A Corporate Obsession To Avoid

What I read this morning is alarming.

Corporate America is skating on the edge of prosperity and digging some very deep graves… or at least the CEOs running the corporations are skating on ice right now.

And it has nothing to do with China or Trump.

I was ready last night to dedicate this blog writing to some key insights I gleaned from some campouts in malls across the U.S., but upon reading this morning’s newspapers, I cannot help but shift the focus to something overtaking corporate board rooms. 

Here is the headline of one of the articles…

“Much of Corporate America is obsessed with NPS… a score that has developed a cult-like following.”

A Millennial digital marketing geek that heads up marketing for one our media clients brought the topic up back in 4^th quarter 2018. 

He called me and said he wanted to get the research up and running by the first of the year.

As soon as he used the acronym, I knew we were going to have some spirited discussion.

Not that I am a statistical Phd, but there is no way that EXPERIENCE will ever, ever, ever implement this type of “research.”

There are friends I have in Atlanta, that regularly protest around the Emory Yerkes Primate Institute that conducts medical experiments on apes and monkeys.  They believe that the research violates basic animal rights.

NPS research violates fundamental business missions, Wall Street investments and global economics. 

The CEO of Delta airlines, an Atlanta-based corporation, is quoted in the article saying this… “Our score has averaged 50, up seven points over last year.  This is the reason we’ve sustained the best revenue premium in the industry.”

Now I am not an economic forecaster or accounting expert, but I doubt that the Delta Score is why Delta’s financials are positive. 

At least the CEO is a positive thinker with the perspective that the glass is half full.  Not that I am a naysayer, but just as much as the glass is half full, it’s equally half empty and that might be an area of improvement focus.

So what is this “NPS” that I am talking about?

The cult-followers refer to its acronym – NPS – that stands for Net Promoter Score.  The followers like to refer to is as a “customer satisfaction rating.”

It’s a “like-ability rating” survey question – one question – where customers rate their recent experience on a 1-10 rating scale. 

No further questions are asked.  Just one question. 

In the last week, I have received two NPS survey phone calls.  I even knew that one was forthcoming. 

When I purchased a Jeep Cherokee last week, the salesperson told me I was going to get a single question survey call to rate my experience in purchasing the Jeep. 

He went on to tell me that his sales commission was dependent upon the rating I gave.  He even told me that if I rated the experience any lower than a “10” his commission would be cut to a lower percentage.

The second call I got came in from Target. 

It came in within an hour after I purchased some groceries at a Target just down the street from my Atlanta home.  The refrigerated items had been unpacked, but the non-refrigerated items were still in bags on my kitchen counter when the call came in.

The question was identical to the call that came in from Jeep… “using a scale of 1-to-10 with 10 being excellent and 1 being poor, how would you rate the likeability (I am not making that up) of your most recent Target shopping experience?”

John Mulligan, Target’s COO is quoted in the article saying, “Our most recent net promoter score for Drive-Up is 88.  A crazy high number, the highest of any service we provide.  We expect to have this service rolled out to nearly 1,000 stores by the holiday season.”

Wow. 

One question delivering “a crazy high number” that is going to drive a service roll out to nearly 1,000 stores.

And I guess the COO has the CFO on the same bandwagon. 

The WSJ article goes on to note that “so many of the NPS surveys are sent to customers through Emails, web pop-ups and phone calls, it has become harder to secure a representative response rate.”

The article goes further with “its hard for investors to interpret the scores because companies often administer the surveys internally, get very low response rates, do not publish margins of error and elect to internally adjust the ‘scores’ against cultural bias.”

Okay.

Corporate business leadership that is now making financial investment decisions driven by a single like-ability question are living in la-la-land.

The headline for the article is politically more correct than my commentary with “CEOs Embrace a Dubious Metric.”

The CEOs of Best Buy, American Express, Target, Delta Airlines, UnitedHealth, Google, Intuit and Citigroup are all noted as cult-followers in the article.

Am I a loyal Apple Mac user? 

Yes. 

I have three MacBook Pros and two iPhones.  I have used an Apple computer for more than 25 years now.

Do I “like” Apple and would I give them a “10?”

Absolutely NOT.  Maybe a “5” at best. 

MacBooks cost 5 times more than the corresponding PC.  Microsoft Office still cannot coordinate programs with Apple mechanics.  The staffing at the Apple stores are arrogant.  Apple just got slammed by the Supreme Court for hording the apps. 

Does my “like-ability” of Apple align with my likelihood to purchase another Apple product?

No. 

It’s a love-hate relationship that marriage counselors attempt to correct.

Did I give the Jeep salesperson a “10.”

Yes. 

Am I in a brand love affair with the new Jeep. 

No.

It’s nice, but there are a lot of Jeep components built into the dash and the power limitations of the engine that I do not find very like-able.

LOL… Did the one question ask me to rate the product experience itself? 

No.

We work with a retail client that owns multiple store brands.  I did the mall campouts for this client that I will write about in the next blog post.

The head of consumer insights is a good guy.  But when I asked him how often he gets out in the field and visits the stores and has conversation with customers, he told me in his 11 months on board, he has yet to get out into the field.

CEOs that build their brand kingdoms around comfort and internal mission statements are not likely to be long standing.

If you are just now hitting the EXPERIENCE website and reading this… or you clicked on the Blog link in our Email signature and reading this… and you have concluded that EXPERIENCE is a crazy group of non-MBA, corporate culture, brand endorsers and believe we are not going to generate much return on your investment…

Email me and I will send you the names of some of the firms quoted in the Wall Street Journal article that actually are advocates of the NPS research.  I will also send you the names and contact information for some do-as-the-client-says ad agencies that you will find reinforce your defined brand promotional needs.

If you read this and observe quickly that the brands who are integrating this type of research that is generating “crazy high numbers” are struggling with market maturity and limited growth and you desire to avoid a similar brand situation, call us.

My goal is not to make this blog… nor our client relationships “like-able.” 

My goal is to drive brand growth and bottom line return… to craft brand experiences that customers emotionally desire to seek out beyond rational thought… even when they don’t necessarily fully like the brand!