We have a fantastic NPS score, again! – but its not the full story

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We have a fantastic NPS score, again! – but its not the full story

Great News

We are genuinely delighted to announce that our NPS (Net Promoter Score) and CRQTM (Customer Relationship Quality) scores are fantastic, again! Stifle that yawn – I promise it gets more interesting. 

We are very proud of this picture. Most of our customers are promoters – they love our products and services and are willing to tell the world about it. Time to celebrate and shout this from the rafters – right?

Call it intuition or call it 20+ years’ experience in understanding client feedback but far more digging into the feedback would be needed before we were ready to celebrate.

The result of this digging is the creation of a new role – Product Manager – and their first objective will be to validate if we have the correct product strategy. 

So, how is this logical given the amazing feedback that I have just shared, especially around product? The answer to that is a lesson on why you should never just rely on NPS to tell you how your customers are feeling or what their future intentions might be.

Lets start digging.....

This is where CRQ™ really helps us to get under the bonnet of even the rosiest feedback, forcing us to listen to the murmurs of bubbling discontent.

The first red flag is when we asked all respondents what our greatest weakness is, not only did we have a new winner – we had a new topic entirely and it was mentioned by 15% of respondents.

Is this really a problem?

Immediately the internal arguments came that this was a blip and not that important. Arguments we used to try and convince ourselves were:

  • 15% is still not that many!
  • Price (often a key indicator of competitiveness) is not raised by even one respondent.
  • We are in the CX business for over 20 years (long before CX was even a thing) – you will find it difficult to find a competitor in the B2B space with more global, cross industry, experience than us.
  • Just look at that promoter graph again, our customers love us!

The only way to answer these arguments is to establish if there are further data insights that support this feedback? (Keep Digging)

We started by segmenting the feedback into the respondents who know us best – the CX Teams we work with every day and Key Decision Makers who repeatedly choose us as their CX Partner.

Turns out that even a higher percentage of the individuals who know us best believe this to be a weakness for us.

Further investigation of CRQ™ scores only compounded that we need to listen. Focusing again on those individuals who know us best, scores that link closely to this type verbatim have slipped from Top Decile Scores to Second Quartile Score .

The important Insight from all this data

🙂 Great overall scores are not wrong – Our customer love what we do and how we do it.

But here is what we cannot ignore

🙁 Our customers want more CX services than we currently offer, and they perceive that there are other suppliers in the CX space now who can give them what they want.

😐 Some of our customers also believe that other CX suppliers are better at promoting themselves in the market and raising brand awareness.

The exciting part of all of this

🙂 Our customers do not want to use those other suppliers; they trust us and believe in our integrity as their CX Partner. They want us to provide these additional services, and they want us to tell the world how great we are.

The Action - A new position in Deep-Insight: PRODUCT MANAGER

FIRST OBJECTIVE: Validate if our current product strategy is correct, needs to be tweaked or needs a massive overhaul. 

FIRST STEP: Ask many customers, previous customers, industry contacts and friends for your input and I will be extremely grateful to anyone who can give us the time to help

PURPOSE: Change, even if that is in a way that neither us nor our customers can predict just yet 

P.S. I am not ignoring the brand promotion and awareness feedback, our CEO John O’Connor is going to take personal ownership of addressing this. Watch this space, his thoughts will follow shortly.  

Things that never happened: a Net Promoter Score of 91

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Things that never happened: a Net Promoter Score of 91

Net Promoter Score

I came across two posts on LinkedIn recently where two separate business-to-business (B2B) companies – one professional services company and one IT services provider – announced the exact same Net Promoter Score results from their clients: +91. The spokesman for the profession services company was particularly chuffed: “We were delighted with the results of the survey resulting in an NPS of 91.” 

Now +91 is indeed an impressive result. If you understand the scoring mechanism behind NPS, you’ll know that a score of +91 requires almost every one of your customers to score you either 9 or 10 to the question: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to  recommend [Company] to a friend or colleague?”

“We were delighted with the results of the survey resulting in an NPS of 91”

 

The calculation for Net Promoter Score is simple: just subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. The resulting score will be somewhere in the range from -100 to +100.

Promoters score you 9 or 10. Detractors score you 6 or less. What about the 7s and 8s, I hear you say? Well, they’re called Passives and the sad thing is that they don’t get counted at all.

