NPS or Net Promoter Score is a term I am sure everyone reading this blog will be aware of. Over the last couple of years there have been a number of attempts to replace this favoured metric to measure the customer experience. These have ranged from trying to measure Customer Effort to a recent example I saw of WoMI or Word of Mouth Index.
These new metrics have not only sought to bring a greater and more accurate understanding of what customers think of the brand, but also how they act on those thoughts with friends and family. It is true that NPS was created in a very different world to that which we live in today, smart devices were still a number of years off hitting the mainstream and Facebook was still a year away from being created in Mark Zuckerberg’s college bedroom. Today customers interact with business across more channels than ever before and in more complex ways. In NICE’s Consumer Survey last year, respondents said on average they interact across six channels with an organization, not so long ago it would have been a stretch to name six channels across a business.
New metrics seek to readdress how businesses understand, measure and subsequently try and improve the experience they offer to their customers. This is a very understandable approach, yet seeking to create the ultimate KPI or metric is somewhat missing the point. By asking a different multiple choice question, or an additional one for that matter, is your business truly gaining a clearer insight into the customer experience? And perhaps more importantly are you gaining a better understanding of what and how to improve?
A new way of asking a question may give better insight into a particular part of the customer experience, or a particular effect it is having, but largely fails to improve the holistic understanding of the customer experience and how to improve it. One of the questions which springs to mind for me, is what level of granularity do you need to gain an “accurate” view of the customer experience? Taking WoMI as an example, asking an additional question about how the customer will act does add an additional level of detail, but does this mean it is any more accurate than a measure like NPS? There is a huge amount of potential information to take into account such as how many friends that person has, both online and offline, what opinion their friends have of the person, what sort of personality they have, are they trusted etc. While I’m not advocating collecting all this information, the point I’m making is that certain metrics can create an illusion to the level of accurate insight they are offering.
While I’m not saying that metrics aren’t important, as ultimately businesses need a number to be measured and tracked on; but this should not be the focus for improving the customer experience. Listen to your customers, what they are saying in the feedback they give to you, or what they say online, and improve the customer experience you offer from these insights. Then the numbers will take care of themselves.
Tom Lynam
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