Don’t Choose Your Core Customer Metric Using the “Wisdom of Crowds”
Seni Thomas wrote a thought provoking piece here decrying the current blogging world’s lack of ability to predict things that would be a fancy-tickler. The posting made me think about the crowd mentality that seems to be prevalent in the marketing research industry, particularly related to choosing a Core Customer Metric that 1) is predictive of business results and 2) can be easily communicated to the troops.We continue to receive frantic pleas from clients to explain why or why not the Net Promoter Score might be the metric for them. After talking this poor researcher off the ledge and listening to their business issues, inevitably, this is what is occurring with frequency in American corporations.
The CEO/ CIO/ CMO/ CXO wakes up one lazy Sunday afternoon and reads how GE or Enterprise Rent-A-Car or American Express is using the NPS. This well-meaning executive takes the torn-edged article from the Wall Street Journal, or Marketing News or some other paragon of business wisdom and hands it to someone in the organization, with the instruction to “make this happen.”
On down the slope this goes, until it lands on the desk of the hapless researcher, with the edict, “management wants this.”
The huge sum of money the company is spending against capturing the Voice of the Customer is clearly at stake. The company is already asking the Recommend question, so what might be the harm?
Probably none, since people who work with Customer Experience data know, many of the outcome questions in this work are so multi-correlated that you’re likely capturing the main effect with any one of the numerous outcome questions you’re asking.
But business wisdom has never come from a single book, article or conference presentation. Business wisdom comes from crafting a decent theory about what is true about your business, and testing to see if you are right.
I certainly can’t imagine Finance decisions being made using the “wisdom of crowds.” If shareholders are important enough to do some diligence with the financials, certainly your customers are worth the same effort.
This is certainly not a slam against the idea of Promoters. It is an admonition that your business is too important to shortcut the process of investigating which Core Customer Metric is the best one — one that is both predictive of business results and easily communicated to the rank and file. What do you think?
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