Andrew Wiseman looks at NPS and brand recommendation in places where you least expect to find it.
A few months ago, I wrote a blog about the NPS advocacy gap, using current accounts as a test case. If you missed it, you can read it here. You know how these things work – you post them to your website, socialise on LinkedIn and hope someone sees it, or even better engages with it
In this instance, it yielded a WhatsApp message from a client asking me to send them a link to the blog so they could do some live testing in their organisation. Naturally, I thought this was pretty cool, and an opportunity for them to test what the advocacy was in their organisation. How wrong can you be?
It turns out that my mind was acting like a one-tailed t-test – testing only whether there was a gap between claimed and actual recommendation amongst those ranking 9 or 10 on the classic NPS question. What my client actually discovered was yes, this exists, but so too does actual recommendation lurking in the passive data we’re always more likely to spend less time on, because they’re satisfied enough, right?
Including an actual recommendation question in their survey had yielded the surprising result that 27% of their passive customers had actively recommended the company at least once. I went back to my banking current accounts data to conduct the same experiment and found a remarkably similar result – 29% of those scoring 7-8 at the NPS question had recommended their current account in the last 6 months.
Implications of the advocacy surprise
So what are the implications of this advocacy surprise? First off, it shows us that our passives aren’t people to just ignore as ‘non-contributors’ to our NPS scores. Real world behaviour shows that in some cases, they aren’t just neutral, but active promoters. Ignoring the group leaves a rich advocacy seam left untapped.
It’d be so easy at this point to proclaim that ‘NPS is sh*t’. It doesn’t accurately predict the behaviour of either promoters or passives, so likely it also doesn’t predict that of detractors either. But that would be crass – so let’s look at the fuller picture instead:
- As I concluded in my previous blog, measuring intended and actual recommendation is critical in getting a full read on how customers actually feel about you.
- Rethink how you deal with passives. In the past I’ve actually had a client complain that they were paying for 50% of their sample which was useless. This experiment shows there’s massive value to be had by going deeper.
- As always, go beyond the score. What exists in the other data, whether coded or unstructured, which provides more clues about any given customer’s relationship with you?
In short, the advocacy gap remains important, but only tells us half the story.
Of course, unlocking the intent of promoters to act is a great way of driving business growth, but don’t forget those quiet voices who are speaking up on your behalf – the surprise advocates sitting at 7 and 8 on the scale. Remember, advocacy can come from the strangest, most surprising places – and sometimes we just need to flip the t-test around to uncover new insights.
