Hundreds of companies say they are using Net Promoter Scores. Fred Reichheld, Bain and Company Fellow and author of The Ultimate Question, showed a page full of the logos of companies that have publicly talked about using NPS. "This thing has really taken off," he said. "But I don't think all of them are really using it in the way we intended. I hope you will use NPS in a responsible way, one that makes us all proud. And I hope you will push some of these other companies to do so, too."
Reichheld then introduced the two men who inspired the Net Promoter, the founders of Enterprise Rent-a-Car and Chick-fil-A. The latter, Truett Cathy, inspired Fred by pointing out the biblical proverb that a good name is worth more than gold. He set his company on a mission to make the lives of everyone they touch a little better. The Net Promoter approach, said Reichheld, is about inspiring employees to make customers' lives better.
Chick-fil-A invests a lot in delivering good chicken sandwiches. That shouldn't surprise anyone. What is remarkable about them is how much they invest in creating relationships with customers. Chick-fil-A differentiates itself more on the quality of the experience they provide, and achieves this through careful hiring, extensive training and the development of a culture that runs through the whole company and is focused on "intelligent kindness." At Chick-fil-A, the frugal wows include positioning staff outside during the lunch rush to take orders in person from motorists in line for the drive-through, speeding up the line's progression and creating a more personal service experience.
JetBlue is one of the most successful airlines in the US and has a real focus on creating Promoters - not just among its customers, but also out of its employees. A source of frugal wows for JetBlue occurs when pilots leave the cockpit to greet passengers, or joins in with the rest of the flight crew to clean the plane after a flight. The company earns such high levels of customer and employee loyalty that it can sustain lower customer acquisition costs and lower employee turnover. American Express creates frugal wows by picking just a few key experiences that matter a lot to their best customers and differentiating around those.
Rackspace has organized its account teams to focus on individual customer relationships. A Rackspace conference attendee told of the frugal wow when a customer has a baby. The account team sends along a tiny bib that proclaims the baby a future Racker. Other attendees told of several other frugal wows from their own or other companies.
Apple Retail's mission is to "enrich lives." When the iPad launched to great fanfare, they quickly ran out of of them. Customers had to wait for several days for them to arrive from backorder. So Apple Store employees started helping iPad buyers get started working with their new purchase right in the store. They help unpack it from the box, start it up, get it registered and then demonstrate how to download some relevant apps the customer will probably like (based on some questions asked of the customer). Another frugal wow.
Reichheld laid out what he is working on next - a series of books - and then introduced the next speaker, David Speakman, the CEO of Traveller Counsellors.
For Fred's description of Frugal Wows, you can see his blog post on the topic at Netpromoter.com.