Nowhere is this more true than your customer relationships.

It is at the heart of Net Promoter Score … or any customer feedback program for that matter.

I know from experience that it’s easy to believe you have an NPS program operating at or close to maximum effectiveness when you:

• start seeing the customer feedback roll in
• begin to get a better insight into what is important to your customers; and
• implement improvement initiatives (in the case of Cox Automotive, over 100 new initiatives in 18 months)

However, the more I spoke to people and the more I learnt what was possible, the more I realised my optimal performing NPS program “just ain’t so”. So I set out to understand in detail just exactly what went into a high performing Net Promoter program.

In my analysis I identified 121 separate, but important, attributes of a high performing NPS program. At first it seemed too many to be realistic but whenever I tried to remove one I found I just couldn’t – each was important in it’s own right.

What we do know “for sure” is that there are certain key areas that need to be considered and actioned effectively to have a high performing program. In this post I’m not going to go through all of them but I am going to highlight 25 that are particularly critical.

Buy-In

Executive Buy-In: Senior (“C” level buy in to the overall NPS process)

Middle Management engagement: how well do middle management support the process, for they are the silent gatekeepers to the organisation

Internal communication: do all staff really understand the what, why and how of NPS?

Reward & Recognition: Integrating Net Promoter into your R&R planning to ensure long term success.

How effectively do you collect data: Is your data collection comprehensive, reliable and robust. Staff need to believe the data to take it seriously.

Operational Effectiveness

Good governance: sounds boring but governance is critical to NPS success.

Average case response and close times: closing the small loop quickly and effectively.

Documentation standards: nobody wants documentation for documentation sake but you need solid documentation to support the system.

Data segmentation: being able to report on the right data segments underpins continuous improvement.

Data integration: putting the right data in front of the right person at the right time

Initiative Development

Data analysis process and frequency: there is a rhythm to effective data analysis, getting that right is critical.

Project shortlisting process and frequency: identifying and shortlisting the highest value projects.

Project prioritisation process and frequency: having a process to identify the right project to do now.

Quality of customer feedback: distinguishing high quality feedback from low quality feedback, and acting only on high quality.

Business cases: ensuring projects are approved comes down to a solid business case.

Customer Retention

Customer churn reporting: small changes in customer retention have big impacts on business value – you need to track churn.

“At Risk” customer volume: knowing this will help you to target at risk customers

“At Risk” customer value: knowing this will help you to know how much to invest in customer retention.

Process for managing “At Risk” customers: exactly what do you do when you identify an at risk customer?

Customer communication: how, what and when do you communicate with customers for maximum impact.

Customer Growth

Up-Sell capability: sell them more of what they have already purchased.

Cross-Sell capability: sell them new and different products. Research shows a very high take up of new products by promoters.

Online review generation: positive reviews drives sales, it’s as simple as that!

Loyalty Programs: providing the right added value for customers drives long term loyalty.

Referral Programs: you already know your most loyal customers, let them help you market your business.