A German Family-owned Business Strengthens Ties Through Net Promoter®

corporate-governanceA successful German wholesaler drives business through Net Promoter implementation. With an already strong product line, the company implemented Net Promoter to improve customer service and strengthen ties with their customers.

W. & L. Jordan GMBH, with over 50 stores across Europe has been around since 1919 and promotes themselves as a customer centric organisation. The organisation sought the services of CustomerGauge in order to implement the Net Promoter to improve business through a customer feedback program which can be effectively measured.

Embedding the Net Promoter program can provide many advantages as Jordan discovered:

  1. Fast, responsive and simple to understand
  2. Scores allows for benchmarking and feedback
  3. Reports and analysis are automatically generated through Net Promoter software solutions company, CustomerGauge.

The Net Promoter provided the company with the necessary information to identify areas of concern and make the vital changes to its business and operations; strengthening their relationships with customers. Jordan was able to develop procedures to effectively manage and respond to any issues that may arise.

After a series of Net Promoter surveys, Jordan identified key issues which were concerning customers and effectively take the appropriate steps and actions to rectify these issues responsively. In doing so, Jordan was able to increase its Net Promoter Score from +29 to +38.

Jordan will be able to use the Net Promoter as a benchmark on performance; comparing against previous performances, performances of other companies and industries. Jordan, through the Net Promoter is able to strive for continual development and improvement.

How has the Net Promoter benefitted your business? Let us know your thoughts below.

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Digital and Innovation Agency Drives Business with Net Promoter®

Service chart with red marker

Service chart with red markerUK based digital and innovation agency Volume proves there are no right or wrong industries for using the Net Promoter approach. In fact with a score of +60 the organisation is out in front of many of its’ peers:  Amazon’s score is 76 and Apple’s is 71.

Here is a company doing things  differently. Being a small agency with big success in a tough industry wasn’t enough for them. They decided to implement Net Promoter to actively seek out flaws and correct them.

More than most other industries  in the agency industry, a strong trusting relationship between the agency and client is vital for success. Companies  need to ensure their personnel are continually striving to meet the needs of their clients. The more satisfied the clients are, the stronger the relationship that exists, increasing customer loyalty and business revenue.

Knowing this, Volume decided to use Net Promoter, a proven metric to benchmark performance, increase customer loyalty and drive up business revenue.  According to CustomerGauge, Volume is one of the few agencies implementing Net Promoter within their business; gathering data and feedback to improve their business and strengthen relationships.

Using Net Promoter  Volume is increasing value to their business by scrutinising all areas of the business. With the right NPS tools, Volume receive a range of services including real-time feedback to identify which areas to focus on and see areas of the business which need improvements and become more accountable.

While the process of implementing Net Promoter may be tough, the benefits of implementing such a program reap many benefits.

Volume received a Net Promoter Score of +60, which in the creative agency industry is a very high score.  This is a great example of a business which although small and may not initially have seemed to fit in the “ideal Net Promoter candidate” have been  to effectively leverage all benefits from implementing the Net Promoter.

Have you heard of any other Net Promoter success stories? Let us know your thoughts below.

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The 5 Phases of Customer Feedback Failure

rhombus warning oops

rhombus warning oopsEvery day in companies around the world people sit down in meetings and decide today’s the day that they’re going to get serious about collecting customer feedback. Lots of earnest discussion follows, agreements are reached, actions allocated and heads nod in full agreement. Everyone leaves full of enthusiasm.

Flash forward 18 months (sometimes less sometimes more) and many of the same people are sitting around the same table. This time they are lamenting that “this customer feedback stuff obviously doesn’t work in our industry / country / customer base / organisational structure / [insert suspected third party excuse here].  Zappos, Amazon, Apple and the rest must have some other secret sauce; lets dump this and try that new technology I read about last week. That will solve our customer problems.”

How did it come to this? Where did all of that excitement go?  [Read more...]

Telstra Rewarding Resellers for Customer Service But What is the Anti-Gaming Strategy?

