10-22-13 | Blog Post
Online Tech’s Co-CEO Talks About Net Promoter Score
In business, customer opinions matter. Opinions can help drive product developments, improve customer relations and increase sales. One of the best gauges of customer opinions is the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which is a tool used to measure customer satisfaction.
The NPS score is based on the perspective that every company’s customers can be divided into three categories. Promoters are loyal enthusiasts, who buy from a company and urge their colleagues to do the same. Passives are unenthusiastic customers who can be easily taken by the competition. And detractors, who are unhappy customers.(1)
The Net Promoter Score is calculated by asking customers to rate a simple question, “How likely are you to recommend <company> to a friend or colleague?” The actual score is determined by taking the percentage of people who responded 9 or 10 (extremely likely to promote you) and subtract the number of people who rated you less than 7.
Online Tech’s Co-CEOs, Mike Klein and Yan Ness, first learned about the Net Promoter Score from the book, “The Ultimate Question 2.0,” by Fred Reichheld. In this book, Reichheld explains the NPS concept and how it can contribute to a company’s growth and the power it has to energize employees and customers.
All of Online Tech customers are asked 4 to 5 times a year to rate the company and reply in a few sentences why he or she gave that score. The NPS score provides the Michigan data center operator an immediate feedback mechanism and benchmarking opportunities. The data center can use the score to measure themselves against other companies like Southwest, Apple and Ritz Carleton.
This helps drive our culture says Ness. “We can refer to well known brands that our employees love and enjoy and articulate what we want done that are similar to what they are doing.” Read how Michael Kowal, Director of Business Development at Online Tech, compares his customer experience with Southwest Airlines to data center operators and cloud service providers.
Inevitably some complaints or low scores are given. These immediately land on Yan Ness’s desk and customers are contacted asking, “What can I do to make things better for you.” This customer feedback is shared with company directors and product managers and improvements are made to any processes or procedures so the negative experience does not happen again.
The NPS score has been engrained within Online Tech’s culture. You will hear the product design team and client services talk about different things to do to produce higher NPS score. It gets the team thinking of ways to drive the metric higher allowing the company to build a great relationship with customers.
Learn more about Online Tech’s “Exceptional People Delivering Exceptional Experiences.”
(1) www.netpromotersystem.com
