"How likely are you to recommend this product or service to a family member or friend?" With this simple question, thousands of companies around the world make many strategic and tactical decisions to grow their businesses. It is called the Net Promoter Score, or NPS, a metric proposed in 2003 to measure loyalty to a company based on market recommendations. Although some may dismiss it as simplistic, the truth is that as a metric it is easy to obtain, easy to interpret, and allows forbenchmarks or comparisons between companies. The name of the tool comes from those consumers who give a score of 9 or 10 out of 10, who are classified as "promoters."
Based on this metric, one of the leading companies in Customer Experience that we have mentioned on other occasions, Temkin Group, has just published a comprehensive study based on the NPS of more than 340 companies, generated by 10,000 consumers in the United States. In addition to the intrinsic value of the study, its main findings also allow us to verify that this score is not related to the volume or turnover of companies. If we took the Fortune 500 list, we would be surprised to see who occupies which position in this particular ranking, which is the hallmark of many companies.
Do Walmart, Exxon Mobil, Berkshire Hathaway, or Apple occupy the top spots in the NPS? Not at all. The gold medal goes to a company as unusual as it is genuine, USAA, founded almost a century ago (1922) by a group of 25 U.S. Army officers as a mutual self-insurance mechanism when they were unable to obtain auto insurance due to the perception that they, as military officers, were a high-risk group, according to Wikipedia. Today, it is a large group that offers banking and insurance services to past and present members of the Armed Forces, officers and enlisted personnel, and their immediate families.
In fact, the two branches of USAA's business, banking and insurance, occupy two of the three top spots, accompanied by another company whose business is closely related, in part, to that of the leading firm: Navy Federal Credit Union, which was founded in 1933 as a credit union for Navy officers and later expanded to become the largest retail credit union in the United States.
These top positions alone raise many questions regarding customer experience. For example, having the highest recommendation ratio does not depend on being amillennial, young, disruptive company with knowledge of the digital market; no, it depends on winning the heart of the impact market. For example, scores such as NPS disprove the maxim that credit and insurance companies are guided by shady interests and whose activities border on theft; because getting to the top of the consumer's list of favorites does not depend on the perception of the sector, it depends on the perception of each individual company. In fact, the results for USAA and Navy Federal Credit Union exceeded the banking industry average by more than 40 points. There must be a reason for that.
It is also worth noting the above-average growth of three other more or less "unknown" names: first, and note that we once again find insurance services, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida; second, the low-cost hotel chain franchised by Marriott as Fairfield Inn; and third, Ameren Illinois, a holding company for energy supply companies. Once again, maximum performance for three sectors that, for one reason or another, are always under suspicion of practices that are not entirely above board. These three companies must be doing something to stand out so far above the average: more than 20 points above their own score last year alone. It would be a good idea for more than one executive to sit down with their managers to find out what they are doing so well.
And watch out, there are some twists and turns ahead. The score curve by age group is particularly striking, as the highest scores are given by those aged between 25 and 34 and those over 74, while consumers aged 18 to 24 consistently give companies the lowest scores. Does this mean that there is an unbridgeable gap betweenmillennials and the generation immediately before them ? Or does it mean that the NPS score changes dramatically when people enter working and professional adulthood, to the point of generating a rebound effect? These are questions that should not be overlooked if we want to be prepared for the market of the future.
In any case, what has been proven is the high correlation between NPS and Customer Experience: on average, according to the Temking Group executive report, leaders in this discipline enjoy an NPS that is 21 points higher than the NPS of those who lag behind in Customer Experience. The conclusion is clear: in a digital society, being recommended is almost as valuable as being purchased; and if you want to be recommended, the path is obvious: invest, now, in improving your Customer Experience.
