My View:
In my last post, we reviewed the Net Promoter score and methodology, as well as some criticisms.
I believe that Net Promoter Score is a useful indicator as to how a company is satisfying its customers. The end.
Not very satisfying is it?
Sort of like hearing the score of the ballgame with no details--you know who won, but do not get any context that makes the game richer as a fan. Was it a good game? Did your team play well? How did your favorite player do?
As a manager, the score may be a measure of success, but did the team perform according to plan? Did winning the one game use up all of the players' energies so that they will not be in position to win future games? Did players perform as expected, or did it take heroics from one player in order to win?
As a player, the score would certainly not be enough to know how well you personally did. Did you make any mistakes? Did you miss any signs or not follow the coach's instruction? Did you take advantage of other team's mistakes?
While the Net Performer Score tells companies whether or not they performed well, it does not give a company enough information to do anything to improve their performance in the future. It doesn't tell management whether the company is performing well compared to the competitition, and whether that performance is improving over time.
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I just watched a web lecture by Frances Frei from Harvard University speaking to a group of managers about Customer Service. One item from her excellent presentation that stood out is that great companies "relentlessly pursue problems." She believes that most organizations do not treat people who expose problems as heros, and if problems never surface, companies cannot improve.
Net Performer Score does not identify problems, does not tell management how each service attribute that is critical to success is performing, does not give any root cause for the satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
It is a score. Yankees 4 - Red Sox 3.
If you want to improve your company's service performance, you must go beyond the scoreboard.
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Chris:
ReplyDeleteGreat post. Scores alone are really not highly valuable. But the Net Promoter approach, as practiced by companies like Allianz, eBay, Intuit, Schwab, Vanguard, American Express, Philips, and many others is much more about that relentless pursuit of problems (and, by the way, of opportunities) than about the score itself.
For just one example, see this video about how Schwab does it: http://www.robmarkey.com/multimedia-resources/closing-the-customer-feedback-loop-at-charles-schwab.html.
Thanks Bob.
ReplyDeleteI reviewed the video (nicely done, by the way), and can see how the score is used by Schwab. I still believe, however, that the score does not lead to improvement. Rather, it is the program that supplements the score that leads to areas of improvement.
One could say that the Net Promoter Score needs an entire improvement methodology for progress, while an improvement methodology doesn't really need NPS.
Chris