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The popularity of Net Promoter Score is staggering. We see it used constantly in both B2C and B2B surveys. Its utter simplicity is extremely attractive to managers sick of the overly complex reports they are used to getting from the market research industry. But that is fodder for another article. There are also a lot of voices pointing out that it can be dangerous to rely too much on this one metric. That too is for another article.
What I want to talk about is the impact of culture on NPS. I started thinking about it when a long-time client of ours in the Netherlands was acquired by an American company. The American company placed great importance on NPS even basing bonuses on it. The American company was surprised at what a low NPS score the Dutch Company was getting. The score wasn’t low, it was just above 0 which in NPS terms is actually neutral.
What was going on here? Well it had nothing to do with the quality of the service of our Dutch client. It had to do with ‘scoring’ nature of the Dutch respondents versus American respondents. When Americans are asked to rate something on a scale of 0 to 10 they give more extreme responses as compared to their European counterparts.
This scoring bias is deeply engrained in the cultural differences between Europe and the US. American children are expected to get all A’s, even in high school. In Europe where tests are graded on a scale of 0 to 10, students can almost never get a ten. A teacher of my daughter once said that an 8 is great, a 9 is for geniuses and 10, well only God can get a 10. In Belgian colleges, around 70% is considered cum laude and around 80% magna cum laude.
When European respondents, growing up in such a school system, are confronted with a classic NPS scale of 0 to 10, they will – if extremely satisfied – give an 8 (a compliment in their mind). I see plenty of surveys conducted in Europe based on some American template where these respondents are then asked “What can we do to get a 9 or 10?” They inevitably respond with “Nothing, I love your company!” or “Nothing, it was the best service I ever had.”
In classic NPS scoring, the 8 from these respondents has no weight! They are ignored. That is why so many European companies have neutral NPS scores. What I propose is a European Net Promoter Score variant where an 8 also counts as a promoter and 6 as passive.
If I apply this NPS-EU scoring to various client EU companies of ours, I get scores much closer to their respective American industry benchmarks!
Using the NPS-EU, would allow American companies to realistically compare their NPS scores with those across the pond. It would also give European managers a more accurate and usable instrument.
In the future, it could be fine-tuned even further. Once there is enough data from different European countries, a weight or factor could be applied to scores based on the cultural response bias in each country.
What do we do in the meanwhile? Well, our advice to our clients is not to worry about industry NPS benchmarks. Start measuring NPS now yourself and use your score as your own benchmark and base. Then start tracking it through time. Use key-driver analysis to find out which factors affect your score. Take action and repeat. Don’t ask everyone at once. Spread it out and ask a small panel once a month. That way you shorten the cycle between measurement and action and back to measurement again.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.
“Net Promoter” is a registered trademark of Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company and Satmetrix.
I think managers are often too much concentrating in getting more promotors than eleminating detractors. If you decrease the detractors the NPS is going to grow – even if the customers give an passive feedback (7 or 8).
My opinion is: Focussing on the detractors to get them up (perfectly to promotors, but good if they become passive too) is a good alternative strategy.
Good point! I agree that eliminating detractors is vital. As we all know, someone with a bad customer experience is much more likely to share it. Since it now so easy to share with your closest 500.000 friends, detractors can seriously affect your public perception.
I think there is some truth in this blog. We have the same kind of experience with our customers all over Europe. An 8 is often considered excellent by customers. When asking them why they score only an 8, people are often offended and reply that nobody is perfect and that 10 is an impossible score because it equals perfection, and nobody’s perfect as we all know.
However, I think benchmarking is more important than lowering the promoter and passive score. As explained in the book, scores can often vary in certain regions. There is a danger in comparing regions, because cultural differences are often a huge influencer. Part of the solution is benchmarking locally and comparing local scores. Try to get your score up in your country or region and strive to become the top NPS company in your area.
To be honest, I think that creating continent focused NPS approaches is a waste of your valuable time. You lose out on benchmarking, industry comparisons, global standards etc.
It is better to accept the standard approach and understand and educate others that scores can vary by culture. This means that some scores will always be lower than others.
Passives do carry weight – and any organisation that ignores them should change their approach and focus on them as well as their Detractors and Promoters. Just because the percentage of Passives is not used in the score calculation, does not mean that they are not important.
My last point – and another reason why creating a European NPS score would be irrelevant is due to the fact that you are still grouping too many cultural differences together. People from Southern Europe are far more likely to give much higher scores than people in Northern Europe – particularly Netherlands, Belgium, Finland etc. And the younger/emerging markets in Europe – such as Turkey, Russia, Georgia etc – give extremely high scores. A European NPS would not provide an answer to this.