Net Promoter London Conference Blog 2007

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The Things We Learned in London (2 of 2)

Part 2: Top Ten Success Factors for Net Promoter Deployments

There were lots of compelling case studies presented at the recent Net Promoter conference in London. Clearly a revolution is occurring in the marketplace. If you don’t embrace it, your competitors will bury you. Because sooner or later, they too will wake up to the power of this important customer-experience metric.

The Things We Learned in London (1 of 2)

Part 1: Leaping into the Net Promoter Domain

I am writing this blog on the plane ride home from the Net Promoter Conference in London. As I ponder the success stories I heard at the conference – stories from GE Real Estate, Aggreko, Philips, Groupe Neuf Cegetel, and other prominent firms – it occurs to me how critical Net Promoter has become for these businesses. Many attendees who were “on the fence” at the outset of the conference have jumped over to join the Net Promoter community. Success is contagious.

Paul Marsden: Building a Net Promoter Program Brick by Brick

Delegates are returning from a short coffee break – room is packed again.

Peggy Conley introduces her session by explaining LEGO adopted NPS two years ago as part of a turnaround strategy for company.

NPS has permeated LEGO company culture - focusing the business on customer experience (the key driver of NPS).  Example of CEO receiving letter from customer asking for Space LEGO instructions - and replying personally.

Peggy is talking about critical success factors for NPS deployment:

Paul Marsden: NPS Success Story from T-Mobile

The room’s full overflowing - standing room only to hear Gavin Sugden, Market Intelligence Manager for mobile operator T-Mobile, talk about the T-Mobile experience of deploying Net Promoter.

Gavin’s talking about T-Mobile deployment of Net Promoter Score in the UK. At the heart of the initiative is a competitive NPS tracker conducted with a random sample of 3000 consumers by phone every month.

Interestingly, the T-Mobile tracker measures the NPS of T-Mobile and key competitors, reporting scores relative to category average to provide a competitive benchmarking. Smart.

Scott Smith: Building the Net Promoter Discipline in Four Steps

Are there economic benefits for Net Promoter? Yes, according to Satmetrix's Dr. Laura Brooks, one of the co-developers of Net Promoter. So what is the economics of Net Promoter?

Well, first, there is measurable economic impact from promoters as well as detractors. Straight to the punch line: On average, the relative economic impact of promoters who recommend is that they bring in additional $565 in revenue and while detractors are responsible for $701 in lost revenue. This is from a sample of B2B software companies. This data was calculated by understanding the number of referrals or negative comments these folks gave.

Paul Marsden: Using NPS to Get Closer to Customers

Beatrice Dupuis, Directeur process et satisfaction abonnés with Groupe Neuf Cegetel, is introducing her talk - implementing a Net Promoter strategy in consumer call centers for Neuf Cegetel, a broadband supplier. Neuf Cegetel has a clear strategic vision to get closer to customers, address their needs and become the top rated supplier in terms of customer service - and is using NPS to do this. Neuf Cegetel outsource call centers and use Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a quality/satisfaction index to counterbalance productivity metrics they use as KPIs for call centers.

Paul Mardsen on De La Rue's "My Contribution"

So here we are - a room full of people with our eyes closed pointing where we think north is - hands pointing in every direction. Andy Brierley, Project Director of De La Rue, is up on stage, telling us that our random and varied pointing about sums up De La Rue’s customer focus strategy before they embraced the (Net Promoter Score) NPS.

Suhail Khan: Goal Setting to Drive Action and Business Improvement

The second session was by Satmetrix's James Young, Managing Consulting - Europe. James discussed goal setting and best practices for actioning business improvement by setting appropriate goals. I think this is a very important topic, and one that I’ve heard much discussion and debate, especially when wanting to tie compensation to these targets.

Paul Marsden: Using Net Promoter in Market Segmentation and Product Design

We began the Process Excellence track with a presentation from HSBC's Nadya Hijazi. 

A Little Context

Because HSBC is such a large, global company it’s difficult to present themselves cohesively to their customers. Perceptions of their customers differ widely based on where they are located and which part of HSBC they work with.

And, HSBC have a very competitive environment in which they must make a multi-million dollar investment in HSBCnet, introducing new functionality, and supporting geographic expansion.   

Suhail Khan: The Methodology of Who, What, and When

The first presentation is by Dr. Vince Nowinski, the Principal Methodologist at Satmetrix (co-developer of Net Promoter). He is the guy who works to maintain sound methodological standards with Satmetrix and based on my observations, it appears he is succeeding. His presentation today is entitled “Measuring What Matters – Capturing the Voice of Your Most Important Customers.” Vince’s approach to the discussion is to cover the "who," "what," and "when," as it relates to sampling strategies, response rates and general survey design. This is a hotly debated subject and has brought much discussion thus far at the conference.

