Since the birth of the Net Promoter Score in 2006, the NPS has become one of the most popular key performance indicators to measure how customer centric your organization is. The NPS does not simply measure customer satisfaction, it measures customer enthusiasm to a level that these so-called Promoters act as an external ‘word-of-mouth’ driven marketing machine for your organization. The NPS is one simple question: “How likely are you to recommend this product or service to your friends and acquaintances?”, measured on a scale from 0-10. I call the NPS “the dopamine of customer experience”: dopamine is a neurotransmitter that belongs to the reward system of the brain. It causes us to feel rewarded with a shot of delight on top. NPS is all about the excitement we feel after we purchased this fantastic e-bike or have seen a fantastic series on Netflix and want to tell our friends about the excellent choice we have made. NPS works at its full potential for products and services with a high social currency (i.e. using it tells people something about who I am) and with system 1/fast thinking purchase behavior. Examples are the movie you see in the movie theatre or the series you see on Netflix, events, specialty FMCG, …
NPS reflects the pleasure level your customers experience when using your product or service. Life is not about pleasure alone. Pleasure is the cherry on top of a happy life, and that’s where trust comes in.
Trust is the oxytocin of customer experience. Oxytocin is the happiness hormone. Trust reflects how your product or service contributes to the happiness of your target group. Trust is related to ‘purpose’: what would your customers miss if your product or service did not exist? How does the product or service really elevate the life of the target group? The furniture manufacturer Leolux contributes to a better planet with its high quality, long-lasting contemporary furniture, taking into account people and the planet. Especially products and services with a relatively rational purchase process and low social currency benefit more from using Trust as key performance indicator, at least alongside NPS. Examples are energy providers, telco providers, tyres, leasing companies, banks and insurance companies. Especially banks and insurance are good examples: the reason the traditional banks stand ground against tech giants who launch financial services is not their high NPS. It is the invisible level of TRUST people have in their regular bank. Focusing on NPS alone would risk to leave a blind spot on what really drives your customers loyalty: trust! Trust builds up over years, with ‘blind trust’ as the ultimate level you can reach. However, you can also ruin it much quicker that you built it up, with just a couple of negative customer experiences. The solution: measure, manage and monitor trust alongside your Csat or NPS metrics.
Trust and NPS are complementary indicators to capture the quality of relationships your organization is creating with its customer base. Depending on which sector or category your company operates, measuring only one of the two means that you miss half of the story. At DataSynergy, we support our customers to create the best research design to make sure you measure the full customer experience, with the right KPI’s and the most insightful diagnostics. Want to know more? Drop us a message and it may be the start of a new CX relationship.
