You don’t need to inhale to be doing Net Promoter. You don’t need to ask only one ultimate question. You don’t even need to call it Net Promoter. To be a Net Promoter practitioner, there are just three things your organization needs to be doing:
1. Systematically categorizing customers into promoters, passives, or detractors. If you prefer, you can call them loyal advocates, fair-weather friends, and adversaries.
2. Creating closed-loop processes so that the right employees will directly investigate the root causes that drive customers into these categories.
3. Making the creation of more promoters and fewer detractors a top priority so employees up and down the organization take actions based on their findings from these root-cause investigations.
If you are doing these three things, you are doing NPS.
What about the ultimate question—wasn’t that the title of the book? Isn’t it the quintessence of “true” NPS?
In fact we might have called the book The Net Promoter System, except that few readers were familiar with the term “Net Promoter” when the book was published. We wound up calling it The Ultimate Question because it really is possible to categorize customers effectively with one question, and doing so helps make the system extremely practical. But fixating on just one question misses the real point.
For example, I recently discovered one major firm whose executives denied they were using NPS, even though they were intently focused on getting more promoters and fewer detractors. Indeed, they passed all three of my criteria with flying colors. The reason they claimed not to be NPS practitioners was that they used an index with several questions to categorize promoters, passives, and detractors. In some of their diagnostic surveys, moreover, they asked multiple questions, not just one “ultimate” question.
Well, plenty of NPS companies utilize multiple-question surveys to sort customers into correct categories, and even more use multiple-question surveys as one of their diagnostic tools. Indeed, Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s system, on which the NPS framework was originally based, relies on a two-question survey, but the key is to be economical and ask only for relevant feedback. Some NPS practitioners start out with a several-question index and then discover that one question works even better. FileNet, the content management software firm (recently acquired by IBM), began its customer focus effort this way: the company started with a five-question index but soon evolved to a score based on one question. Even in the multi-question phase, the firm made outstanding progress. And FileNet’s managers certainly consider themselves NPS practitioners (as attendees of the FileNet presentation at our most recent NPS Conference in London can attest).
Some companies mistakenly conclude that they are not doing Net Promoter because they use a question other than the original “would recommend” question. They have found that their question provides a better solution for categorizing promoters, passives, and detractors. They should reread my book, which makes it very clear that not every firm should use the “would recommend” question. We noted that about 20% of firms will find that another question better correlates with the customer behaviors that drive growth in their business (repurchase, increased share of wallet, and referral). The key to a reliable NPS is the use of the right question or questions for a specific company, not whether the question used is “would recommend.”
More common than companies doing NPS and claiming not to be are the numerous firms now claiming that they are doing NPS when in fact they are not. They may be surveying customers with a question such as, “How likely is it you would recommend us to a friend?” But most of the root-cause analysis is done by statisticians at headquarters, who are searching for broad drivers of customer scores. There is no closed-loop follow-up between line managers or supervisors and individual customers. These companies are ignoring the power of the bottom-up feedback loops that are central to the NPS approach.
So before announcing to the world that you are doing Net Promoter (or not), I hope you will review the three criteria at the top of this blog. That is the only way to know whether you are really following the precepts of this powerful system —and whether you can reasonably expect the resulting benefits of accelerated and profitable organic growth.
I think NPS is just for company's service, not for industry.
Do you have any examples about NPS using in B2B markets?
Thank you
Kátia
Posted by: Katia Souza | November 28, 2007 at 10:50 AM
Numberous B2B companies are doing Net Promoter. Here are a few examples of stories from the Net Promoter Conference blogs:
From the London Conference: http://netpromoter.typepad.com/npc_london_2007/fred_reichheld/index.html
From the New York Conference:
http://netpromoter.typepad.com/npc2007/b2b/index.html
Posted by: Net Promoter Community | November 28, 2007 at 12:35 PM
We are contacting customers post-sale to ask NPS questions, but are having limited success getting any responses at all? We're phoning people and sending e-mails. What could we be doing differently to get a better response rate?
Posted by: Rob Morris | November 28, 2007 at 02:44 PM
Here is a Net Promoter discussion forum string on response rates (viewing/posting requires brief registration):
Survey return rate
http://netpromoter.groupee.net/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/2731073251/m/5981052062
NPS E-mail Subject Line
http://netpromoter.groupee.net/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/2731073251/m/3051075072
Using Incentives to Generate Response with NPS
http://netpromoter.groupee.net/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/2731073251/m/1401016912
Posted by: Net Promoter Community | November 28, 2007 at 04:54 PM
What %age of your user base should you survey to get a reliable Net Promoter Score?