Scott Smith: Driving Net Promoter into Your Organization

Sinéad Kwant of Philips International quotes Dr. Morris Massey: “The gate for any change is always unlocked from the inside.” This was a very engaging presentation if you count the number of hands going up asking questions at its end. If I was to summarize, the key ingredient that drove the success of the Net Promoter program at Philips is to gain the hearts and minds of employees. Employees engaged in the customer experience will deliver happy customers stated Sinéad.

Scott Smith: Best Practices for Making Net Promoter Operational

In the Net Promoter community, 68% of companies aspire to be customer centric but only 15% achieve this goal based upon research Satmetrix (co-developer of Net Promoter with Fred Reichheld and Bain & Company) recently conducted with over 100 companies in the community. This aspiration is why there is so much interest in the Net Promoter conferences, stated Henry Jones, Satmetrix's Director of Business Consulting, EMEA, in his talk.

Scott Smith: "Driving NP into Your Organization" - Fred Reichheld

The room is still full for the last session for today. To end the day, we are hearing from Fred Reichheld, with his talk on Loyalty and Net Promoter. Fred makes the point - relationships worthy of loyalty should be a top priority – but that in most business it is still a joke. This is why Fred has stated that he is no longer the high priest of loyalty but is now the godfather of growth.

Loyalty leaders are growing at 2.6x their competitor averages.

Suhail Khan: Energising Your Business around NP - Swiss Re

My second session was another enjoyable interactive presentation delivered by Steve Dee from Swiss Reinsurance Company (Swiss Re). The session, which included everything from teaching the audience a magic trick (pulling a rabbit out of a hat, literally, ok, albeit a baby stuffed plush rabbit) to covering the Net Promoter program efforts at Swiss Re, was full of insightful data suggestions that can help companies who are just starting the NP journey.

Suhail Khan: From Hearsay to Hard Data - Aggreko

As we enter the home stretch of Day One of the EMEA Net Promoter Conference, I cannot but be impressed with the amount of best practices that have already been shared by some very distinguished speakers. And this trend continues well into the afternoon as I have the pleasure of covering two speakers for you who will be laying out some key concepts that are the foundations for running a fine tuned Net Promoter program.

The speaker I am covering first is Simon Lyons, Global Head of Marketing and Communications for Aggreko, a generators rental business targeting companies, individuals and countries as well as providing mission critical power supply to disaster hit areas and regions impacted by war. They are a global company with a 1.5 billion market cap.

Scott Smith: Using NPS to Change Your Business Focus from Transactions to Relationships

Ask Bernhard Klein Wassink, Senior Vice President, Global Marketing, GE Real Estate: “Why did GE Real Estate embark on the NP journey in 2005, when they have tripled their net income over the last 5 years?”

Well to start, Bernhard quotes GE CEO Jeff Immelt: “NPS is the best formula I’ve seen in my career here, and I want everybody here to get on board.” This is seen as the next wave at GE, following other successes like Six Sigma.

So does GE Real Estate have a business problem?

Scott Smith: Creating Action at the Frontline: Making Net Promoter Relevant in Each and Every Part of your Business

Martyn Christian, VP Worldwide Marketing for IBM Enterprise Content Management, talked about their success with implementing Net Promoter and customer loyalty program over the last 5 years.

Wow! These results tell the story:

§         Increased Net Promoters from -6.73% to +20% (Net Shift of +26%)

§         Acting on Key Drivers, Drove Over 30 Company Wide Improvement Initiatives

§         Increased Revenue from Existing Base from 72% to over 80%

§         Increased Net Profit 10 percentage points

§         Increase “Positively Ecstatic” Customers

§         Database with customers willing to serve as references increased from 100 customers to over 600 in 12 Months

§         Published over 100 Customer Success Stories

§         Increased Press Activity

§         Analyst Validation – Gartner/IDC/Forrester briefings on program

So how did they get there?

Scott Smith: Net Promoter and the Value to Your Business

Richard Owen, CEO of Satmetrix, the co-developer of Net Promoter, kicked off the presentations by talking about Net Promoter and the value to your business. He talked about why Net Promoter is taking off.

Richard presented four reasons that are driving the adoption of NP:

1. Shift to service economies
2. Shortcomings in public accounting
3. The high rate of CRM failure, and
4. The Reinvention of marketing.

(And all in 45 minutes)

The first big topic that Richard covered is the shift to service economies.

Scott Smith: Conference Opening - Martin Green

We are kicking off the Net Promoter Conference here in London at the Park Lane Hotel with introductions from Satmetrix's Martin Green, Managing Director - EMEA. He kicked off the meeting with the one big feedback item from the first NP conference in New York in January: more information about how to implement a successful NP program.

Welcome

Couldn't make it to the European Conference, taking place 27 & 28 June 2007? Then check out the Conference blog for updates from Scott Smith from Satmetrix, the co-developer of Net Promoter; Dr. Paul Marsden, formerly with LSE Enterprise and now with Brand Genetics; and Suhail Khan, Director, WW Customer Loyalty Programs, FileNet, an IBM Company.

For more Net Promoter learnings, check out the New York Conference blog from earlier this year.