Scott Smith, Director of Product Management, Satmetrix

Employee Experience Management

This is my last post to the Net Promoter Blog. I write this, having moved on from Satmetrix to pursue other opportunities. But I sit here thinking about what I would write and I can’t escape the learnings from my career at Satmetrix. I learned more about Customer Experience then I ever thought possible. My only regret is that I wished I learned these things earlier in my career. One of the tidbits that sticks out is that employee loyalty translates into customer loyalty (i.e., Service Profit Chain methodology.) How a company treats its employees can say a lot about how they will treat its customers.

The World Is Not Flat

CRM solutions are intended to track a 360 view of customers. What does this mean? Judging by the marketing literature supplied by CRM vendors, a 360-degree view would offer a complete view of the customer corridor throughout the sales cycle: from the customer’s initial touch and transaction history through the marketing program and on to the purchase decision – with some predictive analytics thrown-in for good measure.

Help Wanted: Superhero

Net Promoter Managers Reveal Their True Identity

Requirements: Experience driving cross-company, customer-centric culture change with limited resources and no budget. Must be comfortable managing executives (previous experience herding cats a plus.) Must have in-depth experience with sales processes, service processes, product delivery, marketing, and every other role in the company that is the least bit customer-facing. The ideal candidate should also be able to reengineer customer-facing processes in ways that maximize customer experiences and shareholder ROI. Wearing underpants on the outside is optional.*

Bottoms-Up or Top-Down?

Are you top-down or bottoms-up? No I am not talking about convertibles or drinking games, I am talking about Net Promoter surveys. There are two basic approaches to collecting the Net Promoter Score (NPS). The first is to collect the data at the time of customer touch, which is often referred to as transactional or bottoms-up data. This is where the survey is targeted towards the customer involved in the transaction. The second method is relationship-oriented, where the data is collected periodically – also known as the top-down approach. In this case, the sample is often driven by some sort of sampling methodology out of the customer population, or a census of the customer population taken over a defined time period (see Scott's blog on sampling versus census strategies). What are the differences and which one is right for you?

Celebrating Success!

Looking back on the recent Net Promoter conference, the exclamation made famous by Bill Gates comes to mind: “Wow!” This action-packed event proved that something special is happening in the Net Promoter community, as companies demonstrated their success with this unique customer loyalty discipline. If there was one theme that stood out for me at the conference, it was the simplicity and power of Net Promoter as a change agent—especially when deployed as part of a complete Net Promoter discipline to drive product decisions, manage account processes, and integrate business processes. Collecting Net Promoter data is just the first step in the journey, as the testimonials shared at this conference illustrated so well.

NPS: Common Sense Metric or Sacred Truth?

I’m not a market researcher. I don’t even play one on TV. I took only one statistics class in college, but I have been in the Enterprise Software business for 25 years, delivering business solutions to business users. This is the point of view I try to bring to this blog as well as to my interactions with Satmetrix customers and thought leaders in this industry. So I thought I would chime in on the perennial discussion about what the Net Promoter metric means in a business context. Don’t worry—this is not a statistical analysis or research paper. I am more interested in how you should embed the use of NP into a business process, similar to the blogs I have written about in the past. While the validation of the metric is important, it is its business value—owing in part to its accessibility, its motivational power, and its proven value in business contexts—that makes NP so pertinent in a business context.

Customer Experience Is a Bad Idea

Who cares about customer experience? Not customers. They want good products and great service for the least possible cost—hold the hassle, please. They don’t generally ponder something as ineffable as their “experience.” Meanwhile, companies pay lip service to customer care, but they are mainly concerned about making a profit—anyway they can.

Which brings us to the two basic ways companies approach customer experience. The first kind of company believes that maintaining happy customers really does matter. Good profits pay off in the long run. (“Good” profits refer to profits generated by enthusiastic customers who not only buy your products, but also recommend them to their friends).

Enlist Account Managers to Drive Your Loyalty Program

The holy grail of customer loyalty programs is to provide value to all parties in the business relationship. One of the primary ways to accomplish this objective in a B2B setting is through the account management process. Leveraging customer feedback within a formal customer-experience process enhances relationships between account managers and customers. When properly executed the process will drive both loyalty and revenue.

How do you get there?

A sales-oriented customer loyalty program should consider the entire feedback loop between customers and account managers. It begins at the data-collection stage and continues through the action stages of dealing with reported customer issues. While this may sound like a simple complaint management system, a well crafted customer loyalty program has much loftier goals. Namely, understanding what motivates customers, and using analytical data to prioritize issues that have a positive impact on customer relationships.

Moving NP Scores (“Up” Preferred!)

I was recently talking with some folks at Satmetrix about the value of customer experience programs, and how they can improve your Net Promoter Score (NPS). These issues come up quite a bit on the Net Promoter (NP) forum as well. In my past posts, I have been a strong proponent of using customer feedback as part of business processes. I have also stated that it takes multiple programs—including relationship programs that measure NPS and touch-point satisfaction programs—to really move your NPS. Since relationship data tends to be more reactive then proactive, satisfaction programs focused on key touch points are critical to moving your NPS.

Proactive organizational change comes in two forms: process change and process integration. Both approaches focus on integrating customer data into the DNA of the organization, rather then just relying on individuals becoming more “customer centric” in an unstructured way.

How Mature Is Your Net Promoter Discipline? Attaining Enlightenment in Five Easy Steps

You would think that collecting and making use of Net Promoter information would be breathtakingly easy. Ask the Ultimate Question, do the math, write a report, and you’re done. But in reality it is not that simple. Sure, collecting information can be challenging, but the true Herculean task comes when you put that information to use.

