Net Promoter Conference 2007 Blog

The Net Promoter Conference Blogs Have Moved

Read blogs from our latest conferences and search all conference blog archives on the Net Promoter Website at:

 http://www.netpromoter.com/blogs/conference.jsp

If you have more questions, e-mail us info@netpromoter.com

Sincerely,

Net Promoter Team

Deb Eastman: Insights from Fred Reichheld - Businesses Need to Follow Golden Rule

The conference wrapped up with a “fireside” chat with Fred Reichheld, author of The Ultimate Question, with moderation by Dr. Ralph Oliva, Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets at Penn State University. His passion for the importance of NPS as a key business metric is clear, and it’s hard to argue with the facts. Fred offers some practical advise for those embarking on the NPS journey.

The focus on Net Promoter started because he saw a fundamental disconnect in the world. Business had come to the conclusion that loyalty was irrelevant, yet the best businesses were living up to the highest standard, the golden rule. He set on quest to prove that loyalty is driving market leadership.

Deb Eastman: Intuit's Experience Using NPS to Drive Design and User Experience

Barry Saik shared the experience of Intuit in using NPS to drive product design and user experience.

As anyone who has read The Ultimate Question knows, Intuit has embraced NPS as a key metric of the business. When getting started, they debated whether to invest in competitive benchmarking.  Barry’s advice to anyone starting on the NPS journey is to invest the time in mapping yourself relative to your competitors on the growth vs. NPS charts from Fred’s book, The Ultimate Question. 

Deb Eastman: Focus on Right Customers with Right Value Proposition to Drive Growth

Rob Markey of Bain shares his insights and experiences on how customer segmentation can be used to improve loyalty and drive growth by targeting your offerings in a manner most relevant to your target buyers.

There are six basic things that companies should do to define and deliver to their target buyer, yet very few actually do this. 

John Williams – It’s So Simple!

Simon Lyons, the global head of marketing and communication at Aggreko, Plc doesn’t care about any of the occasional criticism of the NPS metric by academics. “NPS is directionally-correct, and it’s so simple! Nothing else is so useful for focusing the entire organization on the customer!” During his presentation today, Simon showed a disguised example from Aggreko’s actual results showing a tight correlation between NPS performance and revenue growth.

Simon introduced a number of interesting frameworks during his talk. One simple and thought-provoking framework is illustrated below:

John Williams: Creating Action at the Front Line

According to Martyn Christian, prior to 2002, FileNet had a fragmented approach to the customer, with no measurement of customer advocacy. Between 2002 and 2006, FileNet improved their NPS score from -6.3 to +20; an increase of over 26 points! How did they accomplish such a feat? By creating a customer-centric culture…

Deb Eastman: Marketing Moves to Fact-Based Reporting

And lastly in the B2B track we heard from Simon Lyons, Global head of Marketing & Communications at Aggreko. He clearly demonstrated his mastery of NPS and driving change in his organization.

Simon described being motivated by the feeling of lacking meaningful data in the boardroom. While the financial team brought in their data, the marketing team was looking in the rear view mirror and not driven by the voice of the customer. He found Fred’s HBR article (The One Number You Need to Grow) a defining moment, embraced the simplicity of NPS, and rallied the organization around it.

Internal selling required he break the silos and move marketing to the bleeding edge. Others sensed a shift in power and skepticism in the data. Simon pushed on and embarked on a NPS journey.

Deb Eastman: FileNet/IBM

Martyn Christian, Vice President, Marketing & Content Management at FileNet shared with us his journey of deploying an enterprise-wide customer loyalty program.

When embarking on the program, they had the following goals:

• Increase Promoter population
• Increase customer and partner loyalty
• Increase revenue & profitability
• Increase sales efficiency
• Build barriers to entry for competitors

Deb Eastman: NP Panel - Lessons from the Real World

We wrapped up Day one with a panel discussion moderated by Richard Owen with executive participation from Charles Schwab, GE Real Estate, and Mellon Investor Services. In their opening comments, each of the panelists shared a summary of where they are today regarding NPS. 

Troy Stevenson of Charles Schwab shared important insight from “Chuck." In a recent meeting, Chuck indicated that focusing on the customer was a guiding principle for how they built the business and lack of focus in the organization caused it to lose their way: an important lesson for all of us as the business grows and your attention moves from customer-centric to financial-centric metrics.

