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Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer experience staple, so we wanted to break down the basics of NPS and share why every customer-focused company needs to be leveraging the power of your NPS. 

NPS Definition 

NPS is a metric that measures the loyalty of customers to a company, and its scores are measured with a single question survey and reported with a number from -100 to +100. The higher the score, the better off you are. (Sounds pretty straightforward, right?)

NPS® is often held up as the gold standard customer experience metric, having first been developed in 2003 by Bain and Company, it’s now used by millions of businesses to measure and track how they’re perceived by their customers.

It measures customer perception based on one simple question: 

How likely is it that you would recommend [Organization X/Product Y/Service Z] to a friend or colleague?

How NPS is rated:

Respondents give a rating between 0 (not at all likely) and 10 (extremely likely) and, depending on their response, customers fall into one of 3 categories to establish an NPS score:

• Promoters respond with a score of 9 or 10 and are typically loyal and enthusiastic customers.
• Passives respond with a score of 7 or 8. They are satisfied with your service but not happy enough to be considered promoters.
• Detractors respond with a score of 0 to 6. These are unhappy customers who are unlikely to buy from you again, and may even discourage others from buying from you.

How to calculate your Net Promoter Score

It’s actually quite simple to calculate your final NPS score – just subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters.

For example, if 10% of respondents are Detractors, 20% are Passives and 70% are Promoters, your NPS score would be 70-10 = 60

The difference between transactional vs relational NPS Programs

Relational NPS surveys are deployed on a regular basis (i.e.- quarterly or annually), and the goal is to get an ongoing pulse on your customers and understand how they feel about your company overall. This data is oftentimes used to used to check the health of a customer year-over-year and provide a benchmark for company success. Transactional NPS surveys are sent out after the customer interacts with your company (after a purchase or support call, for example) – and it’s used to understand customer satisfaction on a granular level while providing feedback about a very specific topic. Typically, it’s best practice to use both types to programs to understand your customer at both the macro and micro levels.

What else can you measure using NPS?

Good news, you can pretty much measure almost anything using an NPS score. In addition to understanding the overall NPS for the company, you can track scores for everything from individual products, stores, websites, employees – and more. While most net promoter score surveys are designed to collect customer feedback, they can also be used to measure employee sentiment, or – what is commonly referred to as employee net promoter score (eNPS). This measures how likely your employees are to recommend your company as a great place to work. There is something interesting to note, however – Qualtrics recommends not using eNPS to measure employee feedback in favor of other more comprehensive survey methodology such as employee engagement surveys because eNPS lacks the complexity an engagement survey has, as it’s only one question. If you’re just getting starting with exploring employee engagement, it can be a great starting place. Although, it is good to notate that it doesn’t give you a complete picture of employee health, and it could be challenging to know where to make improvements once you have the data. That is – unless you partner with a team like ours who are NPS Masters – in which case, bring on all form of NPS!

If you have any questions about how your organization can be leveraging NPS to drive loyalty and enhance your customer experience, get in touch with us!

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“Even when we’re about three years old working with Lego blocks, we want to do something different, we want to build something unique with our own hands.”

It’s clear that from a young age Cisco Customer Experience’s Chief Architect, Dave Malik, had a knack for innovation, the process of deconstructing problems and reimagining new solutions. In his early career, Dave was drawn to the world of finance due to its position at the forefront of enterprise innovation. It was here that he discovered the value of technology to drive companies to find a ‘wedge’ in the market – vital for survival in the highly competitive world of stock trading.

He may have moved on from Lego blocks, but today Dave is still focused on finding and implementing the innovations that set businesses apart from their competitors. “Every customer has a vision of their own masterpiece and we want to help them build it.”

In our discussion with Dave, we uncovered 11 guiding principles he uses to drive innovation and digital transformation for some of the world’s largest companies.

