How and why the Net Promoter approach motivates front line employees

Most executives who hear about the Net Promoter system conclude that the reason it works is because it creates a clear outcome metric to which we can hold front line employees, supervisors, managers and executives accountable.  In fact, some of the NPS early adopters, most notably GE, focused most of their early efforts on creating a score, setting goals, and linking compensation and incentives to achieving goals for improving that score.

Daniel Pink, the author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Amazon listing), references academic research that calls into question the model of behavior at work that relies on a simple "carrot and stick" approach to motivation. First, he shows that the typical reward-and-punish approach often fails to produce the required results, and often produces lower levels of achievement than no incentives at all.  Then he shows that a very different approach works much better.  This approach is highly consistent with the fundamental principles of the Net Promoter system, and may explain some of why it works so well in so many companies.

Pink reports on a simple and compelling model for motivating achievement in complex tasks (such as, say, figuring out how to really wow a customer in a service interaction).  It is built on three elements:

• Autonomy: People want to have control over their work.
• Mastery: People want to get better at what they do. 
• Purpose: People want to be part of something that is bigger than they are.

How does the Net Promoter approach support an environment in which employees can experience all three elements of Pink's system? 

• Autonomy
  • By clarifying and simplifying the fundamental objectives of all service interactions, all product development, all policies, processes, etc. -- creating more profitable Promoters and fewer Detractors (or unprofitable customers of any type) -- the Net Promoter system gives simple, clear guidance that can be used as a touchstone for all decision-making deep into the organization
  • This enables managers and supervisors to allow more authority to meet the objectives, within simple guidelines that anyone can follow.  "Do whatever you can to create a Promoter out of that customer, as long as it is profitable and meets our legal/ethical/values standards"
• Mastery
  • Fast-cycle feedback -- often fewer than 24 hours pass between a customer experience and the time the feedback makes its way to the employees in question -- allows employees using Net Promoter are able to learn and adapt their behavior quickly. They can see the results of changes they make very soon after they make them
  • Clear outcomes indications -- the simple and clear likelihood to recommend along with verbatim comments and a supervisor's description of a follow-up call -- provide actionable, tangible recommendations for improvement
  • Group learning -- the processes of sharing commonly-encountered issues or success stories, along with group problem-solving -- enables faster identification of best practices and more creative problem solving
  • Purpose-driven coaching -- the ability of supervisors to sit down with employees and review significant volumes of individual customer feedback, using the customers' own words and comparing to peers -- provides the sort of learning support that accelerates mastery
  • Simple scoring allows employees to see their own progress over time and to compare against peer groups
• Purpose
  • Loyalty leaders using the Net Promoter system successfully tend to use a common practice: they use Net Promoter to reinforce the fundamental mission of the company
  • Chick-fil-A, Philips, American Express and other companies successfully using NPS to drive improvement have leaned on it to help employees understand that when a customer is wiling to recommend your company or its products -- even mundane ones like chicken sandwiches, light bulbs or credit cards -- to friends and family members, they are putting their own reputation at risk on your behalf
  • Therefore, in these companies, it is clear that achieving this level of customer advocacy requires treating customers with honor, respect, and dignity.  Creating a Promoter out of a customer is evidence that you have made their life a little bit better. And doing that many times a day helps make the world a little bit nicer place.

Those who oversimplify the Net Promoter system down to just measuring and reporting a score rely on a model of customer and employee motivation that is incomplete, at best.  Building a culture of customer advocacy requires building deep motivation and engagement among your employees, and NPS can be one important tool in the employee engagement toolkit.

Comments

[Andrew]

Hi Rob,

Interested in your thoughts on passing all feedback directly back to frontline employees. Is it best practise to automatically pass all customer feedback to the employees who served the customer. I know you have spoken about cool iPhone apps that give feedback in realtime, do you think there is any danger of passing negative feedback back to the frontline without a manager putting it into the appropriate context? Also what happens if a customer is a detractor because of a policy or product and not the actual customer interaction - Do you think this will demotivate the frontline (e.g. "It's not within my control")?

Thanks,

Andrew

[Rob Markey]

Andrew:
Excellent questions that have given me an idea for my next post! Stay tuned.
Rob