Deb Eastman: Best Practices in the B2B Space

In the B2B track, we heard from Dr. Laura Brooks of Satmetrix, Martyn Christian of FileNet, and Simon Lyons of Aggreko. All of these presentations highlight key themes for success in realizing gains in NetPromoter scores that drive business results. The consistent themes of these speakers clearly demonstrate best practices that must be deployed to drive growth.

To start with Laura shares her research on the best practices observed in the Satmetrix customer base. By analyzing customers, she has found 4 key elements to success:

John Williams: Using NPS to Play Offense at the Point of Care

Hooman Hakami, VP & GM, Global Services, GE Healthcare, gave an excellent presentation this morning. Hooman explained that the Clinical Systems business within GE Healthcare operates at the “point of care.” Products include ultrasound, cardiology, monitoring devices, bone densitometers, maternal infant care, and life support. The company has 1.7 million units installed in 140 countries, and is supported by 2 ,100 employees.

Andy Sernovitz: Parke Pettegrew, part 2

During the customer lifecycle there are certain critical experiences:  leasing, move-in, resident service requests, renewal, and move-out. Here's an example of drivers during move-in:

• Apartment readiness (clean, appliances hooked up)
• Office staff is available
• Eliminate mistakes (missing keys, lease errors)
• Preventing errors in move-in experience.

This led to a big chart with a move-in checklist in each building. (They call it the "poor man's Six Sigma"). The result of this visual, simple tool? 50% increases in NPS.

Andy Sernovitz: Parke Pettegrew, VP, National Training, Archstone-Smith, part 1

Parke Pettegrew shared many of Archstone-Smith's innovations in the apartment rental business, which include some very aggressive customer-facing promises.

Parke then asks: How can we be sure we are living the brand promise that we make to our residents?

They want to know how to understand baseline loyalty and understand what drives it. Then they want to translate these into operational improvement.

They have an interesting system to track NPS in parallel with their org chart -- regional EVPs, VP, etc. are compared against each other.

Andy Sernovitz: Raimund Schmolze, part 3

Raimund has fantastic examples of how they communicate NPS within the organization. The toolset includes:

• Detailed 2,000 word NPS brochure
• NPS conference with local university (Bonn)
• Best practice documents
• Flash animation video

Andy Sernovitz: Raimund Schmolze, VP Customer Insight, T-Mobile -- part 2

T-Mobile finds that NPS increases with proximity to customer interaction -- it rises significantly (as much as 70%) immediately after a visit to a store, and then begins to drops back as time passes.  Without the positive reinforcement, NPS drops back to nearly 0% over a few months. Lesson -- pay attention to customers!

Andy Sernovitz: Raimund Schmolze, VP Customer Insight, T-Mobile -- part 1

For all you NPS fans, Dr. Raimund Schmolze (see left) opened with a great video that explains NPS to employees. Ask him to borrow it!

NPS adoption at T-Mobile was driven by their board, who wanted to address issues of customer defection due to problems with "unfriendliness or lack of care in service" - 70% of defections. So they set a mission to be the "most highly regarded service company." He was concerned about how to adopt this new measure without the experience and tools ... and with traditionally low NPS in the telecom industry. So he set out to do it ...

They now measure NPS in every market, every month. Raimund shared a number of fantastic examples of how marketplace behavior drove month-by-month NPS changes at T-Mobile and with competitors.  The stories are hard to reproduce (I can't type that fast), but the lessons are clear:

• NPS can be used to track the impact of operating decisions in fast enough time to use the data for meaningful improvement
• NPS can be used to evaluate the impact of marketing decisions as they happen

John Williams: Measure Who Matters!

Dr. Laura Brooks, VP of Research & Consulting at Satmetrix gave what might be described as a somewhat sobering presentation on achieving success with NPS in a B2B context. She reported that while 76% of companies aspire to be customer-centric, only 16% actually “execute” and achieve this aim. In addition, her group’s survey of companies showed that only about 1/3 showed any improvement in NPS scores over a 3-year period, and that the overall average improvement was only 3%! The summary quote: “Breakthrough performance improvement (i.e., 10%+) is very rare in B2B.” The tale of the tape shows that, as with American Idol, many are called but few are chosen.

Andy Sernovitz: George Hofheimer, part 2

Other interesting findings:

1. Customers have difficulty articulating why they choose an institution
2. There is enormous switching inertia, even when consumers know they can get a better deal.
3. Consumers are irrational.
4. We thought that people would be attracted to the idea of doing business with a group they own, but the decisions were really based on service and features. They were resistant to the ideas of a relationship, and didn't want one.

