I have assembled here some links related to customer advocacy, the Net Promoter approach, closed loop feedback, vendors, and other materials I have found helpful. Please suggest additional links by sending me a note or adding a comment to the discussion section (you must be logged in).
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Net Promoter-related web sites
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The most active Net Promoter community online, including an active discussion forum, several blogs, and links to the Satmetrix Net Promoter conferences and certification courses
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Website for the Fred Reichheld book that created the NPS movement. Includes links to other articles authored by Fred on related topics.
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Adam Dorrell's blog reporting Net Promoter progress and logging self-reported NPS results he finds in press releases and annual reports
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Articles and blog posts on closed loop feedback
Some of the best articles and blog posts around the web-
Bain capability brief published March 2010. Describes how to use Top-down NPS, using examples and prescriptive advice
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Harvard Business Review, December 2009. Describes the Net Promoter approach to using closed loop feedback to drive culture change and improve results. This is the link to the HBR site, where you can purchase the full article in PDF form or in print.
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Published in Strategy & Leadership, May 2008. Fred Reichheld and I outline some of the keys to success in driving a culture of customer advocacy in your company.
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Sampson Lee, the founder of G-CEM, summarizes a few of his key techniques for achieving customer advocacy. He provides a great piece of data linking NPS to customer satisfaction and brand differentiation from a big consumer study of Starbucks.
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Adam Ramshaw, a principal of customer experience specialist consulting firm Genroe (in Sydney), refutes some of the most frequent criticisms of NPS in a practical and helpful way
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Consultant Wim Rampen shares why he doesn't like NPS. The comments are rich and may be even better than the original blog post
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Jeffrey Henning of researcher VoVici shares his critical views on NPS. This is a fairly balanced way of presenting the criticisms that typically come from the research community
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Another Adam Ramshaw post, this one picking apart one of the sillier academic attacks on NPS by a professor at the Kingston Business School, London. Like several of the other attacks, the one Adam deals with here relies on a false straw man argument.
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Eric Reidenbach and Reginald Goeke of Market Value Solutions summarize techniques for NPS driver analysis and a framework for breaking down NPS into product-market components. Posted on iSixSigma.com, this one is a little academic
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Adam Dorrell gives a nice description of the 1946 Gallup experiment with giving consumers dials so they could register their feedback real-time while watching a speech, a commercial or a movie. A fun look at the history of real-time customer feedback!
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General service providers
Some of the best experts and resources available to help companies create customer advocacy and/or implement the Net Promoter approach to closed loop feedback-
Bain & Company's approach to helping companies develop profitable, sustainable organic growth through customer loyalty
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Satmetrix runs a certification program for people working on Net Promoter and related customer feedback systems. Several companies have certified Net Promoter professionals on staff, and you can find the list here.
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You"ll need to join the LinkedIn "Net Promoter Score (NPS) Forum" to view this, I believe, but it describes several companies' experience with providers in Europe
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Text analytics firms
Finding ways to analyze, categorize and make sense out of reams of open-ended verbatims can seem daunting. B2C companies, especially, often turn to automated tools. Here are a few we've heard about.-
NPS Loyalty Forum members report varied experiences. While one member is highly loyal to Attensity, based on great service, another experienced inadequate support. Some would argue they have superior analytic engines.
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Like Attensity, Clarabridge is focused on text mining. Forum members generally report data/system integration, ease of use and service and support as reasons to be loyal to them.
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Used by one Forum member, Ascribe is a fairly manual verbatim management platform. It provides a lower cost approach to categorizing comments for analysis.
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While I've heard of companies using this, I don't know much about them. Any want to contribute their experience?
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One company we know is happy with the CustVox solution for multi-channel text analysis. They include a speech to text conversion.
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Members of the LinkedIn "Net Promoter Score (NPS) Forum" group seem to be frustrated by this company's lack of response to inquiries (link: http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&gid=66125&discussionID=20316656)
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Dell (and several other companies) use Radian6 to monitor social media mentions and make sense of the cacophony of feedback and comments on the web.
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Articles and blog posts on customer strategy
Customer segmentation, value proposition design, sales and customer acquisition, customer experience, loyalty and other related topics-
Excerpt from a chapter of Winning in Turbulence (2009, HBS Press)
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How to identify the "design target" for your business - Harvard Management Update 2008
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American Banker, May 2007. Bain Partners Doug Stotz and Julie Coffman describe how banks work to drive customer advocacy
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Harvard Management Update, May 2006. Fred Reichheld describes why customer research has traditionally delivered so little value to management teams
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How to achieve true customer-led growth (2005, Bain & Company)
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Customer economics (or, as some call it, Net Promoter Economics)
One of the most important ways to create the right conditions for lasting change is to make sure you have a clear and compelling economic logic supported by facts and analysis. Some resources:-
Ron Shaul of Pursway puts forward a way to segment customers based on their influence over others plus their current purchases and value. This article leaves open the question of HOW to identify who is most influential, but provocative, nonetheless.
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