Rule #1: Find the 10%

“When you look at the journey of a customer, it’s typical that 80-90% is fairly commoditized, meaning everyone’s doing the same thing. It’s the last 10% that really differentiates people. It’s about, how do you become the first in your industry, or the second, to really gain a competitive edge in the market. And those are usually extremely challenging maneuvers. Otherwise, everyone would be doing it.”

To unearth this, he works alongside companies in a process of ‘co-innovation’, helping them discover what their customers need, and guiding them to implement the technologies to bring their outcomes to life.

Rule #2: Innovate from the outside-in

One of the most common mistakes Dave encounters in these early stages is innovation from the inside-out. Instead, companies should place themselves in the shoes of their end-customers, innovating from the outside-in. “That’s how most companies fail. They build something they hope customers will embrace. Instead you should look at, ‘what are the toughest problems in the industry that can make an impact if resolved?’ and then you go tackle them.”

Rule #3: Focus on interactions, not transactions

“When you go to a store in a checkout line and get your groceries, that’s a transaction. That’s not what we’re here for.”

Just as important as winning new customers is achieving what Dave calls, ‘customer stickiness’.

But how do you make your customers stick?

The key is to focus on ‘interactions’ – building relationships by leveraging insight-driven experiences that engage customers as individuals, rather than delivering on one-time ‘transactions’.

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (ML/AI) are enabling us to unearth these insights by predicting how and when customers require expertise for a solution. When people feel valued, as the result of an outstanding or highly personalized experience, they’re far more likely to come back for more.

Rule #4: Innovate at speed, with safety

In recent years, many industries have been flooded with nimble new players, each vying to innovate faster than the rest and achieve ‘customer stickiness’. This has prompted many established companies to change the way they operate to stay above the high-water mark.

“As an example, we have executed programs with financial institutions with over 200,000 employees, but they know they can no longer operate like a battleship. So we’re seeing a lot of larger customers that are building smaller agile teams. They’re working in sprints and now we’re getting code out to drive cloud applications much faster with micro-releases.” At the same time, these companies should ensure they’re working with trusted, credible vendors to minimize risk.

Rule #5: Secure your network with Automation and ML/AI

Properly managing security is essential to ensuring safety when innovating. Hardly a week goes by that we don’t hear of a cybersecurity breach, often due to the complexity of maintaining compliance across environments and the sheer scale of the networks that human operators have to protect.

The answer? Automation and ML/AI.

“Humans cannot correlate millions of data points and drive insights from them to take action with low latency. It’s impossible. So, we want to get to the point where you can make an educated decision in a very short amount of time. We take threat and network intelligence very seriously, and we marry them through automation frameworks to protect not only their applications but also their employees and devices.”

Rule 6#: Unlock creativity by removing repetition

Beyond the pivotal issue of security, automation can also accelerate deployments and increase efficiency by batch processing repetitive tasks. Companies improve their bottom line, customers get access to reliable new services more quickly, and employees have more time to focus on innovation.

“A common misnomer in many markets is, ‘automation is going to dramatically reduce my workforce.’  The truth is, it will make your workforce more intelligent if you use it in a strategic manner.”

Rule #7: 24/7 availability is a must in today’s digital landscape

Automation is also key to reducing latency and remediating issues faster, both of which are central to availability. Today, if your experience can’t be accessed 24/7 by your clients, it can pose a serious threat to your brand.

As a concrete example, Cisco’s Customer Experience team is supporting the requirement for high availability for some of the largest mobile operators in the world. Site Reliability Engineering practices are being used to ensure system availability to meet end-user demand.

Rule #8: Drive simplification and choice in multicloud

Whether building a Lego castle or a digital masterpiece, openness and interoperability are key. With Legos we rely on the ability of every piece to fit together to create a masterpiece. This is true for our networks too, particularly when it comes to cloud. Dave believes every business should be able to develop a cloud-agnostic policy, the ability to choose the cloud they want, to innovate in the way they need, without negative consequences.