Andy Sernovitz: George Hofheimer, part 1

George Hofheimer is the Chief Research Officer, Filene Research Institute (see left). George's organization is what they call the "think tank and do tank" for the credit union industry.

George's research set out to understand and validate NPS in the credit union context, and correlate NPS with growth.  The studied 17 credit unions and surveyed 50,000 of their customers  They got a 13% response rate.

The result? Credit unions had an average NPS of 53% -- compared to typical financial industry scores of -21% to 48%.   People love their credit unions.

They further looked into the loyalty question, with 97% of promoters reporting that they would stay with the credit union.  Promoters are likely to see their CU as their primary provider of financial services, have been customer for more than five years, and have a good overall experience. The research also found that NPS correlates very positively with membership growth.

Andy Sernovitz: Why This Is So Important, and So Fantastic

Just 3 years ago we started talking about a new kind of marketing ... a kind of marketing based on a simple philosophy: Happy customer are your greatest advertisers. It is the philosophy that says:

• Honesty matters. 
• Respecting consumers is the secret to marketing. 
• You do well by doing good.

Just 3 years ago we started talking about a new kind of marketing ... a kind of marketing based on a simple philosophy: Happy customer are your greatest advertisers. It is the philosophy that says:

• Honesty matters. 
• Respecting consumers is the secret to marketing. 
• You do well by doing good.

Deb Eastman: Choosing the Right Customer Mix and Building Value Over Time

After learning of the journey at Experian, we had the chance to hear from Das Narayandas, a well-regarded authority on B2B marketing & customer management. Das shared two very simple frameworks with a powerful punch. 

The basic message was if you want to build good loyal customers you must understand the value you create for customers and evaluate your customer portfolio to meet their unique needs. 

Andy Sernovitz: Big Idea #2

From Harvard's Das Narayandas: Understand difference between features and benefits. If the benefit isn't meaningful to your customers, don't build the feature.

It's not just about benefits and value ... but your ability to communicate those benefits easily to the consumer.

It's also not about products that provide an economic benefit to the customer -- because if you can provide the benefit and communicate it easily to the customer ... so can your competition.

Andy Sernovitz: Big Idea #1

From Experian's Laura DeSoto: Include the NPS for each of your customers in their records, so your entire organization can see how well they are being served (or how well they feel they are being served.

John Williams: Are You “Experian-ced?”

We’re all accustomed to hearing about success stories at business conferences, but Laura DeSoto, SVP of Innovation and Synergy at Experian, presented the real deal this morning. She told a story about Experian’s “client promise initiative” which, following lots of hard work and the engagement of 2,000 employees, resulted in more than a doubling of Experian’s NPS scores and “double-digit” increases in revenue and profits over the most recent six quarters.

Deb Eastman: A Morning at the Net Promoter Conference

The Net Promoter conference is off and running with a full house. We are sitting in a packed room with eager students ready to learn about how companies are applying Net Promoter to drive business performance. Richard Owen shared with us the demographics of our fellow attendees representing several industries from financial services, pharma, consumer goods, industrial and tech companies from all regions of the world including representatives from Latin America, Europe, North America and Australia. The buzz of Net Promoter is clearly spreading across the world.

After a warm welcome from the Satmetrix executives, we got started with Laura DeSoto, SVP of Innovation & Synergy at Experian.

Andy Sernovitz, 9:34 am: Something Special Is Happening Here

As I walk into the room it's clear that this is not your normal conference.  Definitely not your normal research and measurement conference. 200+ executives are sitting in their seats -- focused, taking notes, and absorbing the presentations. What you don't see is people drifting around the halls, chatting, and making phone calls. Amazingly, I can't see anyone on their blackberry either. Without a doubt, this is a group who has a appreciation for this topic, and they are here to grab every bit of knowledge that they can.

It's going to be a good event.

Welcome

Couldn't make it to the Conference (Jan. 31 & Feb. 1 in NYC)? Then check out the Conference blog for real-time updates from Deb Eastman, Andy Sernovitz, and John Williams (read their bios). Want to review the posts by topic such as B2B, B2C, best practices, speaker, or blogger? Then check out the "Categories" to the right. (Note: click on photographs below for larger image.)