Implementing the Critical Elements of Net Promoter Score® (NPS) Based Programs

·   Over 500,000 loyalty interviews per year

·   Working with NPS-based loyalty programs since 1997

·   Advanced quota management to ensure unbiased data collection

·   One of the initial vendors on the ESQI program

·   Specialized customer satisfaction trained interviewers

·   100% verifiable data using Question Based Digital Voice Recording

·   Mixed mode collection voice and internet for mixed audiences

·   Automated Call Detractor alerts procedures

·   Custom reporting according to any segmentation or organizational structure

High integrity data collection and reporting is critical to the successful implementation of a loyalty program.   According to chapter 6 of “The Ultimate Question”, by Fred Reichheld (Harvard Business School Publishing, 2006), there are seven principles that are essential to good measurement.  Reichheld strongly recommends that companies engage a third party to collect and report the data.  The third party must be able to demonstrate 100% data integrity and quality procedures to ensure effective buy in at all levels.

Consumer Contact is one of the largest independent providers of loyalty data and reporting in North America. We have been collecting and reporting NPS type loyalty scores since 1997, starting with Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s ESQI implementation. Each year, we complete over 500,000 customer satisfaction interviews on behalf of our clients. We have built extensive sampling, training, and operational procedures to ensure the success of our clients’ programs. 

Our loyalty clients have chosen us first and foremost due to our data collection and reporting quality.   We have implemented very specific training programs to reflect that we are effectively an extension of our clients’ relationship with their customer. Consumer Contact interviewers are specially trained in customer satisfaction and gaining respondent cooperation so that they reflect a positive image of your company.

With Consumer Contact, the loyalty interview effectively establishes another positive interaction between you and your customer. While we explicitly state and represent ourselves as a third party collecting this information on our client’s behalf, the customer perceives at some level that it was your company who called them and asked “how was I doing and how they can serve me better”. There is a very subtle but important relationship difference between a professional interview and an impersonal email invitation to complete a questionnaire.

In order to maximize the effectiveness of your loyalty initiative, it is critical that the data collection is executed with statistical validity, ensuring neither interviewer nor sampling bias. With over 37 years of experience managing research data collection and reporting projects, Consumer Contact has implemented many innovations to ensure the highest quality in the data collection process.  In fact, the chairman of Consumer Contact is also a leading member of several international committees that determine the industry standards for market research data collection, including the ISO Standard for Market Research.

Consumer Contact uses Question-Based Digital Voice Recording (QB-DVR) to monitor all interviews. QB-DVR creates a database of audio files for every unique question which allows us to analyze the conversation around the questions. 

This facility can be very important when driving executive buy in, as the recordings of detractors can be played in the detractors own voice.  When you hear a customer actually complain about something, you really take note. It’s a dimension of effectiveness well beyond the written verbatim.  

An important element of Loyalty is managing both promoters and, even more importantly, detractors. Consumer Contact suggests that clients implement an immediate detractor follow up program.  We create a specific out-bound calling with our clients to contact detractors.

Once an interview is completed and the respondent is identified as a detractor, an email message is sent to the unit manager (branch, region, franchisee etc) responsible for the customer. We recommend that the detractor be contacted within 24 hours, and that there should be a feedback mechanism from unit managers detailing their resolutions to these calls.

Our experience leads us to believe that the telephone interview carries significantly more relationship value with clients, as they are able to interact when describing their pleasure or displeasure with the company.   Consumer Contact also has multilingual telephone support which enables consistent program implementation across all customer segments.   Clients who communicate to their customers in the customers’ native tongue greatly enhance their reputation with that client. 

Fast reporting results in faster actions. All your loyalty data is right at your fingertips with Consumer Contact’s Access portals. We offer remote access to your data, by survey segment, 24/7, customized to the way you would like it presented.

We take the tedium and delay out of your loyalty report generation. Your regular tables and charts are updated with ease, saving you and your staff valuable time and allowing you to concentrate on the results. Tables and charts can be converted to PDF format and sent directly to desktop PCs and Blackberries or presented over the web in HTML format.

For a complete explanation of the best practices of the Net Promoter Score ®, we recommend that you purchase your own copy of:

 
“The Ultimate Question”, by Fred Reichheld, Harvard Business School Press, 2006.

 
Net Promoter is a registered trademark of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company and Fred Reichheld.