Going beyond the NPS® Score

Created nearly 2 decades ago, the Net Promoter Score has attracted much controversy among the CX professional community. But first, a quick reminder… NPS measures a customer’s propensity to recommend a brand on a 0-10 scale. Promoters are those who give a score of 9 and 10, Detractors 6 and less, and Passives make up the rest with 7 and 8 scores. Then all you need to do is subtract the % of Detractors from the % of Promoters and, ta-da, you’ve got your NPS.

So, is it a magic bullet or just another satisfaction score? Does it really predict behaviour, correlate to financial benefits, point to operational improvements, guarantee long-term success, and solve world hunger? Not quite. Like all KPIs, NPS just tells you where you stand. But use it to anchor an action-packed, silo-busting, ROI-obsessed customer experience program, and it can become an incredibly powerful tool in your CX arsenal!

Sadly too often companies focus only on NPS as a score and expect magic in return. They measure it religiously, quarter after quarter, year after year. They look for reasons why it goes up, why it goes down, why it stays the same. As their maturity levels around CX increases, they might even get smart in correlating this score to overall business KPI’s like customer retention or reduced cost to serve.

But what about your place in the market? Rating your company against your key competitors, against CX leaders, surely that’s important too. Would you pat yourselves on the back for a 5-point increase in NPS if you found out your top competitor achieved a 10-point increase in the same period? Probably not. Would you want to know how they did it? You bet you would.

That’s where our HX Benchmarks come in. Created by Forsta and a key partner Watermelon, these benchmarks can help you pinpoint where you stand in the market. By comparing NPS scores, because scores do matter. But most importantly by going beyond the score, and diving deeper into what drives it, around 5 core principles that apply to all sectors:

1.      Personalization
2.      Effort
3.      Integrity
4.      Empathy
5.      Resolution

If you know where you stand for each of these key competencies, and how you compare with your competitors, you’ll have the tools you need to design a truly differentiated CX strategy. One that focuses on true customer centricity: letting your customers tell you how they feel about you, how they rate your competitors, and what improvements they’re expecting from you. That way you can evolve your program over time based on a panoramic view of your customers’ requirements, a view that includes other brands and leaders in CX regardless of industry.

Like the sound of that? Then contact us today to get a personalized quote.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score, and NPS are trademarks of NICE Satmetrix, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc. and Fred Reichheld.