Satmetrix Press Release
Customer Loyalty Professionals Exchange Best Practices at Inaugural Net Promoter® Conference
Sell-out Audience Explores Strategies for Closing the Gap between Executive Vision of Customer-Centricity and Front-Line Action
FOSTER CITY, Calif., — February 1, 2007 — The inaugural Net Promoter Conference concluded today following an intensive one-and-a-half day program on practical approaches for improving customer loyalty with the Net Promoter® Discipline. The conference was attended by 250 business leaders responsible for improving customer loyalty and revenue growth in business-to-business and consumer companies. Guest speakers included executives from leading firms using Net Promoter including Experian, GE Healthcare, Intuit, T-Mobile International, Aggreko Plc, Archstone-Smith, and Filene Research Institute, a think tank for the credit union industry.
Interest in Net Promoter as an overall measure of customer loyalty has grown rapidly since the publication of “The Ultimate Question,” the most recent best-selling book by business loyalty expert and Bain Fellow, Fred Reichheld. Conference sponsor, Satmetrix Systems, Inc. co-developed the Net Promoter metric with Mr. Reichheld, and has been actively involved in educating business markets on the use of Net Promoter and helping companies implement it within their operations.
“Our recent research on loyalty best practices has shown a gap between the vision executives articulate for loyalty initiatives and the reality of how successful companies are at driving operational changes and action at the front lines,” said Dr. Laura Brooks, co-developer of Net Promoter and vice president of methodology and consulting at Satmetrix. “Net Promoter offers a solution to this gap, allowing organizations to rally around a powerful and straightforward score that links to customer loyalty and growth. But achieving results requires a disciplined approach that drives customer focus throughout the organization.”
Conference sponsor Satmetrix laid out a framework for the Net Promoter Discipline, encompassing four key elements:
- a strong executive foundation linked to the company’s business strategy;
- organizational alignment with the executive vision;
- a system infrastructure for collecting, analyzing, and distributing customer feedback within the organization;
- process integration to drive closed-loop action at the front line and align operational metrics and incentives.
The opening keynote from Laura DeSoto, senior vice president at Experian, highlighted the results that can be achieved when Net Promoter is used as part of a comprehensive program to drive customer-focus throughout the organization.
“A few years ago, we began to implement a company-wide initiative called 'The Client Promise.' As part of this, we began to track our Net Promoter scores,” said DeSoto. “In the past six quarters, Experian’s Net Promoter score has doubled and at the same time we have seen double-digit growth. We feel there is a correlation between our Client Promise initiative, our increase in customer loyalty and our revenue growth.”
Loyalty experts and academics also shared their experience and recent research on subjects related to customer loyalty and Net Promoter. The conference concluded with a fireside chat between Fred Reichheld and Ralph Oliva of Penn State University. Reichheld described his personal journey in developing Net Promoter, and answered questions from Oliva and the audience about how companies can succeed with Net Promoter and how he sees it impacting business in the future.
For more information about Net Promoter and for blog entries about conference presentations and discussions: www.netpromoter.com.
About Satmetrix
Satmetrix Systems is the leading global provider of on-demand software applications and consulting services to measurably improve customer loyalty. The company’s solutions support enterprise-level deployments to gather trustworthy data on customer experience, derive actionable insights, and integrate this information into the daily work flow of employees throughout the organization. Satmetrix co-developed the Net Promoter® customer loyalty metric with Fred Reichheld, noted loyalty expert and Bain Fellow. The company has deployed more than 700 enterprise solutions in 40 languages. For more information visit www.satmetrix.com, or call 1-650-227-8300 in the US or +44 (0) 845 371 1040 in the UK and Europe.