Satmatrix, the company behind the Net Promoter© methodology has just published their latest industry ranking scores. These results are based on over 19,500 consumers in the US across seven industry sectors.
If you are new to Net Promoter do read carphone warehouse puts emphasis on customer care (example of it in action) and Net Promoter Telecom industry scores for more information.
Whilst Satmetrix sells detailed reports you can download an excellent (and free!) summary document from their website ( you will need to register) that will tell you, for example, that in North America banks score between -9% and 81% with an average score of 20%, supermarkets range from 21% to 69% with an average of 44.4% and online shopping from 12% to 71% with an average of 42%. There are some outstanding stars that account for the higher figures. For example, USAA a specialist financial services organisation servicing the military scored 81% for banking, Amazon scored 71% and Apple 78%.
Deborah Eastman, Satmetrix’s CMO summed up the results of their study by saying
“Best-in-class companies are those that put in the processes to continuously listen to, learn from, and take immediate action on whatever their customers tell them about performance”
– a statement we entirely agree with.
At Surveylab we have been using Net Promoter as a performance measure for over four years. Our clients often find it scary to start with particularly when the NPS© score is initially considerably lower than the traditional ‘percentage’ satisfaction score. But once the initial panic of moving to a lower result is overcome, the benefits of this tighter measure are soon understood and used to drive improvement.
One client of ours started with an NPS of 56.5% in 2006 and is now regularly scoring in the 70%’s (an average of 73.8% over the last 12 months). Used to measure a number of external contractors, regular reporting, including Ranking and ‘Customer-at-Risk’ reports are used to provide monthly feedback including a range of diagnostic scores and verbatim comments. The customer at risk report, in particular, flags all detractors (those scoring six or less out of ten) triggering detailed investigation into the reasons for low scores.
The standard Net Promoter approach is to ask only one question – Based on your experience how likely are you to recommend ABC Co? Whilst we believe it is important to have one clear measure to use as an index, we find linking this index to a tight range of diagnostic questions and at least one qualitative response (verbatim comment) helps us to provide sufficient information to identify issues and drive improvement. We also believe this methodology works as well for workplace / employee surveys as it does for customer loyalty and satisfaction studies.
For further information and to download a selection of articles and white papers, please visit Surveylab’s resources page or give us a call to discuss our approach to customer and employee loyalty measurement.
John Kemp
John: Nice post. I wanted to address an assertion I think is flawed, however. You stat that, “The standard Net Promoter approach is to ask only one question.” That’s simply not true.
No good Net Promoter approach stops with a simple score. The open-ended follow up (some version of “why?”) is crucial for turning a customer’s raw assessment into something actionable.
Just wanted to make sure no one comes away thinking that Reichheld, Bain or anyone else associated with Net Promoter has ever really advocated ONLY asking the “likelihood to recommend” question.