A NPS result of +91 equates to a combination of Promoters, Passives and Detractors that might look something like:

  • 91% Promoters, 9% Passives, and no Detractors (91 – 0 = 91)
  • 93% Promoters, 5% Passives, 2% Detractors (93 – 2 = 91)
  • 95% Promoters, 1% Passives, and 4% Detractors (95 – 4 = 91)

You get the picture. To achieve a Net Promoter Score of +91, almost everybody has to love you. Not just LIKE you, but LOVE you. And I mean REALLY, REALLY love you! 

+91 is an astonishingly good score in the B2B world.

A bit more context: In Northern Europe we generally think that a score of 8 out of 10 is pretty good. 9s and 10s are reserved for experiences that are truly special. I’ve written about this before. It’s conditioned into us in school and at university not to give 9s and 10s when we rate somebody or some service that we have received. Think about it. If you have a college education and graduated with a First Class Honours degree, you scored 70% (or maybe a little higher) in your final year exams. That’s 7 out of 10.

If you’re a Premier League footballer and score a couple of goals in a Cup Final, you might be lucky enough to get a player score of 8 from the sports writers commenting on the game. When Liverpool won the Premiership for the first and only time in 2020, they did so with a Net Promoter Score of MINUS 45.

We’re a difficult bunch in Europe. A dour lot. And the further north you go, the harsher we score. Other countries are different. In America (both north and south), you can get 10/10 if you do a good job or provide an excellent service. There are major attitudinal differences from country to country when if comes to scoring – you can read about it here.

An 'average' B2B Net Promoter Score is slightly above zero

So what happens in real life? How many B2B companies score +91 on the NPS metric?

At Deep-Insight, we have been running large NPS programmes for nearly two decades – mainly in Europe – and the reality is that there is a surprisingly wide spread of scores ranging from -50 to +50.

An ‘average’ Net Promoter Score is slightly above zero. Nobody scores worse than -75. And nobody scores better than +75.


CX Programmes: most responses are biased

So am I saying that the professional services and IT firms claiming Net Promoter Scores of +91 are lying?

Not necessarily. Theoretically, it is possible to get a NPS result of +100 from your customer experience (CX) programme but in nearly 20 years we have never seen this happen. In fact, we’ve never seen any B2B company get close to +75. 

In practical terms, the only way you can get a NPS result of +91 is as follows:

  • First, you really do have to be excellent at what you do – particularly when it comes to delivering excellent service every time
  • But that’s not enough. You also need to ‘frig the system’ by selecting a small number of clients who are Ambassadors for you and your service
  • You also need to select only those individuals in those client organisations who you believe will score you 9/10 or 10/10
  • You need to carefully deselect any client that is likely to give you a poor score – you can use the excuse: “Now is not the right time to ask them their views” or “We’ll only antagonise them if we approach them now”
  • Never send a survey to somebody who doesn’t know you really well, even if it’s a senior decision maker that you’d love to have a conversation with – as we’ve seen already, the chances of them giving you 9 or 10 are very slim indeed
  • Finally, don’t outsource the survey process to a third party who will give the option of confidentiality to the survey participants – confidential surveys are likely to elicit lower scores even if they provide a more realistic and honest view of your product or service

You might think I’m being cynical. Surely B2B companies don’t act in such a manner? Surely the leadership and CX teams will prevent this happening by putting an appropriate governance process in place?

Even if companies aren’t that cynical – and in our experience most are not – subtle biases always creep in to soften any hard messages, inflate the true Net Promoter Scores, and water down the recommended actions. Sometimes these biases are blatant. But they always exist.

What’s worse is that leadership teams often compound the problem by setting inappropriate targets (“We’re expecting a completion rate of 75%”) or by incentivising a completely biased result by paying bonuses if certain NPS targets are reached. We all know that if you give good sales managers a target and an incentive plan, they will do their best to achieve it.

Don’t fall into that trap with your CX programme. Work hard at getting what we refer to as ‘unvarnished truth’ about what your customers really think. 


Things that never happened: a NPS of +91

Back to our professional services and IT companies and their +91 NPS results. 

I don’t believe they deliberately set out to ‘frig the system’ in order to achieve a score of +91. I also suspect they genuinely do deliver a really good service. But even without knowing the full details behind the surveys, I know in my heart that they were administered to a small sample of hand-picked clients. The individuals administering the survey were probably not even aware that they were ‘frigging the system’. After all, they had to ask to account managers to nominate the people to be contacted as they don’t manage the client relationships themselves. They weren’t to know that the leadership teams had (unwittingly) conveyed to the account teams that a high NPS result would be good to promote their company on LinkedIn and other social media. They didn’t tell the CEO that she needed to put a robust governance process in place.