Multicloud is now a reality and those who exercise it will gain a competitive advantage. The challenge is ensuring these different environments are abstracted with common languages. Businesses must ensure they work with a vendor that can maintain security policies with no vendor lock-in, deliver the right experience and provide full visibility into their applications across any cloud.

Rule #9: Let your technology partner focus on the details while you focus on business outcomes

Automation, machine learning, and the ability to operate securely and efficiently across whatever environment you choose all provide the groundwork for innovation that drive a company’s competitive edge. Despite this, Dave’s point of focus when working with customers is around providing value by achieving their specific business outcomes. At the end of the day, solving these problems is what builds a strong, trusting relationship.

Rule #10: Adopt a holistic end-to-end architecture

One of the ways Cisco sets itself apart is by moving beyond product development, realizing that for companies to get the most out of their solutions they need to be able to look at systems end-to-end. “We’re looking at things very holistically. We’re passionate about how networking, security, applications, IoT, multicloud and emerging technologies can integrate more easily.”

With a cross-architectural approach, aided by Advisory, Architecture and Support teams, and ecosystem partners, Dave is able to help customers take a step back from their individual technologies. With architecture blueprints, key decision makers can view the entire canvas of their masterpiece and understand how it all fits together, and when and where investments need to be made. At the end of the day, IT is run as a business.

Rule #11: Innovation is a continuous process

To stay competitive today, no company can rest on their laurels. Rather, they need to continually ask themselves what new problems they can solve and how they can make their end-customers’ experiences even better across the lifecycle of their solutions. Here Dave draws the comparison to the Cisco’s Customer Experience racetrack.

“The graphic shows that it’s a continuous journey for our customers… We can always do better and improve and learn from what we’ve done.”

It’s this same philosophy that’s driven Dave Malik since day one, from bringing to life creative new ideas with Lego blocks, to stitching together digital solutions and driving innovation at a global scale.

“That’s kind of the mantra. I think, you’re never done. There’s no end. When people think they’ve arrived, they’re mistaken.”

The original article to this post was posted here.

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It’s officially the start to a new decade –

Our team at AboutFace is hitting this new decade with a fresh, new stride. After over 20 years in business, we know now, more than ever, that innovating and changing is critical for growth. Our brand underwent a significant and exciting change last year, which is evident by our new logo and website. Don’t you worry though – our signature smiley is still there and will always be a part of our identity!

We were also proud to launch the first (ever) customer experience subscription service, called ARCHIE, for B2B brands, and we’ve already seen a 400% ROI utilizing this new business model. Mystery shopping is a long-standing, reliable research method to viewing your business through the eyes of your customers. Now with ARCHIE, we are able to help our client move the deeper bigger, and faster.

As a top-tier customer experience research firm, AboutFace has always focused one simple mission: To improve the business of our clients in profound, specific, and measurable ways.

Even with all of our internal growth, this remains constant for our work and for our team. We do this by partnering with leadership teams to conceive clever, customer-centric strategies that engage customers in new and exciting ways. Because we are equally proficient in strategy and research, we deliver robust financial wins for our clients. We help our clients not only understand their customer data, but ultimately improve their brand presence across all areas of their organization. Our staple services include:

• Mystery Shopping
• Competitive Intelligence
• Advanced Customer Experience Strategy (ACES)
• Employee Engagement
• Customer ForensiX
• Compliance and Auditing
• Loyalty Driver Solutions
• …and a lot more

“There are only three measurements that tell you nearly everything you need to know about your organization’s overall performance: employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and cash flow. It goes without saying that no company, small or large, can win, over the long run, without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it.” –Jack Welch, former CEO of GE

So as we hit our biggest stride ever in 2020, we invite you to follow our journey, notate our mission to improve our client’s success in profound, specific, measurable ways, and join us in continuing to provide exclusive and ground-breaking growth for our clients.

Click here to view our top-tier research services.

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