Photo Credit: Newtown grafitti http://www.flickr.com/photos/newtown_grafitti/
Photo Credit: Newtown grafitti http://www.flickr.com/photos/newtown_grafitti/

Photo Credit: Newtown grafitti

Telstra, Australia’s largest Telco, has been well known for it’s roll-out of Net Promoter®  over the past few years. Telstra has announced (see The Age newspaper) that it will be starting to partly pay its resellers based on their Net Promoter Score.

Through the current CEO (David Thodey) the company has been making a concerted push to improve customer service level which have traditionally been not as high as might be wished.

“Telstra will pay its retailers not only sales commissions, but also for their customer service performance.”

While incentivizing franchisees to improve customer service can be a good idea, the program will need to be carefully constructed to preventing gaming of the system. Where payments are linked to customer feedback scores there is a risk that front line staff (and their managers at the resellers) can actively try to alter the scores that customers receive.

This is much more common than you might think. Examples include hotel chain staff begging for scores, bank staff explaining to customers that “anything below a 9 [out of 10] is considered a failure”, and car dealerships offering incentives to customers if they will score them a 10.

So, I wonder what the anti-gaming approach will be here?

Don’t Let Market Research Interfere with your Customer Feedback

The wrong plug for the job

The wrong plug for the jobFrom the outside looking in Australia and The United States look very similar. We speak, to all intents and purposes, the same language, we watch the same television shows, enjoy the same music, etc. But anyone who has ever swapped countries and lived on the other side knows that deep down the culture and outlook of both countries are deeply and substantially different.

So it is with Market Research and Customer Feedback.

[Read more...]

Generating Higher Profits by Managing Customers as Financial Assets

business and customer assets

business and customer assets“Your customer is your most powerful asset” according to Harvard Business School Professor Frances Frei. Yet, how many organisations actually manage and monitor their customers as a financial asset?

The road block that many organisation’s face, is that they manage customers as non-financial assets rather than as financial assets. For this reason, they do not use the same rigorous tools and processes to manage customers as they do to manage their other assets. [Read more...]

How to calculate Return on Customer Investment

return on customer investment

return on customer investmentCEOs and CFOs like numbers; mostly profitability numbers but  revenue and return on investment also catch their eye. So, if you can’t speak their language and convert your customer focus project into hard numbers that talk to them; your chance of having it approved are slim to none.

After months of patient research, meetings and design sessions you have created a truly useful and, you think, value adding improvement to the business. All you need is some (or a lot) of budget to make it a success. But before the budget gets signed off you need to determine, in business terms, the value that the change will bring to the company. Most often that value is expressed n terms of Return on Investment. [Read more...]

Customer Feedback is Worthless without the Right Analysis

One stock market quote graph bull with chart type line

One stock market quote graph bull with chart type lineIn a home kitchen in the early 1830’s a, then unknown, inventor saw potential in the milky sap from the Indian rubber tree. Surely, he thought, there must be a way to make the sticky substance more useful.

Through many years of experiments he mixed the raw rubber with a variety of different substances and tested the outcome. Did this mixture improve the properties of the raw material? No; onto the next trial. None were successful until he hit upon the idea of also heating one of the mixtures. [Read more...]

How to Overcome Customer Feedback Defensiveness in the Executive Suite

senior-management-defensivenss

senior-management-defensivenssAlmost everyone who has presented negative customer feedback to a senior management audience has lived this scenario.

The presentation starts well, everyone’s happy while you go through the numbers, lots of nodding heads, serious looks and agreement. That is until the very specific section by section scores or negative verbatim customer comments are presented; then the wall comes up, and the excuses rain down: [Read more...]

Customer Feedback Governance: Boring but Critical to Your Success

customer-feedback-governance

This may come as a surprise but implementing customer feedback is not about sending out surveys. It’s not even about collecting data. It’s about something much more.

It’s about driving change in the organisation using that information and it’s not always easy. It takes effort, it takes perseverance and it takes a focus on change management. [Read more...]