No, I’m Unlikely to Recommend You - And Here’s Why…

These articles are part of my weekly Tuesday Tidbit religiously read by over 30,000 senior executives. Go to NoahFleming.com to make sure you’re on the list.

It's easy to mock companies who seem to completely miss the point of customer appreciation/loyalty/satisfaction gestures, and I've probably been unapologetically ruthless about it in the past... 

But today, I want to focus on the silver lining. 

Whatever size company you are, it's better to be doing something than nothing, so long as you take action on that something, and make changes to keep improving it. 

I'll give a concrete example. 

Both my colleague and co-author Shawn and I (of Dealing with Difficult Customers) have been receiving calls at 8:30 pm and later for the past couple of months, from different companies doing automated customer satisfaction surveys. 

Now, obviously, I think it’s ridiculous for them to be calling at those times with an automated system... There’s just so much of what I hate is being done there at once (lack of respect for the customers time; depersonalization; know thy customer, etc..).

But as I thought about it, I realized that as bad as it is, at least they're doing SOMETHING.

Hopefully, they're able to get some insight that helps them raise the bar across all of their locations or the business as a whole, identify the best performers in the company, or enhance their training programs.

What I worry about is that they're doing it for the sake of doing it. That they're bothering their customers, and not making use of the information they're getting. I’ve railed time and time again against NPS (Net Promoter Score). The de facto loyalty metric that asks the single question of “On a scale from 1-10 how likely are you to recommend us to a friend?”

I usually give NPS a one or a ten just to see if they do anything. And the best part is that if I give either a one or a ten, I can count all the times I’ve heard from the company. 

Zilch. Nada. Never. Try it sometime. 

At best, they use another form to ask me to explain my answer. But never once have I received a meaningful follow-up communication. 

When I work with clients, I often remind them that it’s just bad manners to ask their customers to do a lot of work for free, which is necessarily what these surveys are doing. 

They’re the result of a company saying, “How can we make this process easy for us, at the expense of our customers?” 

Is it any wonder that it’s hard to get meaningful, actionable feedback from such a silly mechanism?

No matter how big or small your company is, the first step to better customer loyalty/service/satisfaction is to do something to measure it. 

The critical (and almost always overlooked) second step is to do something with that information you gather that goes beyond, 'We need to get a nine average score or management will fire us.' 

That's just lazy management–and sadly, it’s the de-facto standard.

Here’s your challenge for this week:

If you’re not doing some outreach to your customers to collect information about their experiences, or to measure how positively they view you–then start. (Yes, even if it’s with the antiquated, NPS systems.) 

Task somebody on your team to call 10 of the negative responders and 5 of the positive responders, and listen to them. Take notes. (Record the calls if you can.) 

Share those notes/calls with the people who were involved with that customer interaction. More importantly, look for patterns over time, so that you can find the areas/people who are most connected to your best and worst customer experiences, and leverage that knowledge.

These things aren’t glamorous. They’re not sexy. They require discipline to do and to act on the insights. That’s probably why it’s so rare to see companies taking these steps, but it’s also precisely why these steps are so valuable.

Best,

Noah

P.S. In yesterday’s episode of The Evergreen Show Shawn and I discuss these concepts in more detail. If you’re not listening to The Evergreen Show, you can open up Podcasts on your iPhone, search for the show and subscribe to our brief 15-minute weekly podcast. You can also find the podcast on Spotify.

P.P.S. For those wondering why I'm not a fan of the NPS scoring, I wrote about it a while ago, and found this image that's both funny and absolutely on point regarding the failures of this type of outreach.

#linkedinLearning

Noah is the author of the landmark books, Evergreen, The Customer Loyalty Loop, and the upcoming release of Dealing with Difficult Customers. The books break new ground on customer loyalty, customer service, customer experience, and customer retention. Since 2005, Noah’s firm, Fleming Consulting & Co., has worked with clients around the globe to help them dramatically grow their businesses. Learn more about Noah here. Noah is also a LinkedIn Learning Instructor–view his courses here.