The Best Practice Net Promoter Roll-Out Process

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Okay so you know what you need to implement but how do you get there? When I talk to most new clients they want to start with Listen. Let’s send some surveys they say.

However, best practice is to hold off on that and start by deciding how you’re going to use the information.

Here are five steps to the roll-out process:

best-practice-nps-rollout

Initiate

If you don’t start with a survey, where do you start? Instead, use that first wave of energy part to get everybody engaged in the process. We know from experience that if you do not get the process Initiated correctly, with the right corporate systems in place, it will fail. Generally it takes 12-24 months but it will fail.

Initiate is all about ensuring that:

  • Senior executives are engaged and committed
  • You have the right internal structures (Governance) to make effective use of the information
  • You launch the process effectively to all staff.

If you execute the Initiate process properly you will make effective use of that launch energy before it dissipates in the day to day of business as usual.

Initial Executive Commitment

Getting the program up and running will take time and effort. Staff will have to prioritise what they are doing. You should start by ensuring that you have good support up through all levels of the organisation.

Design and Create the Governance Model

Critical to success is a Net Promoter governance process for your organisation. We know governance frameworks are boring and nobody wants to talk about them. But governance is the place that we find many organisations have failed in their customer feedback process.

This is the governance model that we use with organisations and it has proven to be very effective. We talked about this in the past. Learn more about the details of the Net Promoter Governance Model.

customer-feedback-governance

Change Management Planning

Rolling out Net Promoter is a big change for most organisations and it needs to be communicated effectively. You cannot leave this to chance.

The Process team should lead the change management process as they are most intimately involved and have the deepest understanding. In this process they should consider who will be impacted upon the rollout of the process and who will impact on the launch of the process. Then a communication plan should be created to address the needs and concerns of each group of staff.

Some organisations choose to create an internal brand for the Net Promoter program and it can be a very effective tactic. The branding process serves as a way to bring all of the communication together into an effective package.

Customer Strategy and Context

Once you have the governance in place and the change management planned, you will need to look at the Customer Strategy and Context part of the rollout.

When you roll out a comprehensive Net Promoter program you can do it in two ways:

  1. Big Bang – roll the whole program out at once. This is a high risk approach with a long planning and lead time.
  2. Incrementally – rollout the Listen phase to selected touch points. Then as you grow in experience and get some runs on the board you can extend the range of touch points.

This second approach is our recommendation and the Customer Strategy and Context allows you to prioritise that rollout process.

In this phase you should create Touchpoint or Customer Journey Maps of your customer experience. This will allow you to prioritise the launch and focus on the most important areas first:

  • Which Customers – Prioritise your customer segments so the more important segments are implemented before less important segments. This prioritisation can be strategic, or by value or some other variable important in your business.
  • Which Touchpoint – For each of your key customer groups create a Touchpoint map that covers their interaction with you from awareness to exit.
  • Which key opportunities – If you can foresee some places in the business where you can potentially get some early wins make sure to note them on the map.
  • Who needs to be involved – Make sure that you have the right people in the room for these Touchpoint mapping discussions. You should have people who understand the process (of course) but also people who understand the data systems. The data system folks will help you to identify what data is captured and available for use in surveys.

Listen

Once you have a good understanding of who and when you want to survey, it’s time to get to the customer feedback design.

Select a technology that can automate as much of the data collection as possible. You want to focus your time and effort on analysis and action not on administering customer feedback tools and jockeying with Excel spreadsheets.

Question design should be quite straight forward. Try to have as few questions as possible. Ensure that you use appropriate scales and that the wording is correct. Basically, you should try for best practice survey design to maximise the value you receive from this process.

While the other stages to this point are all very important, try to get to the survey sending stage as soon as possible. Speed is important here because it is only when surveys start to come back that the broader organisation will see that you have actually started the Net Promoter process.

React

Soon after you have started sending surveys you should consciously design your service recovery or React process.

Run a design workshop and make sure that the key staff are there including the Process team.

In the workshop you should address a range of key questions including:

  • How will the organisation be alerted to low scores? – In practice what will happen, exactly.
  • Who should action them? – Will they be triaged (one person receives all the issue and manually sends them to the right person) or will be automatically distributed around the organisation based on a set of rules. What are the rules?
  • How will the actions be tracked?
  • What reporting is required?
  • What is the process flow?
  • How quickly and how will you respond to clients?

When the workshop is over make sure you document the new process so that you can act quickly and effectively on the responses from customers.

Quick Wins

Early in the launch of the program you should look for some quick wins for the Net Promoter program. These quick wins help to drive the cultural change that is so vital for long term success. They also help to prove out the value of the program in general.

Quick Wins should be just that: quick. Look for small changes that you can make to your business without the need for large projects.

Does the feedback you are receiving suggest that you IVR is difficult to navigate, could you tweak the wording on your website’s product description to make it easier for customers to understand, perhaps the layout of your invoices could be tweaked.

Within days of sending your survey invites you should be able to see these small changes you can make so just make them as the first step.

Big Bets

When you have been running to data collection process for 6-12 months and you have made quite a few small changes you will be more confident in the data and in your analysis. This is the time to look for some Big Bets.

Big Bets generally need detailed costing, ROI analysis and senior management approval so they take time to identify and plan. However they are where you can make big impacts on the NPS and thereforE customer loyalty

Examples of Big Bets include redesigning products, adding significant functionality to existing products and making large organisation changes. These are changes not to be taken lightly but if you have proven the value of the Net Promoter process through a range of Quick Wins then you will be in a good position prove your case.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

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