That’s right, we’re talking about NPS, what did you think we were talking about?

In an earlier piece, we spoke about how we should never take NPS at face value, and that even a negative score can be good. The challenge being in how we interpret NPS, looking beyond the absolute score to understanding our relative positioning to competitors and the direction of our momentum.

Beyond the interpretation, it is also about what we do with NPS that counts. I would be a rich man if I had a dollar for every organisation I’d spoken to who came to me saying:

“We’ve been measuring NPS for 2 years now, but it hasn’t improved, what are we doing wrong?”

Most of the time I find that they have a survey in place (sometimes good, sometimes bad), off the back of which they produce a report (sometimes good, sometimes bad), and perhaps input the metric into a KPI scorecard. But then they STOP. The point here is that simply measuring and reporting NPS is not enough, you need to have a program in place to ensure that actions are taken. Only then will things change. This means:

• Engaging stakeholders, they will provide the funds for action
• Engaging frontline staff, they will often be integral to the action, customer service is almost always the strongest driver
• Understanding when and how to use top down versus bottom up transactional feedback
• Implementing a closed loop feedback program
• Going beyond just understanding the drivers, and establishing where to focus to get the greatest bang for your buck
• Getting to root cause through in-depth text analytics (see another earlier news piece)
• Assigning functional owners to implement change: workshop workshop workshop

I could go on, but I won’t, you can call me for that!

Ultimately, it is not about the size of your NPS, it is what you do with it that counts!