
0 Comments Permalink Tags: zappos, nps, b2e, employee, fred, bliss, survey, scale, 0-10

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