Whether they’re good or bad, there’s definite value in showing our NPS^® numbers.

Little Rock Service Manager Mark McKinney gets almost 300 emails daily, chief among them CEO juice-driven customer surveys that come in detailing the review of a service technician’s visit. As he examines the calls closed, the customer comments, and the overall recommendation scores, he can begin to narrow down on what he’s looking for — the “big picture” of his department’s customer satisfaction.

When Director of Service Steve Kennemer similarly pours over customer service surveys completed following a service call, he’s looking beyond the numbers … and that often comes through in the open-ended customer comments, where they have free reign to elaborate.

“When you see additional comments on the survey, I feel like that if the customer is taking the extra time to write a comment in that field, that means they were impressed. That’s what I’m looking for, is who’s earning those comments, and what’s special about what that particular technician is doing.”

And then, the good news is shared.

Our Net Promoter Score^® — and the comments, promoters and detractors that come with our surveys— aren’t for us to keep locked away. They’re to be studied, shared, and ultimately used as learning opportunities moving forward.

An employee Net Promoter System makes the people side of the business far more transparent. It supports learning and experimentation. Companies can discover which areas represent liabilities and which offer potential best practices.

And sharing NPS^® with others gives us credence to our claim of Creating Raving Fans^®.

We show it to our own people.

Sharing our NPS^® numbers doesn't just show off our Raving Fans (and the employees who create them) - it decreases customer churn. Both the promoter, and the detractor, are key items to zero in on.

When positive customer comments come through the ClientCONNECT Center in Dallas/Fort Worth, those are immediately emailed out to the technician, their manager, and executives to help pass the word on that Raving Fans are being created.

“These comments prove that they’re proud of the work they do and they are committed to doing what’s best for the company,” Steve said. “We definitely want his or her peers, the management team, and executives to understand these guys are doing something different .. something above and beyond.”

Sharing also occurs when a detractor is found.

“We take every detractor seriously. We definitely look into each one of them individually and immediately. I usually send a supervisor out to look at the machine, find out what’s going on, and talk to the person about where things went wrong,” Mark said.

Steve says, anytime a detractor is discovered, he has a one-on-one meeting with the technician and his/her manager to develop an action plan moving forward.

“One of the highest priority action items I have on my desk is a detractor,” Steve said. “Someone took time to put in writing that they were displeased with the Datamax customer experience. We need to take action.”

We show it to our industry peers.

On the fifth of every month, our collective NPS^® scores for Texas and Arkansas are shared via email among fellow members of the Copier Dealer Association community.

While the number of responses vary from dealer to dealer, it’s a viable glance at where we stand among our peers.

“If we’re going to put the claim out there that we’re one of the best in the industry, let’s put our numbers out there and let other people see it,” Steve says.

We show it to our customers.

Our current NPS^® score is on the top of our eight-page marketing site seller. It’s on our homepage as part of our Datamax Service Response Quadrant. It finds its way dropped into so much of our marketing materials because, frankly, it tells us — and our customers — a lot about where we stand service-wise.

“According to the Harvard Business Review, questions used to obtain measurements of client satisfaction and retention in many industries provide ambiguous indications of client loyalty. To get to the heart of client loyalty, a company can discover the answer with a single question,” our website states.

The question of course: “How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?”

We also get proactive about the survey responses. An automated email workflow has been set up in Hubspot so that when someone scores Datamax a 9 or 10 score on recommending us, we send an email (a letter from the company president) asking if they would be willing to give us a Google review.  A link in the email will direct the customer straight to our Google My Business Page.

These reviews, which have steadily grown since the workflow went live, are valuable assets for today's online buyer. After all, it's not just about showing... it's about growing.

“Since ultimate growth is what we're after, we felt that complex measurements of customer satisfaction and/or retention would be difficult to measure and manage. Based on the NPS^®, all we simply need to know is what our customers tell their friends about us," Vice President of Marketing Robert Caldwell said.