The Net Promoter System Podcast – Customer Experience Insights from Loyalty Leaders

Few people are loyal to a body shop. Instead, people find them, literally, by accident: after a fender bender, most customers select a shop from their insurer’s direct repair program. But when Steve Grimshaw, executive chairman of Caliber Collision, first took over as CEO of the body shop company in 2009, he realized that with repair experiences often driving insurer policy renewals and most body shop business coming from insurer referrals, customer satisfaction matters a lot. 

Lori Cobb found her passion in a leadership role at Cummins Inc. that included responsibility for customer experience and insights: “I love solving problems, and I particularly enjoy solving customer problems,” she says. “And customers were hungry to have somebody just listen to what their needs are.” Today, she’s CEO of Mockingbird Ventures and a principal of AIM Advisory Services. In this episode, she shares some of the lessons she learned on her journey into customer centricity.

Darrell Rigby believes passionately that Agile is the future. “I do believe that this is the way that companies will be run going forward." His biggest fear, though, is that "there’s a lot of Agile that’s being done wrong. If we don’t fix that, then Agile is likely to turn into the next management fad.” Coauthor of a new book, Doing Agile Right, Darrell leads Bain & Company's Agile practice. He joined me to discuss how, when done right, Agile creates a culture obsessed with customer satisfaction.

Mark Robinson, president of UPS Capital, the financial services subsidiary of UPS, joins me to discuss how the adoption of the Net Promoter System at UPS Capital was turbocharged by Agile ways of working and how Agile teams were able to radically speed up needed fixes to the customer experience that frontline employee identified in their huddles.

Some customer metrics are so good at predicting customer behavior and the value of a company’s customer base, says the Wharton School’s Peter Fader, that “any sensible investor should be demanding these kinds of metrics. And of course, any sensible executive should be obsessed over these kinds of metrics internally.” In this, the second podcast in our two-part discussion, we talk about how executives can use these same metrics to change the way they look at customer investments.

As a professor of marketing at Wharton, Peter Fader has focused most of his career on analyzing data to predict how customers will behave. He is also cofounder of Theta Equity Partners, which offers customer-based corporate valuation—a way of valuing firms based on the quality of their customer base. His most recent work, in the January/February 2020 issue of Harvard Business Review and cowritten with recent podcast guest Dan McCarthy, is called “How to Value a Company by Analyzing Its Customers.”

To provide perspective on the impact of Covid-19 in South America, Rob talks with Luiza Mattos, a Bain & Company partner based in São Paulo, Brazil. Luiza is one of Bain's customer experience, Net Promoter System and Results Delivery leaders, and she recently researched how consumers in South America have been spending their time since the start of the pandemic. She also discusses the strategies companies in the region are using to make sure their customers and employees feel connected and supported.

Stanley McChrystal, CEO of McChrystal Group, knows how to lead a dispersed team in a crisis. A retired four-star general, he commanded US and International Security Assistance Forces in Afghanistan and was the former commander of the nation's premier military counterterrorism force, the Joint Special Operations Command. He joined the podcast during the Covid-19 crisis to talk about three ways to lead through a crisis: trust, empowered execution and inspiring leadership—all underpinned by connection.

Whether we’ve been deeply, personally affected by this pandemic or are simply trying to get ourselves and our loved ones through it, we’re all sharing a version of the same experience. For customer experience professionals, that’s been a new challenge. My colleague Maureen Burns and I have seen some companies fumble it badly. But many others have tuned into the experience with empathy. They’re creating experiences and offering innovative solutions that are building a deep reservoir of trust and loyalty with customers and employees that will last long after this pandemic is a bad memory. In this episode, Maureen joined me to talk about what it is that customers and employees really need right now, and how the answer varies by company. And I also asked Maureen for her answers to some of the practical questions that Net Promoter practitioners are asking about soliciting customer feedback at a time like this.

A decade ago, when Roger Martin was dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, he called for a shift away from the business world’s focus on maximizing shareholder value to a new era in which value for customers and the value of customers would take primacy. He called it “The Age of Customer Capitalism.” His work had a profound impact on my thinking. Very few leaders have been able to act on his vision, but now, a decade later, the era of customer capitalism that he predicted is finally dawning.

In the second part of our conversation about customer-based corporate valuation, Dan McCarthy of Emory University’s Goizueta Business School and cofounder of Theta Equity Partners explains how investor—and executive—behavior would change if companies had to disclose metrics that revealed the true strength of their customer base, rather than the many accounting disclosures today that actually can mask damage done to customers and customer relationships in pursuit of short-term profits.

