Most of the bashing that I have read appears to be driven by a desire to be sensationalist, with few credible arguments given as to why measuring Advocacy or Trust doesn’t work, and certainly with no reasonable alternatives put forward.
It is not hard to formulate an argument that Advocacy or Trust are not lead indicators of future profitability. Consumers are complex, buy for many different reasons and often don’t do what they say they will do. There are certainly occasions when advocates don’t buy a brand, often because they are advocates of more than one brand. Similarly for those who trust a brand. No one metric can be a perfect lead indicator because future profitability is based on so much more than consumer sentiment. That said more often than not advocates and those who trust a brand do buy again, but it takes time for both improvements to affect sentiment and subsequently for sentiment to affect behaviour, during which time other factors come into play. Wouldn’t it be nice (and simple) if future profitability were based on building Advocacy or Trust alone! It’s not, but it is one of the important factors to get right.
Which is the first point that most arguments seem to miss. It is not just about the metric, it is about the program that is put into place. CX programs (Advocacy, Trust, whatever…), when properly implemented are designed to drive process improvements and it is these which in turn drive increased profitability. It is about what you do with it that counts. If you are listening to customers, identifying and remedying friction points, then your business will improve. Simply measuring advocacy or trust alone will not drive future profitability, you need to put the full system in place, with closed loop feedback etc, and act on the feedback. If you do this well, then you can only improve your business model, and if all other things stay equal then yes you will build future profitability, either through growth or improved margins.
And that is the second key point. This assumes that all other things stay equal. Any impact on future profitability needs to be judged within the context of the market. The absolute number can be misleading, and does not tell the whole story, as you also need to consider your relative position. You might have a great score that is improving, but if your competitors have a better score that has also improved, then you will not be in a stronger position.
The point being that you cannot simply correlate these metrics against profitability to draw conclusions, a more in-depth contextual analysis is required.
In the case of trust, many arguments I’ve seen are based on an analysis of trust being measured as a single question, with the assertion that this cannot work because those responding do not know how to interpret and answer the question. This undermines the whole argument, as trust is a complex and subjective measure which cannot be measured accurately through one question. Measuring trust requires a distinct set of questions, which when done properly provides very different and insight results. You need to do it right for it it work!
So please, don’t jump on the bandwagon and simply bash Advocacy or Trust to generate a sensationalist headline, learn how to use and interpret them!