Posted by: Syed Muneeb-ul-Haq | December 04, 2007 at 02:14 AM
Rather than focusing on the outbound survey - think about the listening pipes that already exist within you communication with customers. For example; do you send customers a bill? How about adding one or two questions on the bill? What about asking one or two questions there? We've (unfortunately) sent out way too many surveys to customers and have diluted response rates. I bet you've got some naturally occuring communication opportunities where you can ask those questions. You'll be surprised how customers will respond! One very large membership company added two questions to their outgoing bill, for example, and are now receiving thousands of responses per month. This works!
Posted by: Jeanne Bliss | December 16, 2007 at 11:59 PM
My company recently informed us that they're going to implement NPS. After reading your book, I thought it was a fantastic idea. I've actually espoused many of the same basic principles for years, with little success. I've seen many ideas come and go, so it wasn't surprising to see the skepticism with which the employees viewed this new process. When I asked the Director and Regional President the following question, it was met with derision : "One of the basic tennants of the NPS process is to first make Promoters out of your employees. How do you intend to do this?" To this day, they've done nothing to address this step of the process. They want the employees to create Promoters, but have no intention of working with the employees, and get visibly upset when this is questioned. Could you say a few words to companies like this who want to pick & choose which parts of the process they want to adopt, and which they want to skip, and how this will affect the outcome and success of the program?
Posted by: Rae | January 03, 2008 at 07:15 PM
Practitioner using Net Promoter is just quality time management. Unfortunately we can’t always focus on promoters; B2B needs a game plan for the passives and detractors. Which good management allocates time for each group. http://hotcookies.net
Posted by: jpc | January 05, 2008 at 12:13 PM
I have been trying to find a reference online as to exactly how high your net promoter score can be. Essentially, what is the highest range and lowest range for scores? Is an 80 NPS an 80 out of a possible 100? Is the lowest score you can receive a negative (-)100? Does anyone know?
Posted by: Ericka Morton | February 08, 2008 at 05:03 PM
Net Promoter Score is calculated by percentage of Promoters minus percentage of detractors.
Here's a link to a related page:
http://www.netpromoter.com/calculate/nps.php
Posted by: Net Promoter Community | February 08, 2008 at 07:07 PM
Has anyone ever used the Net Promoter Score on an Employee survey? i.e. How likely is it that you would recommend "X" as a place of employment to your friends and family? Is the calculation still applicable or is it strictly for Customer Loyalty?
Posted by: Art Rome | February 11, 2008 at 11:47 AM
Companies do you use NPS with employees. Find three examples from the recent Miami Net Promoter Conference at the link (blogs from the conference):
http://netpromoter.typepad.com/npc_miami_2008/b2e/index.html
Find more information on the Net Promoter discussion forum (viewing/posting requires brief registration process):
http://netpromoter.groupee.net/eve/forums
Go to "find" (search) and enter "employee" and a number of relevant entries will appear.
Posted by: Net Promoter Community | February 11, 2008 at 12:10 PM
I believe a lot of critics are focusing on whether Fred has chose a good book title (it's certainly catchy) and whether the strategy and its implementation actually works in business.
In my experience, if any of the following issues are of concern then you should take a close interest in the strategy:
- You have excessive customer churn
- Your acquisition marketing costs are too high as you need to compensate for excessive churn
- Your operating costs in call centres and service functions are too high
- You've run 'out-of-steam' in delivering cost reductions from your Six Sigma programme
- You are considering offshoring or outsourcing service functions - you can see substantial savings but you are unclear as to the service/ customer experience impact
- You want to increase upsell and cross-sell within your customer base
If you want to tackle any of these issues - Net Promoter offers a straightforward way of tackling these issues and getting 'bottom-line' results quickly
Regards John
Web: www.closequarter.co.uk
Blog: www.closequarter.co.uk/blog.html
Posted by: John Corr | February 13, 2008 at 04:00 AM
We are considering using NPS as a component in our annual bonus calculation. There is some debate about whether or not our results should be weighted by cliet revenue (we know which responses come from which clients and the revenue value of each client). Focusing on fixing large client detractors thus move the needle more than fixing a small client detractor. What are the pros and cons of revenue-weighting NPS?
Posted by: Dan Thomas | February 18, 2008 at 04:58 PM
I have read The Ultimate Question and am eager to implement the ideas in the book in my shoe store.
In your experience, what is the best way to survey our customers to get the Net Promoter Score?
Do I include a postpaid card with “The Ultimate Question” with every purchase?
Do I send one out later?
Do I stand outside the store with a clip board and ask the people who buy and don’t buy?
How do I gather accurate information in my situation?
Posted by: Rob Englin | March 18, 2008 at 08:20 AM
We are interested in using NPS as an employee opinion survey. Where can I find out more information? Has anyone used it in this way yet?
Thanks
Jill
Posted by: Jill DeKeyser | May 18, 2008 at 01:41 PM
Do you have any examples about NPS using in Hospitals?
Posted by: Javier | August 25, 2008 at 05:34 AM