Dan McCarthy spends his time figuring out what loyalty is worth to shareholders, and how to measure it. As cofounder of Theta Equity Partners and assistant professor of marketing at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, he and his colleague, Wharton professor Peter Fader, have developed a technique called customer-based corporate valuation that helps shareholders value a company by analyzing how its customers behave. Their approach signals a shift from a “growth at all costs” mindset toward sustainable growth based on the acquisition and retention of profitable customers.

How does a banking group operating in multiple countries accelerate improvements in customer experience, particularly digital improvements, while still meeting the unique needs of individual countries? This was the challenge facing UniCredit, and the topic of my podcast with Francesco Vercesi, UniCredit's head of Agile, practice sharing and customer service. The answer, as his title implies, was to create a centralized Agile process, but with product owners in each country empowered to set their development priorities.

Silos are deeply rooted in human nature. We should stop complaining about them and instead ask: How can we harness the tribal behavior that generates silos to create value for customers? To learn more, I turned to Gillian Tett of the Financial Times. Her book, The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers, explores the role of silos in the financial crisis and in our everyday lives. “Silos exist for the very simple reason that we’re human,” she says.

In this podcast, Raj Sivasubramanian, customer experience insights manager at Airbnb, explains how Airbnb is experimenting with a system that makes it easy for customers to provide video feedback. I admit, I was skeptical. But Raj explains why that often provides longer, more detailed and often richly emotional feedback. More important, he says, when transmitted directly to frontline employees and leaders, that emotion often generates the sort of empathy that inspires and motivates thoughtful action.

Kim Scott's book, Radical Candor, focuses on the role that feedback plays in helping other people succeed and the idea that delivering tough messages to colleagues is important when done right. But, Kim discovered, "an awful lot of people are using Radical Candor as an excuse to act like a garden variety jerk.” In this episode, we talk about the revised edition of her book, which addresses some misconceptions about her ideas. We also listen to one of the funniest examples of radical candor gone wrong, from the HBO series Silicon Valley.

Luis Angel-Lalanne, vice president of customer listening for American Express, explains how his team goes beyond the mechanics of simply providing Net Promoter scores and the drivers behind them. At American Express, that can mean combining Net Promoter data with other operational data and performing an analysis to uncover previously unrealized links that affect customer experience .

Sandy Rogers's efforts to measure customer experience at Enterprise Rent-A-Car were part of the inspiration for the design of the Net Promoter system. Today, Sandy is the global practice leader for loyalty at Franklin Covey and coauthor of Leading Loyalty, but in this podcast, he also describes how he managed to convince the leaders of Enterprise, a large, successful company, to take chances that would wind up changing their fundamental approach to customer service. It started with figuring out how to measure customer experience. Sandy is someone I’ve been learning from for many years, and as usual, speaking with him was both inspiring and educational. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.  

One of the most important, and difficult, roles of any leadership team is to instill in the workforce a culture and sense of purpose. Back in 2014, I did a podcast interview that put this challenge in simple, stark terms that have stayed fresh in my memory. That’s largely thanks to my guest at the time, the inimitable Horst Schulze, co-founder of the Ritz-Carlton hotel group and founder of the Capella Hotel groups. He’s an exceptionally plain-talking common-sense leader who just doesn’t take excuses for poor service. And he believes, passionately, that good service depends not on management, but on inspired employees. 

Horst Schulze is famous for being the visionary co-founder of the Ritz-Carlton and Capella hotel groups. They are two brands that set the bar for luxury service, and yet, Horst will tell you, his vision of luxury depends on employees how share that vision and feel a true sense of purpose to deliver it every day.

Former GE executive Beth Comstock has a long and successful track record of finding stories within a company and using them to create strategies, build entrepreneurial teams and take imaginative risks. The author of the recent book Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity, and the Power of Change, Beth spent nearly three decades at GE. As vice chair of business innovation and, before that, chief marketing officer, she led efforts to accelerate new growth, develop digital and clean-energy initiatives, seed new businesses and build brand value. She was also part of GE’s pioneering efforts to adopt Net Promoter^® and learn how to use it as both a metric and as a vehicle for telling customer stories.

