Key takeaways
- Net Promoter Score (NPS), a great tool to measure customer satisfaction and create a user experience that generates higher growth, and it can also be applied to internal interactions between business units to enhance efficiency.
- Most companies simply measure internal efficiency by budget, with a lower budget implying higher efficiency even if it is not the optimal way of driving the business.
- NPS allows fast feedback and allows business units to uncover the root cause of issues.
NPS is not just for customers
I am a big fan of Net Promoter Score (NPS), Bain’s system for looking at promoters and detractors among your customers and leveraging this information to make your company better and grow. I recently came across a post that shows how NPS can also be used internally to improve how people in your company work with each other. The post shows how a robust internal NPS system can alleviate this problem. For those not familiar with NPS , its beauty is in its simplicity. It asks customers (internal or external), on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best), whether they would recommend the product or service. 9 and 10s are considered promoters, 7 and 8s are neutral and the rest are detractors. All are then asked why and companies follow up with detractors to move them up.
While most companies have internal support functions (finance, legal, IT, etc.), it is frequently difficult to measure how well they are performing. We often default at looking at the budget of each function, and measure improvements by lowering costs. This approach, however, does not judge if the unit is providing good value. While most units would welcome feedback, the oft-used system makes them fear any attention as it is likely to result in budget cuts or redundancies.
A robust NPS system can alleviate this issue. Rather than just looking at costs, it can look at every interaction between a business unit and the other parts of the business. It will not only give an overall score but also, by asking why someone gave them a score, understand the issues that internal customers are experiencing. The unit can then launch root-cause analysis to determine the ultimate source of failures, and it could escalate issues that it could not resolve on its own.
The post points out several keys to implementing an internal NPS system successfully:
- Focus on the business unit interactions that are important, no need to measure everything.
- Only survey internal customers intermittingly, do not allow it to become a nuisance or distraction.
- Quickly provide the NPS feedback to the relevant employees.
- Do not hide or degrade the harsh comments, they are very important for improvement.
- Share positive feedback and celebrate the successes.
- Quickly follow up, particularly with any dissatisfaction or problems that NPS helps identify.
- Dig deep, use root cause analysis to find why problems are occurring or recurring.
NPS can help improve your business
A good internal NPS system can help improve your company’s operations as much as NPS helps your company create satisfied customers. With better internal efficiency, you will experienced higher productivity and stronger competitiveness.
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