Net Promoter Day, Paris - October 16, 2008

Wrap Up

Martin Green concluded the day by thanking all of our gracious presenters, and inviting everyone for champagne (gotta love the French style…did I mention we met in the “Salon Panache”!). And as I wrap up this final blog post from my hotel room (with a free internet connection by the way!), I can only say…Paris is still one of my favorite places on earth. And I’m really glad we decided to try out this new conference format. I hope the attendees enjoyed it as much as I did.

For more Net Promoter learnings, check out the European Conference 2008 blog, Miami Conference 2008 blog, European Conference 2007 blog, and New York 2007 Conference blog.For more Net Promoter learnings, check out the Miami Conference 2008 blog, European Conference 2007 blog, and New York 2007 Conference blog.

Using NPS to build an innovative customer experience in a support environment

Alexandre Murat – Sony Style Europe

Alexandre helped us tie together many of the ideas we explored today, by telling us how Sony is integrating NPS into their DNA. How they have moved from a product-focused company, to one that is more and more focused on customer experience.

Why use NPS? They wanted to find a metric that would link their business activities to innovative experiences (combining product with overall experience).

The Promotional Spiral: Leveraging Promoters for Brand Advocacy

Arnaud Pochebonne – Weber Shandwick

Arnaud gave us a fresh view of NPS, from the standpoint of public relations and PR. How does advocacy fit in with NPS when it comes to marketing and PR strategy?

Not that many years ago, the PR profession really thought about word-of-mouth in a hierarchical sense. Strategies were focused on the opinion leaders in a space, with the idea that this would trickle down through various press and communication channels to the general public. But this top-down model has basically been turned “upside down”…or at least sideways! Now, you can find consumers with lots of influence almost anywhere in the pyramid.

Using Customer Feedback to Deepen Business Relationships

Marc Anné – Orange Business Services

Orange Business Services offered an excellent B2B case study to balance out the day. OBS is one of the world’s largest B2B telecom companies with a network covering 220 countries and territories, and customer service centers in 166 countries. If you are from Europe, you probably know of Orange as either a consumer or a business telecom provider.

Net Promoter : financial value and holistic dimension through actual examples

Domenico Azzarello, Bain & Company

Domenico, partner in Bain’s Paris office, kicked off the afternoon with a discussion about the importance of Net Promoter economics, and approaching it as a transformation program. He highlighted the important connection of Net Promoter with key economic factors including:

1. customer tenure
2. level of spend
3. recommendations
4. price premium

We had some discussion earlier in the day about how companies can figure out how much impact word-of-mouth has in their business. Domenico showed a good example of positive and negative word of mouth economics, which led to some good questions about how you go about quantifying the WOM factor in your business.

Ralph Hababou – Service Gagnant

Ralph has been writing about great service since his first best seller book in 1986. He started with an old Chinese proverb…that says that someone who doesn’t smile should not open a store. This one really woke up the crowd…he challenged the crowd about France’s reputation as a country that is not particularly service focused. Wow, this guy knows how to spin a funny story. He made our own experience better for the day (now that’s customer experience!) with his humor and his passion for customer service.

The Unique Appeal of NPS Compared to Traditional Indices - Expedia

Ludovic Philippo, Expedia

With millions of buyers, Ludovic explained the great challenge for large companies like Expedia to truly understand what is going on in their customer-base. We first met Ludovic via his blog, where he had mentioned NPS, and we invited him to join us in Paris.

They have been using NPS for 18 months, and integrating it with their operations for 12 months now. From his point of view, it’s all about making it operational.

Multi-Cultural Approach and Decentralized Management at AIG

Philippe Danielski shared with us AIG’s approach to Net Promoter in a very decentralized, multi-cultural setting, and how important it is for them to have an approach that convinces the different operating units of the value of new ideas and processes. I have to give Philippe credit for his very honest and straightforward introduction around the current situation at AIG, which has been in the press a lot lately because of the financial crisis. What Philippe helped me understand is the size and scope of AIG’s underlying insurance business, which has served clients around the world well for years, and continues to do so despite the unfortunate realities of the current financial crisis.

Net Promoter: From Metric to Organisational Discipline

Following Martin’s introduction, I was joined by Maya-Coralie Blanc, my colleague who runs the Satmetrix France office. I started with a 15 minute primer on the original research behind Net Promoter, to ensure that everyone in the audience understood what Net Promoter is as far as the metric goes. Then Maya took the stage to explain the difference between thinking of Net Promoter only as a metric (NPS), versus using Net Promoter as an operational discipline within the organization.

Conference Opening

Bienvenue à Paris!

After 2 years of Net Promoter conferences, we are thrilled to hold our first one in the city of lights, in French. And my team finally convinced me to try my hand at blogging! So for those of you who couldn’t make to Paris, or who decided not to attend because your French just isn’t up to the task…you have here a summary in English of the day’s highlights from well known brands including like Expedia, Orange Business Services, Sony Style, and AIG, as well as our guest speakers for the day who consult and write about customer experience, customer service, and marketing.