Here are several excerpts from a post by Mila D’Antonio, Editor of The 1to1 Blog, Take a New Look at the Ultimate Question:
When Fred Reichheld introduced Net Promoter Score (NPS) a few years ago, many detractors debated his simple methodology. How could a single question build customer loyalty, retain employees, and ultimately grow your business?
Today, hundreds of companies around the world have subscribed to the Net Promoter philosophy. But many of them still don’t understand the true meaning of NPS and what Reichheld meant the question to become: an organizational discipline that transforms your business around the customers.
But according to Reichheld, too many people remain fixated on the scores, which impede NPS’ true reach. “Maybe it was a mistake,” he revealed at the Net Promoter conference on Monday in San Francisco. “The one place I’m deeply disappointed is the level of rigor I’ve seen here.”
Reicheld admitted that companies cannot be driven by scores; it’s what they do with the scores that matter most and getting the people in the organization to treat customers the way they’d want to be treated. “It’s the Golden Rule that drives growth. When you get into the business world, you forget about it,” he said.
The Ultimate Question, the one that started the Net Promoter phenomenon–”Would you recommend?” he admitted, does not determine promoters and detractors; it’s the question “Why do you feel this way?” that determines real insight.
Until companies can move beyond getting their organizations to reach high Net Promoter scores, and help their CFOs to understand how to quantify and increase the number of promoters, then they won’t find success with NPS.
At Intuit, President and CEO Brad Smith, said it’s about the ability to react to the moments of truth the NP surveys reveal. Since deploying NPS in 2003, Smith said his company has gone through many chapters of the customer journey. At first, “we were all over the score,” he said. Now, Intuit has learned from its mistakes and currently is at a point where they’re getting employees and customers together to drive innovation.
Part of that involves sharing the comments from Net Promoter with the employees and responding to their feedback. “For a company that is committed, it’s about getting out of the way to do great things for customers. Our employees weren’t hearing the feedback…so we got it to employees in real time so they can reinforce the positive…and adjust on the things that didn’t go well,” Smith said. “If we were actors and actresses and had to perform 360 days a year to an empty theater, it would be a detriment. We weren’t letting them hear the applause.”
Also, be sure to check out My Closing Thoughts On Net Promoter, by Bruce Temkin and Companies Share Their Net Promotor Experiences on this blog.