For Francesco Lagutaine, Manulife Asia's chief marketing and experience design officer, Asia is a market of contradictions. On  the one hand, insurance products are relatively new to the region, so simply delivering well and reliably on business basics will still wow customers. On the other hand, customers have enormously high expectations for fast and simple digital services, because they compare them with platforms such as WeChat in China or Go-Jek in Indonesia. In this episode, he talks about how Manulife Asia has begun creating specialized teams to improve customer experiences.

Most of us think about Uber as a true digital disrupter. Yet, there is a very large human side to Uber. When a driver, a rider or “an eater” (someone ordering food through Uber Eats) needs help resolving something that can’t be addressed purely in-app, they contact Community Operations, an organization of some 30,000 people run by Troy Stevenson. In this episode, Troy describes how he helped Uber navigate its rapid growing pains. He also has something many customer-focused executives would envy: vast amounts of real-time customer data, most of it in modern, accessible databases. In this podcast, he shares some of the ways that he makes sure that data gets turned into action, and talks about why that’s both a science and an art.

When veteran leader Amy Cribbs took on the challenge of improving customer experience at Vanguard, the world’s largest mutual fund company, she felt ready for the challenges of adopting new, Agile ways of working. But her experience proved to be full of surprises. A expected, the new cross-functional teams helped Vanguard design better customer experiences and deliver them faster. But there was a lot more. In a previous episode, Amy described how the Agile approach had revealed unexpected insights about what really mattered to customers, which helped the teams design even better customer episodes. As it turns out, the new insights extended well beyond customer needs. The biggest and most rewarding surprise, says Amy, came when she saw individual employees blossom. The unexpected customer insights the Agile approach delivered also reinforced the need for humility when it comes to thinking she understands what customers want. Similarly, she says, she has learned the importance of being a servant leader so she can nurture, not control the new ways of thinking that Agile encouraged on her teams. 

When Vanguard, the customer loyalty leader in its industry, decided it needed to do more to keep pace with rapidly changing client expectations, that meant more than just investing money in client experience or in digital or mobile technologies. It meant shifting to new ways of working that would give Vanguard the flexibility and speed necessary to respond continuously to changes in customer needs. In this episode, Amy Cribbs, who leads Customer Experience for the mutual fund giant, explains how Vanguard began using an Agile, cross-functional approach that made client experience everyone’s ongoing responsibility. 

Andrew Clayton, global head of customer experience at E.ON, talks to Rob about how you inspire an organization to respond to customer feedback, not once or twice, but continuously, with unflagging energy. Since the early 2000s, he has scaled sustainable NPS programs at three major companies, Allianz, Bupa, and now E.ON. He has become an expert at winding that customer feedback loop into the DNA of the company, so that NPS self-replicates, even into new teams and new projects.

Alex Terpstra, head of innovations at ABN AMRO Bank, was born and raised for customer service. His father, a retailer in the Netherlands, never failed to remind young Alex who put food on the family’s table. “Every day on our dinner table we were talking about customers.” On this episode of the Net Promoter System podcast, Alex explains how he helped ABN AMRO to launch radically new services for its customers, even at the risk of a short-term profit hit. The payoff, he says, has been highly lucrative customer relationships that pay dividends far beyond the initial costs.

A recent Wall Street Journal article ran under a catchy headline, “The Dubious Management Fad Sweeping Corporate America.” The dubious management fad, according to the article, is the Net Promoter Score. Of course, the headline bothered me and my podcast guest, Maurice FitzGerald, the former vice president of customer experience at HP. But once we read past the attention-grabbing headline, we agreed with much of what the authors had to say. They provided a sober summary of many ways a company can misinterpret or misuse the Net Promoter Score. In fact, I’d encourage NPS practitioners to ignore the headline and read the article with an eye towards all of the things you shouldn’t do with the score. While NPS has gained tremendous popularity, many companies have cut corners or failed to invest in understanding the benefits of a comprehensive Net Promoter System. The article offers a jumping off point for a deeper conversation about the mistakes and errors that we wish all practitioners of the Net Promoter System would avoid, once and for all.

IBM used to collect customer feedback through longitudinal surveys—until Kathy McGettrick, the vice president of market development and insights at IBM, realized the surveys put all responsibility for creating quality experiences on IBM's sellers and ignored other aspects of the customer experience. So Kathy launched a digital platform that sent client feedback deeper into IBM. Today, some 40,000 IBMers use a client experience management platform that tracks hundreds of thousands of data points.