With a good governance process in place to elicit the ‘unvarnished truth’ from clients, European B2B companies will never achieve Net Promoter Scores of +91. That’s simply a fact. It never happened.

B2B leadership teams shouldn’t be targeting high NPS scores. Instead, they should be trying to identify key areas for improvement, and then implementing changes based on real unbiased feedback from clients. If they are successful, the NPS results will improve slowly and steadily over time.

So don’t just chase a NPS number. Listen to your customers instead. Act on their suggestions. Resolve their issues. The NPS result will take care of itself.

If you would like more information on how to run an effective CX programme that delivers real and long-lasting change, do get in touch with us. We’d love to help!

“Excellence in CX” Awards 2022 – That’s a Wrap!

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“Excellence in CX” Awards 2022 – That’s a Wrap!

Congratulations to all the Winners

We cannot wait to send this year’s Deep-Insight “Excellence in CX” Awards to their forever home.

These awards focus on customers who have embraced our Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ) framework and methodology to make meaningful change for their customers. 

That makes us very proud!

Before we talk about the winners, we’d like to take a moment to talk about the award itself.

So, first of all, who are we?

Deep-Insight is a small team of Customer Experience (CX) consultants who work extremely closely with our customers. The single question which drives us in each engagement is, ‘will this CX programme inspire transformation in our client organisations?’.

Transformation does not need to be, and usually isn’t, a huge significant event in itself. When done well, transformation is a series of small, well thought through changes and improvements.

Transformation is only worth it if it leads to growth, and it always does when it is inspired by the customer.

What do we mean by ‘Excellence in CX’?

Simply put – we are not interested in vanity projects! We do not care who got the highest scores or the best feedback.

We are completely focused on our core mission of Inspiring Transformation i.e. effective, growth-oriented use of CX.

This is what excellence in customer experience looks like and it is the foundation on which our customers grow their CX programmes.

Why award customers now?

This year we realised that we talk about our customers behind their back All The Time!! We are always telling each other about the great thing Customer A did to engage their organisation, or the great thing Customer B did when communicating back to customers.

That’s when we had our eureka moment – we can recognise the great work our customers do publicly, without it feeling counter to our core CX belief of ‘Value before Vanity’.

All of our customers do amazing work. They wouldn’t put up with us and our challenge mentality if they didn’t, so these awards are here to stay! (But I can’t promise we will stop talking about them behind their backs.)

AND THE WINNERS ARE

 

Best Newcomer to CRQ

Congratulations to everyone in Vreugdenhill Dairy Foods, and a special shout-out to Leonie, Erik, Jeroen, Gerben and Harry!

When we started working with Vreugdenhil Dairy Foods they were quite vocal about being relatively new to anything Customer Experience Feedback related. They then impressed us by embracing the process like they had been at this for years. They got stuck in from the word ‘go’ (and even before) and kept their momentum up all through the live survey and throughout the reporting stages. They dove deep into their results to ensure they had specific actions for each area of the business that they could follow up on.

 

“In Vreugdenhil Dairy Foods, customers are at the forefront and are top of mind in everything we do. It is important to Vreugdenhil that we understand how our customers value the relationship they have with us. The research done together with Deep-Insight has given us a clear picture on how to develop even stronger relationships with our customers, with the hopes of an even better outcome in 2024.”

 Gerben van Schaik, Commercial Director, Vreugdenhil Dairy Foods 

Read more about Vreugdenhill’s win here…

 

Best CRQ Focus Amid Change

Congratulations to everyone in invenioLSI, especially Arun Bala, Nader Tirandazi, Tatiana Pankrats, Caroline Silva, Paula Rowlinson, Sudheer Nadipalli.

invenioLSI has grown at a phenomenal pace which has included a successful merger to expand their presence in the North American market. Customer Focus has been at the heart of invenioLSI since the start yet preserving core values is difficult during expansion and change. Despite this, invenioLSI has successfully maintained exceptional Customer Focus.

Using the Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ) methodology has helped invenioLSI to stay close to their customers over the past three years allowing them to measure, understand and respond with action to their customers directly. Better still, their strength in customer focus continues to be recognised by their own customers

As invenioLSI drives change and transformation within their own customers, we are impressed that invenioLSI leads by example by putting their customer relationships at the forefront of what they do.

