In recent years we have come to realize that the customer experience combined with value creation is what delivers an optimal NPS. NPS is important because happy customers spend more and stay longer. They also tell their connections how good you are. Similarly, happy teams of people also results in happy customers. There is much to consider and bring together to make this happen.
Getting this right is not an easy task. Bold investment in technology and operations are needed when you want to offer a great product and service, at a competitive price point that provides a strong point of difference.
Recruiting experienced and passionate people to your business is of vital importance. You need your champions, subject matter experts, and people who will take risks to get a better result and learn from mistakes. You need people who seriously understand that the customer is king.
‘Valuing Every Customer ‘ is a critical mantra at Spotzer which we have embedded across the company over the past few years. Offering a personal touch ensures that the customer feels valued. Understanding their needs, being a trusted adviser, and keeping things simple are all key attributes to focus on. At Spotzer, NPS has been the number one key driver that pushes us forward to get a better result for ourselves and our channel partners.
We were not happy with our own performance and we knew we needed to set global benchmarks for ourselves if we were to be leaders, not followers.
We invested in a leadership team with strong capability, experience, and tenacity. Alongside this, we invested in leadership and management development, front line management training and customer needs training to ensure the messages were aligned at all levels. Simply put, we needed everyone within our business to know that Valuing Every Customer informs everything we do. More importantly, we wanted to make sure that they knew why, and that they shared this core value with us.
At the same time, we trained our teams and developed reporting tools that give us an immediate overview of all elements relating to quality. With the right tools in place, we have enabled our people to get closer to outcomes and to own results. Our people built the tools so they could perform better. They understand what the reporting was telling them, and took immediate corrective steps to continually improve performance and becoming #Oneteam.
After 18 months of relentless change in process re-engineering, technology delivery, training, followed by more training, and then more again, we are now seeing great results. But we want to be even better. We are now addicted to improvements, giving a personal touch, and achieving great NPS.
We put ourselves in the shoes of the salesperson selling our products and services, and then again in the shoes of the customer. We need to make it easy for everyone to understand what we can do to improve their customers lives. We need to deliver great outcomes for customers and partners alike.
It has not been easy. We still look for constant improvements. But now with channels hitting between 40 to 60 NPS points across the globe, we think we are heading in the right direction.
Most of our Telecommunication industry partners are above 55 points. We are particularly proud of this as it’s a customer category that can be very unforgiving. Most of our directory and search partners are above 40 points, some as high as 60 and 80 points with a few below 40 points. Again, this is a challenging and competitive market in which we are committed to constant improvement tactics, where dedication and passion will enable us to continually respond to new challenges and improve. We are aiming for a NPS of 80 across all partner categories over the next 12-18 months. This will require innovation, investment in tech solutions, and of course evolving our training methodology to be best in class globally.
This experience has taught us many things. The single biggest lesson has been that you need to empower your teams to try new things and drive great outcomes. Without that it just becomes ‘all talk, no action’. So you need the trust, you need to be bold and you need everyone involved to be as #Oneteam. Otherwise you only make small incremental improvements, and that’s just not good enough in a fast changing digital world.
What we do know is that a NPS of 40 points is easy to do if you can follow the proven route that allows you to get there. Getting to 60 takes more innovation. Getting to a NPS of 80 will need more process re-engineering. But for all scores to move north, you will absolutely need a #Oneteam approach across all departments and touch points. That means close collaboration, working together as #oneteam, working with the experts in their fields, and coming together. That’s how we get above 60 and shoot for 80.
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