Razia Richter’s path to the executive suite at Petco took her on a wild, winding tour of the company’s operations and back-office functions, from accounting to inventory analytics to supply chain, to name a few. By the time Razia was put in charge of Petco’s customer experience and the adoption of the Net Promoter System, she had personally busted through just about every organizational silo imaginable. And because she had walked in the shoes of so many of the company’s line leaders, her early days as chief customer officer were marked by surprisingly little of the resistance often encountered when companies adopt the Net Promoter System. Her practical experience guided her to pursue an approach that earned the trust of business leaders and functional teams. Without that trust, many companies fail to achieve the culture change that the Net Promoter System demands. In this podcast, Razia shares just how far you can go when you have executive buy-in from the start.

Loyal listeners may recall my last conversation, with Joshua Rossman, formerly the senior director of global customer loyalty and NPS at eBay. Since that interview, Josh has left eBay and consulted with a variety of companies on using the Net Promoter System to help guide customer experience improvements. Now he's at McAfee, one of the world's largest security technology companies. 

Josh has mastered the art of creating a customer feedback system that supports senior executive goal setting and decision making, while also providing the platform for frontline learning and growth. His approach gets to the very heart of why a customer becomes a promoter or a detractor in the first place. By developing a rich set of qualitative insights and combining it with the quantitative data surrounding NPS, Josh seizes the attention of executives across the organization and draws leaders into a fast-moving feedback loop with the customers.

Kevin Parker is the chairman and CEO of HireVue, a platform for automating job interviews. Hirevue combines video interviews of job applicants with an AI-powered algorithms that can filter for qualifications faster than any HR team. Of course, an algorithm doesn’t evaluate candidates the same way a human could. Like any breakthrough in machine learning, it’s a grab bag of promising signals, emerging from the noise, and, well, noise. As Kevin will tell you, though, the signal-to-noise ratio is falling fast. 

Host Rob Markey and Ignacio 'Nacho' Deschamps, group head of international banking and digital transformation at Scotiabank, discuss the role of the Net Promoter System in culture change. They also explore what Nacho has learned during Net Promoter System journeys at three different banks around the world, including how to survive the wait for results to catch up to investment during year two.

Host Rob Markey talks to Ignacio 'Nacho' Deschamps, Group Head of International Banking and Digital Transformation at Scotiabank, who explains why he has long put customers and technology at the heart of his career in banking and describes how many of Scotiabank’s digital efforts are developed locally and then shared internationally throughout the bank.

This week, on the Net Promoter System Podcast, I’m sharing Part 2 of my interview with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of U.S forces in Afghanistan and head of the Joint Special Operations Command during the Iraq war.

We pick up the conversation where we left off: how a leader, who has successfully built trust among a team of rivals, can then push the organization to change its strategy on a dime.

General Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of U.S forces in Afghanistan and head of the Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq, joins me for part one of a two-part interview. In our discussion, he describes how he forged trust among the military’s most elite fighting units. Today, he shares what he learned with civilian executives, as a co-founder of the McChrystal Group, offering battle-tested advice to leaders in the business world.

When I rent a car, I too often find myself waiting in line for the service desk, wondering why my car wasn’t ready and waiting for me, as promised. 

Now I can test my hypotheses against the real world experience of this week’s guest, Eric Smuda. He led customer experience practices for two different giants of the rental car industry, Avis Budget Group and Hertz. He draws back the black curtain, and reveals what it’s like to deliver a car to a customer, from behind the scenes.

Like fitness or dieting, getting started with the Net Promoter System is easy in some ways. Executives are typically optimistic and excited about their fledgling program, riding the high of their early wins. And then something emerges and threatens that momentum. But like maintaining good health, the companies that stay the course learn to anticipate their customers’ needs, allowing them to deepen relationships and deliver bigger financial results in the long term.

That’s what happened at CA Technologies. In this episode, I continue my conversation with Dayton Semerjian. He guided the enterprise software company through a Net Promoter journey that returned it to growth. In this episode, Dayton discusses the challenges he faced while bringing culture change to CA and how he overcame them.

CA Technologies’ Dayton Semerjian joined me on the podcast in 2016 to discuss his approach to managing the enterprise software company’s customer experience in a rapidly changing industry. At the time, the business-to-business service provider was deep in a Net Promoter journey that would ultimately rebuild its customer relationships and return it to growth.

