#104 – My new role, NPS book refreshed, Customer Gauge eBook, KPMG Nunwood, ACSI

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Welcome to the 104th Customer Strategy newsletter. The six topics this week are:

  1. My new role – Editor in Chief – Owen CX
  2. Our NPS book has been refreshed
  3. CustomerGauge eBook on B2B CX and NPS includes a section with me
  4. Latest blog posts – Deep series on NPS ends
  5. Notable items from other sites – I disagree with KPMG Nunwood, ACSI Non-Durables report
  6. Looking forward

My new role – Editor in Chief – Owen CX

As many of you will know, the Net Promoter Score and System trademarks are held by Fred Reichheld, Bain, and Satmetrix (now part of NICE). Richard Owen joined Satmetrix as CEO the same month Fred Reichheld published his HBR paper The One Number You Need To Grow. Bain and Satmetrix worked together on proving the relationship between NPS research responses and actual customer behavior, among many other things. They are co-holders of the trademark of the system, together with Fred Reichheld.

When NICE acquired Satmetrix in 2017, Richard decided not to stay with the new company. He founded a new company, Owen CX Group, focused on B2B customer experience. NICE Satmetrix decided they needed to completely refresh their Net Promoter training and subcontracted the work to Owen CX. The result is the new subscription-based Net Promoter Masterclass.

I first met Richard when I was a speaker at a major Satmetrix event in London a few years ago. (It was held inside the Chelsea Football Club stadium, which was really interesting, and must have been mentally challenging for Richard as a Liverpool native.) We sat together at dinner that evening and got along well.

One of his team called me about six weeks ago to ask me whether I would be interested in doing some freelance work for them, with a particular focus on a newsletter. We continued our discussion and I met Richard when he happened to be in Geneva for a customer visit. We followed this up with two workshops in London three weeks ago. The result is that I have now contracted with them to provide my services as ‘Editor in Chief’ for their content business on a part-time basis. The details should become quite obvious as our new offerings are launched over the coming months.

What this means is that I may not have the time to write as many of my own blogs and newsletters as in the past. I will give priority to the Owen CX work at least until the end of the year.

Our NPS book has been refreshed

The 37-article series on NPS based on our book chapters gave me the opportunity to refresh the content a little. I made a lot of small grammar improvements and updated some information that dated from 2017. If you have the Kindle version it will have been updated automatically. The updated paperback version has been live on Amazon for about a week now.

We are proud of our books and know that a lot of you like them too. As always, the best way you can help us to promote them is to post reviews on Amazon.

CustomerGauge – Advanced B2B strategies nobody talks about

CustomerGauge interviewed five people, including me, to create this free eBook. As their blurb says, “Looking to take your B2B customer experience program to the next level? Struggling to roll out a comprehensive CX plan your company can get behind? In our latest eBook, we asked some of the top CX experts and influencers to discuss how B2B companies they’ve worked with have revolutionized their customer experience.” I have copied the list of experts interviewed below and you can download the whole thing free of charge here.

 

Our latest blog posts

The posts on this list are the final episodes of my extensive and deep series about the Net Promoter System. Older posts are still available on the blog page.

image NPS (37) – Where do I start? – Conclusion and quiz – 37th and final article in a series on the Net Promoter System®

This is the last one in my extensive series based on my interpretation and use of the Net Promoter System in a B2B environment. I provide a good starting point and a little bit of closing advice. Hope you have enjoyed the series.
image NPS (36) – Sustained Leadership Commitment – How to get and keep it – 36th article in a series on the Net Promoter System®

This time the subject is a tricky one: how to get and keep leadership commitment to customer experience improvement work through good times and bad.
image NPS (35) – Sustained Leadership Commitment – Do you have it? – 35th article in a series on the Net Promoter System®

Commitment of senior leaders to customer experience improvement efforts is critical. You may think you already have it, but do you really? Here are some simple checks you can make. I suspect you will be unpleasantly surprised.
image NPS (34) – Employee development opportunities – 34th article in a series on the Net Promoter System®

Providing development opportunities to employees who work on customer experience is important. I cover this and how to make customer experience work an important development opportunity for people in other parts of your company too.
image NPS (33) – Why not ask your employees what your customers want? (ceNPS) – 33rd article in a series on the Net Promoter System®

I want to introduce a new concept this time. I call it ceNPS and explain why your employees may have practical insights about improving customer experience in ways customers might not expect.
image NPS (32) – Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) – 32nd article in a series on the Net Promoter System®

eNPS is a simple and practical way of getting employee input about your company and what they would like to see improved. Far simpler than other employee survey systems! Bain updated the methodology about two years ago and the new questions are covered here.
image NPS (31) – Does employee happiness matter? – 31st article in a series on the Net Promoter System®

Welcome to the 31st article in my series on the Net Promoter Score and System. This time I dig into the question of the relationship between employee and customer satisfaction.…
image NPS (30) – Evaluating text analytics software – 30th article in a series on the Net Promoter System®

This is by far the longest and deepest of the set. It includes an example from a business school student survey. Software is in constant evolution so the functionalities may have evolved. However, the comparison method is still valid today.

Notable customer experience items from other sites

KPMG Nunwood – B2B Customer Experience Report (I disagree strongly)

Some really interesting insights in this report from KPMG Nunwood. Yes, they are of course trying to sell us on their ‘six pillars’ methodology.

I have to say that there is a whole section of the report that is simply wrong. (Note that I am not saying “I disagree with this” or “I think there might possibly be an error.” It is just wrong.) It is the part that shows data that “proves” that the US is doing 8% better than the UK across all six pillars. They go on to show numbers for decision-makers, influencers, and end users across six industries. The US supposedly leads in all six. Not so.

The issue is simple. They have not corrected for the differing ways people from different cultures answer surveys. Here is a graph from our NPS book that shows that difference as measured by something like a hundred thousand double-blind benchmark data points over a number of years for all major B2B enterprise hardware suppliers (servers, storage and networking, mainly):

KPMG Nunwood suggest that the US has B2B customer satisfaction that is about 6% better than that in the UK for ‘Business technology’, which also includes software, PC clients, outsourcing and other items. I suggest that the results either show the opposite or show little or no difference.

OK, so one large section of the report is not correct. Bearing that in mind, the whole thing is indeed worth a read here.

ACSI – ACSI Nondurable Products Report 2018-2019 Download

The American Customer Satisfaction Industry people just published a great report on nondurable products covering all major industries that sell to US consumers. Guess what? Breweries ( = beer) come out on top. I suppose they asked customers at just the right time, and not the morning after 🙂 Unsurprisingly, ISPs and subscription television service providers finish joint last.

The download page is here.

Looking forward

I am happy to say that our books sales trend continues. September sales were also the best for the three Septembers the books have existed, and October is looking good too. Thank you.

As mentioned above, I am pretty deeply into my new projects with Owen CX and that will probably mean somewhat fewer blog posts and newsletters. Let’s see how that goes.

Here are links to all of our books on Amazon.com. Kindle versions are available in all stores. Print versions are available from the major stores only. And as of two weeks ago, you can find the books, or at least order them in many bookstores. If you have already read any of our books, please write reviews on Amazon.

Customer Experience Strategy – Design & Implementation

Net Promoter – Implement the System

Customer-centric Cost Reduction

“So Happy Here”: The Absurdist but Essential Guide to Better Business (Color edition)

“So Happy Here”: The Absurdist but Essential Guide to Better Business (Black & White edition)

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