 

“invenioLSI is honored to receive the “Excellence in CX” Award from Deep-Insight. For the past 3 years invenioLSI and Deep-Insight have worked together to improve customer experience. Supporting efforts to improve customer relationship quality is something I believe is an essential part of running a company. Partnering with Deep-Insight has been a pleasure and an important part in our company’s mission to help our customers succeed.”

 Nader Tirandazi, CEO, invenioLSI

Read more about invenioLSI’s win here…

 

Best Leadership Response to CRQ

Six Degrees has won best leadership response to CRQ

Congratulations to everyone in SixDegrees, especially Chris Abbott, Kirsty Chapman and Tony Wells.

This is a truly deserved award, everything in Customer Experience starts with leadership commitment and drive and Six Degrees have this in spades.

Through working closely with Six Degrees we got to know a leadership team who are fearless in their ownership of every piece of customer feedback. They listen openly and without agenda and immediately review if their current strategies align with what their customers are telling them.

Most importantly Six Degrees’ leadership team supports their people and their teams. We have seen firsthand their dedication to their teams including, attendance & support at client feedback sessions and full transparency on strategic initiatives that will help their people to better support their customers. It is no surprise that Six Degrees have also been named in Newsweek’s list of the UK’s Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces for 2022.

 

“On behalf of the Six Degrees Leadership Team, we’re thrilled to be recognised for this award.  This year’s survey is the first of three annual CRQ surveys Six Degrees are conducting as we work with our clients to continuously improve the relationship quality and client experience.  We recognise that the whole organisation needs to own Six Degrees’ response if we’re going to be successful in delivering on the promises we have made to our clients. So, we are actively planning to bring our teams, as well as our clients, on the ‘Close the Loop’ journey in the New Year and throughout the programme.”

Kirsty Chapman, Director of Customer Success, Six Degrees Group

Read more about Six Degrees’ win here…

 

Trailblazer in CRQ

Congratulations to everyone in BT Ireland, especially to especially to Alan Shanley, Barry O’Shea, Deirdre Tyrell, Mary McDonagh, Conor Devlin, & Aisling McLaughlin.

BT Ireland has been on a long and successful CRQ journey, each year carefully listening and responding to their customers. Their customers truly value their relationship with BT Ireland, and they have seen tangible benefits from the BT Ireland CRQ programme.

BT Ireland do not want to stand still in this area – they are hungry to be market leaders in CX and are taking significant steps and risks to ensure their customers at the heart of everything they do.

BT Ireland used our ‘CRQ Healthcheck’ to inspire a change programme to disrupt how they measure and manage their Customer Experience to re-focus the entire business on the basics – the value of growing customer relationships. Their pioneering efforts are paying off leading to them winning suite of CX honours, most recently on the European stage.

 

“I’m immensely proud to lead a customer-focused organisation, and I’m very thankful to everyone in BT Ireland for their commitment to winning, developing and retaining customer accounts. Our customer experience culture is a differentiator for us as a business, as our customers have told us in our annual Deep Insight report, and it continues to set us apart.”

Shay Walsh, Managing Director, BT Ireland

Read more about BT Ireland’s win here…

BT Ireland has won Trailblazer in CRQ

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BT Ireland has won Trailblazer in CRQ

Congratulations to BT Ireland who have won Trailblazer in CRQ!

BT Ireland has been awarded Trailblazer in CRQ (Customer Relationship Quality) in the Deep-Insight 2022 Excellence in CX awards. This award is thoroughly deserved as it is based on BT Ireland’s courage to lead the way in customer experience.

BT Ireland has been on a long and successful CRQ journey, each year carefully listening and responding to their customers. Their customers truly value their relationship with BT Ireland, and they have seen tangible benefits from the BT Ireland CRQ programme.

BT Ireland do not want to stand still in this area – they are hungry to be market leaders in CX and are taking significant steps and risks to ensure their customers at the heart of everything they do.

BT Ireland used our CRQ healthcheck to inspire a change programme to disrupt how they measure and manage their Customer Experience to re-focus the entire business on the basics – the value of growing customer relationships. Their pioneering efforts are paying off leading to them winning suite of CX honours, most recently on the European stage.

We admire BT Ireland for their courage to change and for their belief in their customers to drive strategic change in their business. This is what makes them true trailblazers in CRQ and they set a strong standard for others to follow.