Fast forward two years and Dayton’s efforts as general manager of global customer success and support not only surpassed senior leaders’ expectations, they made CA an attractive acquisition target. In light of CA’s success, I invited Dayton back on the podcast to reflect on his experience in the first of a two-part interview.

Host Rob Markey talks to Brian Scudamore, the founder and CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, whose rubbish hauling business started as a way to pay for college and grew into an international franchise. Brian discusses how the company’s commitment to customer service helped set it apart from competitors and what it takes to maintain service standards in a growing business.

Big things have been happening at Citizens Financial Group, the New England-based financial services company. After spending 26 years as part of the Royal Bank of Scotland, the company returned to the public market in a 2014 initial offering that raised $3 billion. And the bank has been undergoing a multiyear turnaround effort that has put customers at the center of its business.

In this episode, Rob Markey talks to Beth Johnson, chief marketing officer and head of virtual channels for Citizens Bank. She has been a key player in these efforts since she joined the company in 2013.

Host Rob Markey talks to Bain Partner Gerard du Toit. His team recently asked hundreds of executives if they've adopted 20 of the most popular customer experience tools, and more importantly, whether they're happy with the results. While customer experience tools are not a panacea, they do form an arsenal with which companies can arm themselves to compete. Gerard also discusses the results and other emerging trends in customer experience.

Medical outcomes matter, but they're not the only factor in patient satisfaction. A provider's ability to communicate and express empathy are also critical to the customer experience in healthcare. 

Host Rob Markey welcomes back Maurice FitzGerald, retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implement the System. Rob and Maurice discuss the unique customer experience challenges that healthcare providers and organizations face, and how the Net Promoter System can help.

Host Rob Markey welcomes back Jeanne Bliss, author of the new customer experience book, Would You Do that to Your Mother?

In her book, she argues that companies need to humanize the customer experience to help their employees provide the service that customers want. 

Jeanne also advises senior leaders as founder and president of CustomerBliss, and previously oversaw the customer experience at Land’s End, Microsoft, Coldwell Banker and Allstate.

Follow-up calls offer an opportunity to hear real customers describe, in detail, the things that make them love your company, or not. And they can involve senior executives in learning what it’s like to be an average customer or an average frontline employee—to get out of the mindset of “corporate” and into the world where customers interact with your company every day.

In this episode, Rob Markey continues his conversation with Charlie Herrin, Comcast’s chief customer experience officer, who has been leading Comcast’s multiyear Net Promoter turnaround. He discusses some of the most important drivers of culture change there. 

Cable company executives know they have shaky relationships with many customers. In fact, most have been working to improve their customer experience. And one or two are taking truly radical steps to improve. Comcast, one of the biggest Internet providers in the US, is among those working hardest to earn more trust and loyalty from customers. In this episode, Rob Markey talks to Charlie Herrin, Comcast’s chief customer experience officer. 

USAA, which primarily serves members of the US military and their families, has some of the most loyal customers in business. How does the company do it?

USAA has organized itself around customer episodes—all the steps required to meet a customer’s need—instead of products and services. The company has gone beyond identifying and tracking these crucial moments to assigning leaders to manage and enhance them, using Agile methods to speed change.

Rob Markey recently spoke with Julio Estevez-Breton, USAA's vice president of member and market insights, about the benefits the company is seeing from this radical approach and what it took to get there. 

Rob Markey talks to Charlie Chase, president and CEO of FirstService Brands, which provides property services such as painting, remodeling and storage design through its franchise network. Charlie started as a painting franchise owner in 1982 and went on to start CertaPro Painters, one of the company’s brands. 

FirstService uses the Net Promoter System to collect feedback from not only customers, but also prospects who didn't choose his company's services. This allows FirstService's leaders to identify and address weak service experiences.  

Rob Markey welcomes back Fernando Cadena, director of associate engagement at Elwood Staffing Services, which places 25,000 temporary employees at companies across the country. Fernando has been leading the firm’s Net Promoter efforts, which began six years ago when he first sought feedback from the company’s associates. He has since expanded the company's feedback efforts to its customers. Net Promoter feedback has helped Elwood Staffing improve its customer experience, increase employee retention and build better relationships with the companies it serves. 

Year Up has helped thousands of young adults leave minimum wage jobs and forge meaningful careers. Its one-year program has served almost 20,000 people since 2000, and the vast majority end up in roles at major companies or in college.  

