Customer surveys are everywhere, and they are getting mighty tedious, aren’t they? They’re also getting more formulaic.
These days I brace for the question I know is coming:
How likely is it that you’d recommend us to a friend or colleague?
Can you spell NPS?
NPS defined
Net Promoter Score is a measure of customer loyalty. Based on a 0-10 scale, it sorts people into three categories based on their response to the “would you recommend” question. Promoters (those answering 9-10) are deemed brand enthusiasts. Passives (7-8) are considered satisfied but not especially loyal. Detractors (0-6) are unhappy campers who could harm your brand through negative word-of-mouth.
NPS is a simple calculation: NPS = % Promoters – % Detractors
Developed by loyalty guru Fred Reichheld at Bain & Company, it was introduced in a Harvard Business Review article in 2003. NPS has become the darling of the left-brain intelligentsia. Touted as the Ultimate Question and The Only Number You Need to Know, it has become a virtual industry. Simplicity is a huge part of its appeal.
Critics of NPS contend that NPS is either ineffective or not as good as other measures. But everyone seems to think it’s harmless.
I disagree.
Why NPS is dangerous
1. It makes your brand look clueless
Asking if we would recommend something to a friend or colleague assumes that your brand or company would actually come up in conversation. That’s a steep hurdle.
Most brands and experiences simply don’t merit conversation. Sorry. Even if I like your brand, I’m probably not going to talk about you. Would I recommend Citibank after a brief chat with a call-center rep? What are you smoking? Asking after such a non-event makes me think you have no idea what real people’s lives are like. Not good for your brand.
2. It may backfire
When you ask if we’d recommend a brand or company, you remind us how perfectly unexceptional our experience was. (Most are. Exceptional experiences are, by definition, rare.)
Associating that mundane or second-rate experience with a binary yes/no question (even if it’s spread over a 10-point scale) may reinforce our disenchantment. Before being asked, we might have forgotten the unmemorable experience. Now you’ve made us realize: Nah, we really wouldn’t recommend you. Is that what you want?
3. It may cause good people harm
A wonderful front-line worker may get a lousy rating associated with his/her work. Is that fair? Case in point: after a lesson on my new smartphone with a Device Specialist, I was asked whether I’d recommend my wireless provider. How relevant is that? The specialist was great (10), but my experience with that company is complex—and decidedly mixed (5). Hanging the whole brand on one guy’s slender shoulders is unjust.
I’ve checked: yes, these ratings are often tied to the employees (and to their managers). How deeply unfair. My guy and his manager are not responsible for high prices, inaccurate and impenetrable bills, or other assorted horrors and annoyances.
4. A special danger for big companies
Big companies may be most at risk when using NPS. First, they’re most likely to use it. They live and breathe numerical data. (And, frankly, they’re most able to afford Bain’s pricey counsel.)
More importantly, big corporations are also most likely to:
- Be perceived as out of touch with real people’s lives
- Offer the blandest brands and experiences
- Risk being seen as mindless, punitive bureaucracies
Last week I called two major credit card companies to see if my cards would work when I travel abroad (I’d heard some cards won’t because of new technologies there). Both immediately sent me surveys using NPS.
Both call-center experiences were fine, fleeting, and unremarkable. The reps did their job. Would I recommend these companies to a friend or colleague? No. Why should I? Because their employees answered a question? But neither do I want to slam perfectly okay employees—especially those toiling in huge data-driven companies with little sense of warmth, flexibility, and humanity.
Fast, cheap and out of control
The impulses behind NPS (and customer surveys generally) are laudable. Yes, companies should want to know how they’re doing. Yes, tracking this in some simple way would be great. And in some instances, the would-you-recommend question is entirely appropriate. For example, when someone has performed a genuine service that you might speak of to someone else because recommendations are a vital way to find good resources. Those situations, however, are rare relative to the volume of NPS surveys out there. Instead, NPS is being used as a default for even the most trivial customer experiences.