Trailblazers are leaders, they create paths that others do not yet see. They are willing to take risks because they are driven by a vision of a better way forward. This is at the heart of what makes BT Ireland pioneers – they have had the belief and courage to re-imagine their culture of CX motivated by a relentless prioritisation of their customer relationships. Our hearty congratulations to everyone at BT Ireland – Shane O’Regan, CX Consultant, Deep-Insight

 

“I’m immensely proud to lead a customer-focussed organisation, and I’m very thankful to everyone in BT Ireland for their commitment to winning, developing and retaining customer accounts. Our customer experience culture is a differentiator for us as a business, as our customers have told us in our annual Deep Insight report, and it continues to set us apart.”

 

Shay Walsh, Managing Director, BT Ireland

Congratulations to everyone in BT Ireland, especially to especially to Alan Shanley, Barry O’Shea, Deirdre Tyrell, Mary McDonagh, Conor Devlin, & Aisling McLaughlin.

About BT Ireland

Your trusted provider to a connected world

We’re one of the world’s leading communications services companies. The solutions we sell are integral to modern life. Our purpose is as simple as it is ambitious: we connect for good. There are no limits to what people can do when they connect. And as technology changes our world, connections are becoming even more important to everyday life.

Today, that’s truer than ever. The connections we make are helping solve the world’s biggest challenges such as the global pandemic, climate change and cyber security. Through the power of technology, we’re supporting customers to live, work and play together better.

About Deep-Insight

Deep-Insight is a leading European B2B Customer Experience (CX) company founded in 2000 by a small team of ‘magicians’ with one goal: researching a way to read customers’ minds.

Today, Deep-Insight supports customers all over the world with the skills, tools and methodologies to help you operate world-class CX and EX programmes and transform your organisation.

For more information, go to www.deep-insight.com or email awards@deep-insight.com.

Six Degrees has won Best Leadership Response To CRQ

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Six Degrees has won Best Leadership Response To CRQ

Congratulations to Six Degrees who have won Best Leadership Response to CRQ!

Six Degrees has been awarded Best Leadership Response to CRQ(Customer Relationship Quality) in the Deep-Insight 2022 Excellence in CX awards and we are thrilled for them. This is a truly deserved award, everything in Customer Experience starts with leadership commitment and drive and Six Degrees have this in spades.

 

Through working closely with Six Degrees we got to know a leadership team who are fearless in their ownership of every piece of customer feedback. They listen openly and without agenda and immediately review if their current strategies align with what their customers are telling them.

Six Degrees has won best leadership response to CRQ

Most importantly Six Degrees’ leadership team supports their people and their teams. We have seen firsthand their dedication to their teams including, attendance & support at client feedback sessions and full transparency on strategic initiatives that will help their people to better support their customers. It is no surprise that Six Degrees have also been named in Newsweek’s list of the UK’s Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces for 2022.

“Here is a truly open and human experience focused leadership team. All efforts go into ensuring exceptional customer and employee experience. They are not afraid to commit to change when needed and to communicate this to both customers and employees. They support their people every step of the way to inspire a culture of true customer centricity” Rose Murphy COO, Deep-Insight

“On behalf of the Six Degrees Leadership Team, we’re thrilled to be recognised for this award.  This year’s survey is the first of three annual CRQ surveys Six Degrees are conducting as we work with our clients to continuously improve the relationship quality and client experience.  We recognise that the whole organisation needs to own Six Degrees’ response if we’re going to be successful in delivering on the promises we have made to our clients. So, we are actively planning to bring our teams, as well as our clients, on the Close the Loop journey in the New Year and throughout the programme.”

Kirsty Chapman, Director of Customer Success, Six Degrees Group

Six degrees has impressed us with its dedication to focus on the customer, to truly listen to what they are saying and to ensuring that voice is heard and acted on throughout the organisation.

Congratulations to everyone in SixDegrees, especially Chris Abbott, Kirsty Chapman and Tony Wells

About Six Degrees

Six Degrees aspire to be trusted with your mission-critical technology around the clock. We utilise our people and our expertise to power your business by deploying state-of-the-art platforms of innovation to host the applications and websites that enable you to succeed and grow with confidence.

About Deep-Insight

Deep-Insight is a leading European B2B Customer Experience (CX) company founded in 2000 by a small team of ‘magicians’ with one goal: researching a way to read customers’ minds.

Today, Deep-Insight supports customers all over the world with the skills, tools and methodologies to help you operate world-class CX and EX programmes and transform your organisation.

For more information, go to www.deep-insight.com or email awards@deep-insight.com.