What NPS can learn from Popular Culture - Challenges with NPS Benchmarks

I was looking talking to a customer the other day about Net Promoter and the invariable conversation about how great it would be to benchmark all providers and have a league table for the great & the not so good. I did point out that Satmetrix have just published their “benchmarks” for industries. 

The challenge here is they are very US centric and of little use to many businesses as a true benchmark as most of the customers are massive multi-national blue chips.  The value of them is that they can provide some directional insight on the great and the good.

However, what’s the relevance of Apple Corporation current value $568Bn to a £150m support services business in the Midlands?  People tend to want benchmarks with people like them – the closer they reflect you the better.

This did get me thinking of novel ways to describe the issue of benchmarking and the impact of relativity in NPS measurement.  For those who really know me understand that I really try keep everything really simple and this is reflected in the Blairgowrie Associates Culture – simple, measurable, actionable and quantifiable.  So here goes my attempt to simplify the challenge as I see it...

The Syndrome Effect

It is great that all companies strive to get their customers to promote, provide the 10 NPS score we all crave, this creates a problem.  In a benchmark sense if everyone scores 10 and provides great service the problem was best summed up by Syndrome aka Buddy in the Management classic The Incredibles.  Whilst Brad Bird is no Charles Handy, the comment was just as profound. 

You see " if everyone is super...no one will be" - applying this to NPS if everyone is 10 or +60 in a benchmark one can see no difference.  This then leads on to the Brian effect...

The Brian Effect

Again I never thought I would be citing Monty Python but the piece makes the point for me better than any Micheal Porter tome on competitive differentiation. 

You see the challenge is if every company claims to have an NPS of X or talks about using NPS to improve customer service (again all great things), to the humble customer there is no difference. 

The importance of the message gets lost in the rest of the claims, sub claims and pronouncements.  In essence it is like the scene from Life of Brian where all the characters claim they are indeed Brian...and so's my wife.

Therefore next time you are at a conference and the Company presenting is extolling the virtues of their current customer experience initiative or framework, ask your self if this really differentiates them against their competition or better still are they simply Brian....