Customer Excellence: Simple but not Easy (Part 1)

Last Thursday I had the great privilege of attending a national Net Promoter Score (NPS) event around the topic “Development and Retention of Customer Excellence: Simple but not Easy”. It was a full day of great learning and experiencing, of which I will share the first half today and the second half in part 2 next week.

Awe-inspiring automobiles

This event, organised by consulting company N3w Strategy, was held in the enormous and most impressive Louwman Museum in The Hague, which houses the world’s largest private automobile collection. Visitors to the event were treated to a walk through the museum, starting with primitive models dating back as far as 1850, all the way through to the present day, sporting the weirdest and most wonderful automobiles I have ever seen! Even for a non-car-fanatic like me, a visit to this museum is a day out that I would recommend to anyone!

From satisfaction to loyalty

It was this same sense of excellence that characterised the rest of the event. More than 100 customer excellence experts from companies across the Netherlands were gathered and shared one burning question: How do we not only satisfy our customers, but completely win them over to remain loyal promoters of our brand and product?

What is NPS?

NPS is a well-known, short and effective customer loyalty measuring tool. Companies implementing this tool ask their customers after they have bought a product or received a service, what the likelihood is, on a scale from 0 (absolutely not) to 10 (absolutely yes) that they will recommend the company to their friends, family or colleagues. Customers who provide a rating between 9 and 10 are called promoters and are loyal customers who are a source of growth for the company. Customers rating between 7 and 8 are called passives, because although they may be satisfied, they could still easily be swayed by the competition. Customers rating between 0 and 6 are called detractors and are able to damage the company brand through the voicing of their dissatisfaction.

The NPS is then calculated as the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors, expressed as a number between -100 (all detractors) and +100 (all promoters). The more positive the number, the better the score and the more likely it is that the business will grow thanks to loyal and enthusiastic customers. What must never be forgotten, though, is that this measurement is all about the customer and not about the measurement itself. Customer service, ultimately, can never be a numbers game – if it is not about the people, any customer excellence programme is destined to fail.

Top-class presentations

Delegates were treated to top-class presentations by experts from different corners of the corporate sphere. After a warm welcome by event organiser Jan-Willem Willemsen, his colleague Nils Schmeling illustrated the complexity of the customer excellence challenges facing companies today, with the help of a photo by Maroesjka Lavigne. It depicts snow blowing not from one, but from all directions. He emphasised that the embedding of NPS in one’s company is worth investing time, energy and commitment in, including not only anticipating and meeting the customer’s needs and expectations, but also providing room for employees to take ownership of their part, to make decisions and to live and breathe the brand in an authentic way.

The Toyota way

Paul van den Acker, marketing manager at Toyota importer, Louwman and Parqui, then took the stage and shared some of the changes that have taken place in the car buyers’ market over the last decade. In 2000 customers walked from dealer to dealer to compare options and dealers were consulted based on their expertise. Today however customers compare options online and only visit the dealer to confirm the findings of their own research and to make the final purchasing choice. The dealer’s role has therefore changed, but is no less crucial, because it can make or break the customer’s final decision to purchase the vehicle or not.

Toyota’s vision today is to be the most recommended automobile brand in the Netherlands, because it realises the value of retaining customers who are loyal promoters of the brand. Yet it still faces many challenges in translating their respect for and belief in the power of people, from the head office through individual dealers to their end customers. This topic continued to form part of an interactive workshop during the second half of the day, and will be elaborated on in part 2 of this series.

Work as a source of meaning

Prof. Dr. Willem van Rhenen, expert on employee engagement and productivity from advice bureau 365 and Nyenrode Business University, took a step back, considering the meaning of work and to what extent it provides meaning to one’s life. He quoted Hannah Arendt’s distinction between labouring (repeating the same chore day after day after day without visible or motivating effect), working (creating something good and lasting) and acting (feeling free to shape and improve the world). He stated that we all are born with a desire to act, and that it is worth investing in that which gives meaning to individuals so that they produce something great by merely being their best selves.

Unlocking the passion

He further explained that although employee productivity in the Netherlands is statistically high compared to other European countries, employees in the Netherlands are growing increasingly unhappy and unhealthy. Often a solution is offered to immediately stop working, but he considers this to be the wrong way out. Such employees are then encouraged to undergo counselling and make lifestyle changes in order to think and do differently. Although these solutions might have value, at the core of the problem is the question whether they are doing what gives their life meaning. People will expend all their energy and not grow weary if they are doing what they love to do. And the challenge for companies is to discover exactly what that is, by discovering what energises their individual employees. For some, for instance, relatedness leads to passion, whereas for others a sense of competence or autonomy is more important.

Implications for leadership

He concluded by emphasising the value of a transformational style of leadership in order to bring this passion to the fore. Focus is very much retained on the vision of the company, however in the design of the strategy to achieve such vision, employees become owners in expressing their energy resource needs and including it in the strategy in order to enable them to achieve authentic, passion-driven and much more sustainable business results.

Music to my ears

As a believer in the power of a coaching style of leadership, the morning’s presentations were like music to my ears. Each speaker emphasised in one or other way the power of unlocking the enthusiasm and passion of employees in order to win customers over, not because they must, but because they want to and do so from an authentic belief in their company and in their product.

A coaching style of leadership is transformational because:

1.       It delves deep to discover employees’ real motivations and required resources by asking the right questions without losing sight of the vision of the organisation, and

2.       It leaves ownership of decisions, execution and results with employees where it belongs.

More about coaching leadership, and music, next week!