Delivering such strong results requires Year Up to balance the needs of its students, donors and the companies that provide critical support and internships. The organization has been using the Net Promoter System to gauge those relationships to ensure that everyone's needs are met. 

Garrett Warfield, senior director of research and evaluation, and Research and Evaluation Manager Jess Britt say that feedback is simply part of Year Up's culture. In this episode, Rob Markey talks to Garrett and Jess about Net Promoter's role in achieving the organization's mission.  

What do successful leaders have in common? It often comes down to two key traits: passion and perseverance. In other words, they have grit. 

In this episode, Angela Duckworth, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, shares insights from her New York Times best-selling book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. She's also the founder of Character Lab, a nonprofit that works to advance the science of character development.

When companies set out to dramatically improve their customer experience, they have many decisions to make—where to invest, which markets to go after, which touchpoints to enhance. And there are usually many opinions to consider for each choice. 

In this episode, Rob Markey talks to Bain Partner Jason Barro about how companies can use a roadmap to leadership to set priorities and find clarity as they work toward customer centricity. 

Rob Markey talks to Jackson Jeyanayagam, chief marketing officer at Boxed, an online grocery startup that's taking on traditional wholesalers by offering personalized service and convenient delivery. Jackson joined the company in 2016 after overseeing digital marketing at Chipotle Mexican Grill.      

Host Rob Markey talks to Celine Del Genes, vice president, concept to consumer, for Adidas Football. She oversees the sports apparel company’s go-to-market strategy for soccer shoes and gear, managing key decisions about pricing, sales channels and marketing approaches. Celine is also a Net Promoter practitioner and uses the method to gauge customer reaction to company initiatives and product design. She recently brought together social marketing, agile decision-making and Net Promoter feedback in an innovative campaign to promote Adidas' Glitch soccer cleat. 

Rob Markey talks to Bain Partner Jeff Melton, co-leader of Bain Simple & Digital, an approach that helps companies apply digital technology where it matters. Jeff discusses the importance of choosing the right metrics to gauge a customer episode and what happens when companies choose the wrong ones.

Dell has been collecting customer feedback since Michael Dell dropped out of college three decades ago and founded the company. It's part of the company's DNA.

The computer maker began its Net Promoter journey a decade ago when it was trying to connect customer satisfaction with economic outcomes. Now the company has a robust Net Promoter System that informs major projects and innovations.

In this episode, host Rob Markey catches up with Marc Stein, senior vice president of customer experience at Dell. Marc discusses how the company’s comprehensive Net Promoter System has evolved since Dell merged with EMC in 2016.

Rob Markey welcomes Griff and Hunter Jaggard, the brothers behind the FireDisc, a portable propane cooking surface that has become required gear among outdoor enthusiasts. They launched their company in 2010 with a tractor plow disc and an idea inspired by their Texas childhoods, and they have been using Net Promoter to help guide their efforts.

When responding to an angry customer, few words are as effective as "I'm sorry." And yet, it's so hard for some people to apologize sincerely. Why?

In this episode, host Rob Markey welcomes back Maurice FitzGerald, retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implement the System. Together, Rob and Maurice will discuss how behavioral economics can inform companies' interactions with customers and how they use the Net Promoter System.

How does a customer's country of origin affect the feedback they provide about service experiences? Are certain countries home to naturally tough critics? Do people in some countries view rating scales differently?

Cultural differences play a role in Net Promoter feedback, but to a far lesser degree than many practitioners assume. The challenge is to separate cultural issues from real service problems.

In this episode, host Rob Markey welcomes back Maurice FitzGerald, retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implement the System. Together, Rob and Maurice will take on questions about cultural differences that Net Promoter System practitioners often encounter.

Despite companies’ best efforts to engage their teams, more than half of employees say they are uninspired and dissatisfied in their roles, according to Bain research. Only 19% of employees say they’re inspired and satisfied—a huge opportunity for companies that learn to tap their teams’ potential.

We’ve spent the last several years studying companies’ best engagement methods and distilling them into a simple approach that other companies could adopt to get their employees’ best. We call it Net Promoter for People.

In this episode, host Rob Markey welcomes Darci Darnell, who leads Bain’s Customer Strategy and Marketing practice in the Americas and has played a critical role in developing this powerful system.

Building internal support for a fledgling Net Promoter System can be one of the biggest challenges of getting such an effort off the ground. It requires leaders to not only have a strong grasp of loyalty economics and the company's strategy, but the softer skills necessary to inspire and teach employees to do the right thing for customers.

