"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."- Philip K. Dick

Economists have micro economics and macro economics. Net Promoter leaders have micro NPS process and macro NPS process.

Micro processes, or operational processes are all about closing the loop, activating promoters – they are focused on the individual, customer or business. It’s customer experience improvement based on the “don’t just stand there, do something” school of management – and it works. To an extent.

You see, customers love companies that show commitment. Remember the old adage that a well executed service recovery actually improves the customer perception of your business? Well, it works to the extent that customers don’t get exhausted by a company constantly executing flawless recovery of errors that shouldn’t have happened in the first place. After a while, they just want to see the “Maytag repair man” strategy (the guy who has no real job to do because apparently the hardware never breaks) and not the “we try harder” approach. They want Yoda – “do, or do not… there is no try.”

Companies that focus entirely on tactical closed loop execution for detractor recovery risk making the same error in judgment that the lookout on the HMS Titanic made when he bragged “just wait until you see the turning circle on this baby at full speed”. Tactical execution just isn’t enough.

So companies need to figure out the macro process; how to identify the major shifts in their business that will be required in order to generate high levels of promoters. They need analytics, they need insight and they need data. They need root cause.

It’s a common misconception that NPS philosophy is deeply ambivalent around the issue of data analysis and diagnostics. While there are some  - very few in my experience – companies who never go beyond asking one or two questions of their customers, the vast majority of NPS practitioners develop techniques for mining diagnostic information in one way or another. These tools range from the traditional - a few insightful diagnostic questions embedded in a survey, to the absurd - dozens of complex questions that look more like a college entry exam, to the edgy - data mining of social media data to determine trends and meaning.

As a technology company we have our own preferred techniques of course, and we think you can get quite a lot for quite a little (burden on your customers). But the big point here is that you need to understand what you will do to change the existing dynamic of your business. And there is an art to this; attitudinal data doesn't lend itself to easy interpretation as, say, financial data sometimes does. It feels closer to "reading the tealeaves" rather than analyzing data and goes some way to explaining why there is a market research industry in the first place.

I must have witnessed over 100 strategy sessions around action planning. The only observation I can make with certainty is this: any strategic insight with a sporting chance of changing your enterprise is better than relying entirely on closed loop, or micro NPS techniques exclusively. You really need to know if there are "Detractors, Dead Ahead!"