As organizations look for new ways to understand the impact of their marketing and influence in the market, they often need to rely on tools and research methods to break this information down into something we can all understand. This is where the Net Promoter Score comes in or NPS for short.
Heralded as the new "end all be all" of customer satisfaction indexes it works like this. You ask one, important question, "How likely are you to recommend Company X to a colleague or friend" and you rate this on a 10 point scale. Based upon the answers you break the data into three groups. Scores of 9-10 fall into Promoters. Scores of 7-8 fall into Passive and finally scores of 0-6 fall into the Detractors category.
Here is the formula that you use from that point.
% of Promoters - % of Detractors = Net Promoter Score
In case you were wondering, here are how some familiar companies rank (data taken from www.netpromoter.com)
- 66% - Apple
- 73% - Amazon
- 71% - Ebay
- 56% - Fed Ex
For anyone who reads my blog you know that I love metrics. For the most part I support the NPS and I think its generally a good practice for many companies. Is it the "most important" question...that I am not sold on and here is why. Wouldn't the real "most important question" be...HAVE you recommended Company X?
To me, there is a huge difference between what people say they will do and what they actually do. If you only measure the intent of whether or not they would recommend you, thats exactly what your metric will show you. If your customers REALLY do love you, at least enough to recommend you...then to me that is much more of a promoter then someone who would consider it.
Bottom line: if customers aren't recommending you but say they would...you still have a lot of work to do.
