NPS as a KPI – the good and bad!

Written by: Kushal Dev | Co-founder, Customer Guru

One of the first few questions that organisations ask on adopting NPS is “should they set NPS as a KPI?”  While the intention could be right to ensure that the team is serious about NPS, it is equally important to ensure that the program has reached the maturity level of adopting NPS as a KPI. Do it too early and it will face a lot of resistance from the team. Do it too late and the program loses its value.

A few pointers to keep in mind while you are on the NPS journey

“We are in it with you”. The company should give out a clear message to its employees. Imagine the detractors reaching out to your front line employees. When they voice their concern, then other than acknowledging it if your team is clueless on the next steps it will only lead to repeat complains and further customer dissatisfaction. With no defined system in place the frontline feels helpless and this effects their morale. Any organisation would definitely not want to get in this vicious cycle of unhappy employees and customers. The solution here is to define a process for handling customer issues and equipping the team with the right tools to collect customer feedback, analyse this data and take necessary action to address these issues. The employees should get the message that the company is in it as much as the team and willing to equip them with the right processes and tools.

“Data is key”.  To create the finest quality product you need to use the best raw material. Similarly if you want to get the best result from your NPS program it is important that the data you are collecting and using to make key decisions is relevant, reliable and a good representation of your entire customer base. Initiatives based on non reliable data will face resistance from all the departments effected. This resistance will also be rightly justified as decisions on unreliable data will not be credible and yield minimum result. Some points to consider for data reliability

• The team must be trained and system should be put in place to avoid “gaming” (surveying only satisfied customers, colour coding score chart to suggest scores to customers, pleading customers for high scores indicting bonus for the team etc).
• Some geographies are culturally tuned to lower scores. Its should be accounted for while making key decisions
• Try to get a good response rate. With more and more internet users on the mobile it could be your key to higher response rate
• Organisations with high NPS may want to focus on issues creating passives rather than the ones creating detractors.
• Focusing too much on the score may dilute the essence of the program to resolve customer issues.

Though it is advisable to set NPS as a KPI it is important to commit along with you team, support in their initiatives and in the process always be focused on the ultimate goal to WOW you customers.

Reach Kushal at kushal@customerguru.in