#96 – WSJ article on NPS, Temkin research now free, Journey Mapping, Improved version of original NPS research

The Wall Street Journal writes about NPS. Free Temkin Group research. Welcome to the 96th edition of my customer strategy newsletter. The five topics this week are:

1. WSJ article about NPS
2. Almost all Temkin Group research is now free of charge!
3. Latest blog posts – New series on NPS
4. Notable items from other sites – Journey mapping
5. Looking forward

Wall Street Journal article about the Net Promoter Score

Khadeeja Safdar and Inti Pacheco wrote an article about NPS that appeared last week. It has the rather odd title of The Dubious Management Fad Sweeping Corporate America. (Note that you will not be able to see the full article unless you are a subscriber. Since I had this problem, I chose to subscribe for three months for the equivalent of $1, which I can apparently cancel at any time.)

I was among the people interviewed by one of the two journalists behind the article. I spent about 45 minutes with Khadeeja Safdar on the phone. I also sent her some material about the subjects she raised during the call.

Despite the odd headline (which neither of the two journalists supplied, so I suppose it was written by an editor who did not actually read the article), I found the article quite positive about NPS. There are some relatively trivial inaccuracies.

In her call with me Khadeeja introduced me to the main new subject she brought to the discussion which is the increasing use of unattributed NPS numbers by CEOs in earning calls and annual reports. Mind you, unattributed does not mean they are not correct, just that the methodology has not been described when the numbers are provided. You would hope that they all come from double-blind benchmarking studies, but that is almost certainly not the case.

Personally, I think it is great that more and more top CEOs at least mention customer experience in their calls and messages.

I believe that at least one other point is worth noting. While various people have published papers suggesting that their favorite metric (always one that is a compound metric, therefore more complicated than NPS) has equal ability to predict market share trends, nobody has presented a metric with significantly better predictive ability. Khadeeja mentioned peer-reviewed papers critical of NPS. I have studied every such paper I can find in detail and have found none with any merit. One, for example, included a study of NPS versus revenue in Norwegian retail gas stations from 2000 to 2003, a period when the price of a barrel of oil went down by 30%. And some may know that gas stations in Norway are a state-owned monopoly, so it is not possible to study NPS versus market share.

I hope at least some of you will be able to read the full article. The data on the mentions of NPS in annual reports and earnings calls is quite surprising, at least to me. I learned quite a lot from the article.

Almost all Temkin Group research is now free of charge!

Great news! I have often said that the lack of public domain double-blind NPS benchmarks is a problem. That problem has now been solved. Bruce Temkin just announced that his historic research findings are now available free of charge. I immediately registered and was able to download the full 2018 NPS benchmarks report. It used to cost a minimum of $495.

Temkin Group was acquired by Qualtrics in October 2018. Qualtrics was in turn acquired by SAP in January 2019. Bruce stayed along for the ride and his team is now called the Qualtrics XM Institute.

So, please go over to their website and have a look. You will find the research reports in the lower half of the home page. You can filter on ‘Metrics’ to find NPS benchmarks and loads of other interesting stuff. You must register to be able to download the reports. Enjoy them here.

Our latest blog posts

The posts at the top of this list are the first in a lengthy and deep series about the Net Promoter System. Older posts are still available on the blog page.