The man that many say was the catalyst for the CRM industry through his work on customer loyalty, Fred Reichheld, has promoted a way to measure how well you are doing at meeting customer expectations; the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Fred’s ‘Ultimate Question’ is “On a scale from 0 to 10 how likely are you to recommend us to your family and friends?” Promoters give you 9 or 10, Neutrals give 7’s and 8’s all else are Detractors. % Promoters minus % Detractors gives your Net Promoter Score.
We have found this ‘simple but not simplistic’ metric a very effective way of focussing our clients on the important moments of truth so they can be ‘fixed’ in customer experience terms. CRM tells us which customers are valuable or potentially so, NPS identifies unhappy high value customers and we can investigate why and what to do about it.
To investigate on a large scale, here in Australia we have been using the Satmetrix Adaptive Community platform (known as ‘Informative’ before being acquired late in 2007). This platform allows us to conduct online surveys, quick polls and blogs and convert a mass of qualitative data into actionable quantitative insight quickly.
The NPS authors went further, claiming that NPS is a superior predictor of company growth rates and the market research industry reacted, creating a debate that is interesting but has not impacted our focus on valuable customers. For a good post on the debate look here,for a response from the co-authors, Satmetrix;
A sporting club client of ours asked their on-line Advisory Panel of members what they could do to convert detractors (the actual question was along the lines – “what could we do to make you more likely to recommend a membership…?”).
Watching the dynamics of a large community with visibility of opinion between peers gives almost visceral pleasure to a marketer raised on dusty research reports or the thin gruel of focus groups. Undiluted customer input, lots of it, immediately! Marketing really can be a conversation as Jaffe says ‘Join the Conversation’ !
The consensus advice from the community was implemented, to the great benefit of the club’s member recruiting program.
Where do these communities fit in the mash-up model we are constructing, if anywhere?
I think this is a new 4th P; Place. This is NOT to say that on-line communities are just another channel, this is a Place to market that has no resemblance to the uni-directional communications implied by the word ‘channel’. It is a productive place to talk with customers and listen as they talk to each other.
We have experienced 2 distinct benefits from using this platform and Place for clients;
-
We find out things, in a research sense, very quickly and from a large number of customers, including their attitude towards promoting the product/service and
-
The very act of asking and listening creates advocates who help promote the client’s business, a classic outcome of the “Hawthorne Effect” (a definition).
Keep in mind the context here please; we are typically providing a place where registered customers, with an interest in the brand can express their opinions and inspect the opinions of peer customers. This is not, in our case, a blog naked to the world.This new Place has a different set of rules. Carefully crafted marketing messages cannot sustain the scrutiny of a group of self-selecting engaged customers for very long. ‘Seed’ ideas used by the marketers to start the conversation almost never end up in the top 25 of ideas as rated by the community for popularity and importance. Honesty and openness are the currencies and exchange at a good rate for customer insight and unfiltered advice from our best, most engaged customers.
