thefunnel

NPS (net promoter score) is an interesting and somewhat popular measurement of customer satisfaction and loyalty, but does it work and what does it really mean for B-2-B marketers, and what can they do about it?

Quick definition: Would you recommend a product or service on a scale between 0 and 10. The 9 and 10 are promoters and, 0 – 6 detractors and 7 or 8 are passives. Subtract from promoters, and you have NPS.  A NPS score of 60 – 80% is considered high.

Let’s now look at a few considerations facing B-2-B marketers

• Are you going to include both customers and non customers in the metric? If you do / or not understand why.
• In your industry, does the score vary by your different product categories?
• Is it a measure on service, support or product capabilities or all of the above? How do you know which one to improve?
• What does the score mean for products for which you are the market leader versus products that you are let’s say #3 or #4?
• What do you do when scores are high, but you’re still not gaining market share? How do you reason this?
• If you have a high score can you charge a premium? What about non customers, are they going to pay a premium as well?
• For products which are purchased infrequently how do you make sure that what customers say they intend to do, is what they actually do?

An example (let’s assume small business B-2-B). I own a PC. Certain brand. Would I recommend? Yes, probably =9. Will my next PC be the same brand? Maybe, maybe not, it depends. On what? What else is out there? What the price is? Maybe I just want some variation!The fact is that I don’t consider myself in anyway disloyal, even if I buy another brand. However, maybe the third time around (5 years later), I’ll go back to my first choice, if all things are right.

A while ago I finalized a major customer satisfaction research project for a company.

The objective of the research was to identify customer needs and to determine the company’s level of service performance. The main survey was conducted by telephone.

The respondents were asked various questions in the areas of partnership and supplier expectations.

One of the areas explored was to understand the difference between basic and crucial service factors, basic being factors that any supplier would have to offer to be considered, and crucial the ones that will be critical when customers choose their suppliers.

For many respondents, price was a key factor – it is cited as both a basic and a crucial issue – ease of working with a supplier, partnership and honesty were often mentioned as crucial factors.

In summary, one can say that the key basic requirements related to technical expertise and financial stability, whereas the crucial ‘loyalty’ factors relate to the ongoing relationship – honesty, openness, making realistic promises and keeping them, easy of doing business and other aspects of service. In addition both the basic and crucial factors were ranked for overall importance. This combined created an interesting view of customer satisfaction attributes where all the factors were on two different scales. Summary report will be published soon. Stay tuned.