On a recent visit to one of our clients, I took note of all the goals they had developed using Net Promoter. Some of the goals focused on becoming customer-centric. Others involved measuring individual performance and driving cultural change across the organization. Their goals weren’t the problem, but their approach lacked finesse. They tried to do it all at once using the Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a hammer to drive simultaneous changes. Needless to say, no one was happy with the program, and management emerged with a few squashed fingers.

What Is Enterprise CEM? Part 3: Make the Data Personally Relevant

I love reading comments about Net Promoter. I commonly see questions such as these: “Is NP really the best number?” “Is it the one number that tells you everything?” “Is it the perfect measure of customer loyalty?” The debate seems to focus on how accurately Net Promoter measures loyalty.

This is a statistician’s argument, which proves to me that many people don’t understand the full importance of Net Promoter. So I will go out on a limb here: there are most likely purer ways to measure loyalty, if we could all agree to what loyalty means. But is Net Promoter (NP) the best number for a business to focus on? The answer is a resounding yes. Let me explain.

What I love about Net Promoter is how easily it can be communicated to and understood by all members of an organization. I can hear the hallway conversations now. “Our Net Promoter score is up four percent!” That sort of sounds like, “My stock just went up four points!”

In other words, you do not need to be a statistician to understand the importance of the number. Employees can enthusiastically say, “Our Net Promoter score is up 60%!” It is precisely because this metric is so easily understood that the company can rally around the concept of customer recommending customers.

What Is Enterprise CEM? Part 2: Integrate Your CEM Strategy into Business Processes

It is almost midyear, and I have been thinking about my progress on my New Year’s resolutions. Like most people, one of my vows this year was to lose some of those extra pounds. So I did some research, bought some new gym clothes, and got an exercise bike.

But, looking at the results so far, I have not seen any changes. What went wrong? I bought all the right stuff, read all the right books…I guess I am just big-boned? If not, what do I need to do to effect change? Well, for starters, I guess I should fess up to the fact that I actually need to integrate exercise into my regular schedule – simply owning the equipment is not enough!

Lately I have been hearing similar stories about Net Promoter (NP). Clients tell me, “We are asking the recommended questions, but nothing changes.”

What Is Enterprise CEM? Part 1: Building a Comprehensive CEM Strategy

There seems to be a misconception circulating in the market research community about what Net Promoter is all about. The main criticism stems from a belief that you cannot derive meaningful analysis from a single number. Instead, you have to ask lots of questions to get results.

This is simply not true.

As Fred Reichheld wrote in Harvard Business Review and expanded in his latest book, The Ultimate Question, customer feedback programs should not be viewed as market research but as operating management tools.

Making Data Meaningful, Relevant and Intuitive – A Message from the Office of Jargon Abatement

I remember the first time I was asked to interpret a survey. This was long before I got into the CEM business or had heard of Net Promoter. In fact I was managing a retail store. One day, the folks at corporate headquarters—in their infinite wisdom—asked all of the employees to fill out a survey. It was a big deal; senior management harped on me to be sure all of the staff participated.

So we did—everybody filled out the survey and I shipped the results back to corporate. I didn’t give it another thought until I got the results report. I remember this very clearly. It was a dense report, printed in small type, with about 100 lines listing results for 2 to 3 word issues like “management responsiveness,” “good work environment,” and “feel adequately trained.” For each issue, the survey listed the current results along with last year’s numbers. For example, “good work environment” went from 4.7 last year to 5.1 this year. Well, that sounded good. I think . . .

A Sweet Taste That Lingers: Making Satisfaction Surveys Work

I was having lunch today with a group of co-workers when I learned an important lesson about managing customers. The service was not very good. Actually, it was atrocious – waiters running about in confusion as diners looked around frantically for attention. Finally our food came – everybody’s except mine, that is. You know that uncomfortable feeling, when everyone else at your table has been served and they are collectively staring at the empty spot in front of you, while you insist that they should eat their food while it is hot.

If I had been asked to fill out a satisfaction survey at that moment, the restaurant would not have received a very good score. On a typical Net Promoter scale, let’s just say I would have been “very unlikely” to recommend this restaurant to my friends and colleagues.

Easing the Burden, Leveling the Load: Respondent Strategies for Sampling Versus Census

There are two basic types of respondent strategies: sampling and census.

Most of us are familiar with sampling, since it is the strategy market research firms typically use to evaluate large populations. In simple terms, a sampling strategy uses a representative subset of a large population to measure the whole population. Public opinion polls are a prime example: 54% of adults in the U.S. do not like their eggs scrambled, out of 2,024 respondents surveyed. If the poll used a census approach, we would have asked millions of adults about their egg-eating preferences.

To Touch or Not to Touch: Avoiding Survey Toxicity

What if before we make any decision, we ask our customers for their feedback? Product Management wants to add a new feature, sales wants that win/loss study, and Bob in the cafeteria wants to know how the food was for that last seminar. I see the day when we have our customers use their PDAs to respond to such questions real-time – NOT.

In the customer experience management (CEM) world, we would call the above “survey toxicity.” By over surveying our customers we turn what could be a meaningful business dialog into spam. Survey toxicity from high touch frequency translates into plummeting survey completion rates and poor customer experience. (Touch is defined as every time we ask a customer for feedback – it does not mean they actually took a survey.) This becomes more pronounced in large enterprises that might have hundreds of surveys from different groups all vying for the same customers’ responses. Customers end-up asking themselves “do all these people even work for the same company?”