My first week at CustomerGauge - NPS 101/Customer Retention

So there are two firsts to rave about this week. This is my first LinkedIn article that I am publishing and it is the end of my full first week here at CustomerGauge. I've definitely learnt a lot and wanted to share those learnings with you all!

Firstly I think it's great to see a technology company in which over 50% of the work force are women, a clear indication of a forward-thinking company.

"I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men; they are far superior and always have been." - William Golding

My first interview was with the CEO, Adam Dorrell, and he joined me for lunch on the second day when he got back from our US base. Again not something that I have experienced much in the past but is a clear testament to its flat structure which was a big reason why we were so successful at Apigee and probably one of the many reasons why Google ended up buying them. Our CEO over there, Chet Kapoor, had a saying that seamlessly infused its way through the organisation that was "there are no org charts and titles at Apigee" - we were just a big, happy family working hard on building our house. I get a similar feeling over here. In the end of the day, its all about keeping both business and technology human which is one of the reasons I joined CustomerGauge.

On the point of keeping business human, enter the Net Promoter Score (NPS). After speaking with many executives over the years spanning different geos and industries, I clearly saw a trend in the growing importance of the NPS. Several years ago Fred Reichheld and his team got to work on a research project to determine whether a different approach to the conventional customer-satisfaction surveys would prove more fruitful to the business. The short and simple question they devised that provided valuable insight was:

"What is the likelihood that you would recommend Company X to a friend or colleague?"

NPS allows the business to address the challenge of knowing what customers are feeling and how they can establish accountability for the customer experience in order to gain happy customers :) They also found out that Net Promoter leaders on average grew at more than twice the rate of competitors. Visit www.npsbenchmarks.com for more information on benchmarking the NPS of your business. I used to believe that NPS was a vanity metric but this week I realised just how much value the system (not the score!) has for business if implemented correctly in an organisation. Alex Schulz (VP Growth @ Facebook) mentions that retention is the single most important thing for growth and according to Bain & Co, a 5% increase in Retention can grow profit by 75%!!

In 2010, I remember seeing this awe-inspiring TED Talk from Chip Conley (who is now an exec at Airbnb): Measuring What Make Life Worthwhile. He poses an interesting argument in order to start measuring happiness (instead of say the GDP of a country) and how this philosophy helped drive his hotel chain forwards. NPS is essentially one way to do just that.

After sticking my head into countless resources on NPS and customer retention, I dove into our product with an open mind and set my expectations at zero. I was delightfully overwhelmed by the ease of use, advanced/customisable reporting to provide valuable real-time insights at scale from the frontline all the way to the execs, the ability to correlate the insights with revenue and act off of it, the flexibility of the platform (API-driven with implementations in as little as one week) and the scalability and experience we have working with global accounts like Philips, Tommy Hilfiger, AT&T, Ziggo, Electrolux, DHL, Dulux, Kuoni, BMG and countless of many SMEs due to our flexible pricing. We help these companies to truly listen to their customers, analyze the data, ACT on it (as Einstein said "genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration"), share the feedback, integrate easily with most CRMs, and grow their business.

We eat our own dog-food at CustomerGauge and use the platform for our Customer Success teams to "fire fight" and "close the loops". From what I've learnt working at high growth SaaS companies is that sometimes there is such a relentless focus on growth that retention becomes a secondary priority - this should never be the case! In my MSc in Relationship Marketing I discovered that it is 10 times more expensive to acquire than it is to retain one. If you can keep a finger on the pulse of your customers than you can reduce your marketing costs and increase retention, not to mention improve your brand image and all the referrals that come along with it. When did you hear about Uber or Airbnb? Most people I ask say from a friend. It was this, and having a great product, that allowed them to really scale the way they did.

During my first week I've sat in on calls with many customers trying to understand how they can improve their customer retention and reduce churn and have witnessed four new customer wins from colleagues within one week. As an enthusiastic sales professional this really gets my tail wagging and clearly shows me the opportunity at hand. Above all though it shows that we are thought leaders in the Customer Retention/NPS space, that our platform helps drive business to many global customers and that we practice what we preach and have a die-hard focus on making our customers successful.

Here are some retention best practices that I picked up from our latest eBook on "Retention Management and Combating Churn" (download here) which was put together by our lovely digital content extraordinaire, Sarah Frazier:

• Make a good first impression—every time. Don’t leave the “wow” factor for your new customers. Make sure you are nurturing your existing client base with discounts, campaigns and follow-up. Build a following of promoters who will provide good word of mouth and referrals in return. Be a company your customers are proud to recommend. 
• Treat every interaction like your salary depends on it. Whether they’re your big-ticket customers or not, churn adds up. Always be aware of your churn and retention rate. Use the formulas we’ve provided to get an estimate on what those numbers are, and then use a Net Promoter System to find the why behind the churn. 
• Don’t wait for customers to reach out to you. Check in with them. While it’s important not to weigh your customers down with a flurry of surveys, make sure any major experience or transaction are followed-up with a survey to monitor how their experience was. 
• Tell customers what you’re doing to improve. Once a customer has taken a survey, follow-up by not only thanking them (these will go straight in the trash bin) but also what actions are being taken to improve their future experience based on their specific feedback. Show you are listening and acting. 

How many customers leave you every month…every year? Do you know why they leave you? Do you know which customers might leave you next? If you don’t have all the answers, I promise you, it’s OK! In fact, 44% of C-suite executives don’t know their retention rate or why customers are churning. These are just a small number of questions that the platform helps answer.

As this is my first attempt to enter the world of publishing (probably quite far off writing the next Harry Potter!) - if you enjoyed the read then please like, spark off a comment and share with your circles because as they say, sharing is caring!

If you would like to help me get my first deal ;) or just fancy a little catch up and a chat about how to take your NPS initiatives to the next level, then I will be happy to jump on a call. Feel free to drop me an email at [email protected] or drop me a message on LinkedIn.

Happy Friday and enjoy your weekend :)