Investing in Customer Communities to Drive Loyalty - Aisling Hassell

Kip Knight, VP of Marketing at eBay, talked about how eBay built an online community and how they are using NPS. eBay started in 1995 and now has 248 million subscribers from 37 countries around the world. It is now "The World’s Online Marketplace." About 1.3M people make part or all of their living off eBay. eBay thinks of community as anyone who has a relationship with eBay Inc. Community is core to eBay. It is a strategic differentiator, a unique asset to eBay, builds loyalty and retention, and community members are more valuable.

Kip says they constantly think about keeping their community vibrant. They have a set of community values that have existed from the beginning. eBay stays involved with the community by many different means. Online has forums and a Voices program, as well as member workshops and news and blogs. Offline has Voices (in-person/calls) and town halls, in-person visits, and radio. Voices is probably the most unique program. It is an ongoing advisory group that was begun in 1999. In-person sessions are held with members of the community about 4-6 times a year. The attendees sign NDA’s, so all topics are fair game. Over 400 members have been involved since 1999.

One key loyalty tool at eBay was the feedback system. It is very simple and effective. So, why does eBay need NPS? The feedback system wasn’t really telling eBay what was driving loyalty and what they needed to focus on to keep growing loyalty.

They expect NPS to be a global best practice. It could also be a *red alert* system for their buyers. They think it will heighten competitive awareness, and help focus investments on the right areas. It will also help with root cause analysis on promoters and detractors. In summary, NPS helps eBay go places the other tools don’t.

eBay will implement top down and bottom up feedback. Top down is to all customers, bottom up is focused on key segments that eBay wants to focus on and when they interact with eBay. They tried the "recommend" question, but it didn’t work across sellers and buyers. They finally decided on “Intent to buy” for buyers and “Intent to sell” for sellers.

One challenge they have is how to make employees able to participate and drive loyalty. Globally, they are going to look at trends, and not compare regions. It also will drive a Red Alert program focused on the top buyers. If they rate 6 or lower, then actions will be kicked off.

Kip waited a year before he rolled out, and he doesn’t regret waiting at all. He used that time to make sure that the program and company were ready.

I think the key message from Kip’s presentation is that, even for a customer-centric company like eBay, you can always improve and this is really a continuous journey. The fact that eBay is just embarking on an NPS journey shows how we all continue to evolve all the time. It is also interesting that they found a question that works for their business, but will leverage some of the best practices around the Net Promoter discipline. I wish eBay the best of luck on its journey!

Comments

[Rob Ellis]

Isn't "Intent to Buy & Intent to Sell" a completely different mindset to whether they 'promote' the business? 'Intent to buy/sell' is the same as asking someone if they 'will keep using them' which is totally different to 'would you recommend us'.