You Have to be N Joking...NPS and a Utility provider

Today is the first day I thought I would give this blog writing a go after one of my colleagues suggested it would be good for SEO  and stuff.  It is ironic really as normally with these things it starts with a bang and ends in a whimper.  How many blogs have we all seen where the first 20 posts are long, weighty and insightful, to then see that the last post was 2 years ago.

I have therefore set myself a little task of trying to up date this minimum weekly with thoughts and insights on the customer experience landscape and the prevalence of tools and approaches that may or may not help organisations improve their customers plight.

Ironically today I was asked by a large utility company to provide them with a metre reading - so after crawling around a dark cupboard I wrote them down and went to this organisations website.  Really simple to put in the readings and that was it I thought...however, I was then directed to the omnipotent Net Promoter Survey asking me if, based on my experience today, would I recommend this business, then the follow up of why did you score us this way.

I duly completed this but really it was irrelevant because the reality is I sort of expect as a base service the ability to record metre reading - I couldn't help but think that there is some disconnect in this organisation between what NPS really is about and what it measures (Loyalty) and the use of it to score metre readings.

Whilst the metre reading experience I had may be the best in the world, do you think I would be running to friends and colleagues promoting the virtues of it and by this organisation in particular...er that's a no there then.

If one is going to use NPS, at least use it in the right context and in a way that it can really effect change & improvement.  By the way I scored them 7 which makes me a passive, with a comment for them to contact me to discuss further.  I am not a betting man but I suspect I will not get a "close the loop" folow up call...for some Companies NPS is more rhetoric than a guenuine business improvement approach..