"Hold everybody accountable? Ridiculous!"
Seems like five laws is one too many? Suffering from “Law Fatigue”? Worried that you have already broken so many laws that you are in danger of being busted by the NPS Police?
If you have endured this far, you are probably looking for a catchy, motivational final law. One Law to "rule them all?"
So the notion of "accountability" doesn't exactly jump off the page as that Law. But put a hold on that judgment, friend. You see, organizational accountability is where the change "rubber" hits the corporate "road".
Organizations, particularly large organizations, have a problem getting stuff done. Put yourself in the CEO shoes for a second - assuming you are not already wearing them. You have a strategic imperative to create promoters. Maybe it's even going to require a massive change in culture, process, operations. If you are one of the majority of companies that isn't a loyalty leader and for whom your company culture wasn't born around the customer experience, this is tough stuff. For the leadership team, the weapons of choice for change across the organization are compensation (reward) and accountability.
Now we have talked in the past about what a blunt weapon compensation can be. A significant number of Net Promoter programs run aground based on compensation strategies around bad data and even worse goals. But that doesn't detract from the importance of accountability as a building block for program success. Getting all the employees to understand their role in the improvements around your NPS is not just about education - although that's important - it's also about tools. Knowing that your corporate NPS is 10%, or 80% for that matter, doesn't hold any one individual accountable. Knowing what the score is for your accounts, or the service calls you took last week, well now we are talking.
To create accountability, you need process and you need data. Process because anything at scale will require consistency of operation and data because people respond to information about their performance, not just collective performance. A consulting report could prove useful for helping get your senior staff aligned around the strategy, or even making a persuasive case to the board, but to engage thousands or employees you will need systems. You will need to measure performance at the most granular, atomic level. You will need to help your organization know that they are being measured, then give them the tools to improve and help them measure their improvement.
And let's not forget, there are already competing ideas for everyone's attention: financials. Most firms do a great job of driving accountability for financial success; sometimes, perhaps often, at the expense of long term customer experience. Your team isn't starting from a blank slate, you could find yourself working against existing performance criteria or established ideas.
With that backdrop, accountability for Net Promoter Score could be a challenge. Make sure you establish it as a key tenant of your program from the start, and put the systems and processes in place to make it happen.