Not every customer interaction warrants a survey. Sending us one every time we interact with your brand or company is foolish and counterproductive.
And it NPS is not harmless. You may decide the risks are worth it—and they may well be. But please don’t assume it’s risk-free, just because it’s easy and popular.
We are busy, thoughtful people. We do not exist to give you data. No, I would not recommend using NPS to a friend or colleague. Call me a Detractor.
4 Comments
Great observations.
I didn’t know about NPS; and as it happens, I just filled out one such survey myself. This weekend we unloaded both our old cars at Carmax, and compared to a car dealership, it was a breath of fresh air. I actually would recommend Carmax to a friend.
That said, as you so accurately point out, it’s not like I loved the experience. It’s just that the alternative is such a predictable source of pain, that it makes Carmax seem downright friendly.
And yeah, I’ve often resented these “you interacted with us surveys” that are so tone deaf to the things you would actually like to say – or they seem to care only about your latest interaction, while ignoring your (sometimes sordid) past history as company and customer.
Thanks for your terrific comments, Andre. (And my apologies for a tardy reply. I was out of the country–in Paris, yay!)
You make some great, important points: pain-free customer experiences (where the alternative is predictable pain) aren’t necessarily delightful, but they’re at least a start. You’ve also really touched on something with your comment about companies caring “only about your latest interaction–while ignoring your (sometimes sordid) past history as company and customer.” Seeking feedback on something trivial while ducking what matters (something that’s probably deeply rooted in the company’s basic approach to customers) makes a mockery of genuine customer care and only hardens our dislike.
Seth Godin had a great post about customer service recently, in which he called poorly-trained overseas call centers & chat lines “scalable engines of annoyance.” To this, let’s add the extra annoyance of being hounded for an NPS score afterward! Here’s the post, if you’re interested: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/03/reorganizing-the-economics-and-attitude-of-customer-service.html
Thanks again for your comments!
Ok, so quick along-these-lines story:
Bought a Hyundai not long ago, financed part of it. Yesterday I noticed that the address to which they had been sending the bills was wrong: 1538 had been erroneously entered as 1588 (there is no 1588, but I don’t want to drive my neighbors crazy). I figured this wouldn’t get solved without a phone call, so I called them, had to choose 1 for English (why?), entered my account #, then waited on hold for a minute.
An agent comes on and is able to correct the address. He asks if I will hang on for a short survey. It was 4 questions, two about the helpfulness and ability of the agent, a third I can’t remember, and the last one about how I’d recommend Hyundai on a 1 to 5 scale.
I didn’t want to hurt the agent and I gave him 5s. I said “4” to the recommend question. I was miffed I didn’t get a question about my experience aside from the agent himself. (It really shouldn’t take that long to get an address fixed.)
Today I got an e-mail from Hyundai, asking me to share my love for Hyundai with my friends (!) Presumably, a “4” makes me an enthusiast who is eager to tell the world how much I love Hyundai. (Do they think I’m 15?)
So I look for the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the page. It takes me to an unsubscribe page on the Hyundai site. It takes forever to load. Then the button pops up, I click it, and… a script error message. Happened 3 times.
Now, even though I like my car, I think the company is incompetent at customer service. It boggles the mind that the very process they are using to gauge and improve their customer service has mostly alienated me.
Wow–that’s quite a story, Andre. What really jumps out at me is that Hyundai seems fixated on superficial high-fashion metrics and tools: NPS (strive, strive to get that number up!!) and social media (rack up those “Likes”!). What’s completely missing is the basics: your experience as a customer. Nowhere is Hyundai acknowledging, much less measuring, this experience of yours–but it’s a lot more important than what they’re actually measuring.
Btw, I keep wondering when this social media bubble is going to burst. Perhaps when all the 18-30 year olds are holding down jobs, dealing with mortgages and kids and don’t have time for Twitter and Facebook….