"...keeping you great" Ten Minutes with the Growth Guy
HEADLINES: (Thursdays, regular Insight; Tuesdays Growth Summit highlights)
Dwight Cooper raises Net Promoter Score (NPS) 12 points -- and Cooper figures it added almost $4 million in net annualized revenue -- details follow including a link to how to compute your NPS. Cooper is co-founder and CEO of Jacksonville, FL-based PPR, one of the world's leading nurse staffing firms.
The Ultimate Question -- NPS is the key Customer Advocacy measure highlighted in Fred Reichheld's latest book "The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth." Reichheld's previous best-seller is "The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value." Reichheld is keynoting our FORTUNE Small Business' "Growth Summit" October 23 -- 24 in Las Vegas. Cooper will also share his real world application of NPS to his growth firm.
The very best score 75 -- notes Cooper "thirteen months ago we benchmarked our NPS. We are very good at customer service and it has been a big reason for our growth over the years so we scored a 60. Great number. I felt we could do better. Reichheld says the very best score 75 or more. We set out to achieve a NPS score of 70 and gave ourselves a year to achieve the goal. Moving 10 percentage points in a year would be extremely difficult. It was our theme for the year."
PPR scores a 72 -- a few weeks ago Cooper conducted a new round of NPS surveys and the results were exciting. They scored a 72! "How has it helped us?" explains Cooper. "We had a 6 basis point increase in nurse retention. This results in an annualized increase in revenue of $3.75mm."
How PPR did it? -- "Let me share with you the things we did to impact our score" noted Cooper in a recent email update:
* We tied compensation to our NPS score. Not just the compensation of our sales people but everyone. BTW, if you do this it is important to build in protection against your sales force trying to influence NPS scores by discussing the surveys with their nurses. For us it was simple. The sales people were not
permitted to discuss it at all under threat of termination.
* We had a compensation piece for internal customer service (how they treat each other) and external (NPS score). My view is that they could not offer world class service consistently unless they were offering that service every day to each other.
* We also:
- Evaluated each employee on customer service quarterly
- Did 8 hours of group customer service training
- Did lots of call coaching on service
- But the best thing we did is going to remain secret to your readers but I will share with you (or Fred) the next time we are together (OK, now we have something to ask Dwight about at the Growth Summit!!!)
How to calculate NPS -- here's a link to a quick guide on how to measure your company's Net Promoter Score (NPS), Bain, the leading consulting firm for which Reichheld works, suggests that companies with the leading NPS in an industry enjoy growth that is typically 2.5 times the average growth rate of the competition.
Read the equivalent of 12 leading business books -- if you don't have time right now to learn or think about all of this, register now for this mini "Think Week" for your team (Bill Gates takes a couple weeks each year to focus and learn) -- "Growth Summit" October 23 -- 24, Las Vegas -- here's a link for more details