In this episode, host Rob Markey welcomes back Maurice FitzGerald, retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implement the System. Together, Rob and Maurice will discuss how companies can rally their employees around their Net Promoter System efforts.

No industry has escaped the disruption of digital technology. Advertising is no exception.

Ad agencies, which previously thrived in what was once a loyalty-based industry, are now facing new competition as they struggle to hold on to client relationships. Advertising fee structures have also changed, along with customer expectations.

In this episode, host Rob Markey talks to advertising industry expert Michael Farmer, author of Madison Avenue Manslaughter: An Inside View of Fee-Cutting Clients, Profit-Hungry Owners and Declining Ad Agencies. His firm, Farmer & Co., advises advertising agencies on business strategy, giving him a front-row seat to the industry's dramatic shifts. Michael shares his observations of the changing ad industry and lessons for other companies.

Begging customers for strong scores. Only seeking feedback from customers who had positive outcomes. Altering contact information to make dissatisfied customers hard to reach.

When it comes to gaming the Net Promoter System, we've seen it all and one thing is always clear: When employees intentionally undermine a company's efforts to understand customers and improve service, everyone loses.

In this episode, Rob Markey welcome back Maurice FitzGerald, retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implement the System. Together, they discuss ways that companies can discourage employees from sabotaging their feedback efforts.

Airbnb launched 10 years ago when roommates Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia decided to rent out an air mattress on the floor of their San Francisco living room to make a few extra bucks. Now it's a $31 billion hospitality giant that has created a whole new category of lodging.

Airbnb's unique business model, which allows people in more than 190 countries to rent their homes to travelers, requires a high level of trust among not only guests and hosts, but also employees and managers. The company has gone to great lengths to infuse that sense of trust, inside and out.

In this episode, host Rob Markey welcomes Aisling Hassell, global head of customer experience at Airbnb. Aisling joined Airbnb more than three years ago after leading customer experience efforts at Sage, Vodafone and Symantec. She has played a critical role in promoting Airbnb's culture among hosts in the more than 65,000 cities where it operates.

The statistical validity of the Net Promoter Score depends on response rates; the higher the rate, the greater the accuracy. Low response rates can easily undermine a company's Net Promoter System, causing leaders to overlook burgeoning problems or wrongly assume that customers are happy.

In this episode, host Rob Markey and Maurice FitzGerald, retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implement the System, tackle common questions about response rates. 

Learn more: Creating a Reliable Metric

People feel good when they look good—it doesn't take a fashion expert to tell you that. But that feeling compounds when you make it easy for people to access clothing that's unique, fits well and suits the occasion.

That's the Rent the Runway approach. The company launched in 2009 with a mission to help women feel their best by renting them designer clothing and accessories through an innovative subscription model. The service has been a huge hit, allowing the company to earn more than 6 million members and more than $190 million in venture capital.

In this episode, Rent the Runway's CEO and Cofounder Jennifer Hyman discusses the company's disruptive business model and how it built a loyal following in one of the most fickle industries out there.

What does it take to develop meaningful competitive benchmark Net Promoter Scores? What is the relationship between benchmark trends and revenue? What if your company is small or operates in a niche industry with few competitors for comparison?

Competitive benchmark Net Promoter Scores provide an objective and fair basis for comparing your company’s feedback to the feedback your competitors earn. Done right, they can provide the basis for goal setting and prioritization at the highest levels of a company. However, calculating a sound benchmark score can be challenging and complex.

In this episode, Rob Markey welcomes back Maurice FitzGerald, retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implement the System. Together, Rob and Maurice will tackle questions about competitive benchmarking from members of the Net Promoter System Forum on LinkedIn.

Learn more: The Benefits of a Competitive Benchmark Net Promoter Score

What do customers really want when they buy a product? Some benefits are fairly obvious—convenience and quality, for example.

But some customers, even those in business-to-business (B2B) markets, are seeking far more from their purchases—hope, self-actualization and motivation.

Bain Partner Eric Almquist returns to the Net Promoter System Podcast to discuss developments in his Elements of Value framework and how companies are using it. Eric introduced his framework, which draws on themes from psychologist Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs,” last year in Harvard Business Review. In recent months, he has been expanding the framework to consider the specialized needs of companies in B2B markets.

When faced with a scrappy challenger, it's not hard for established brands to lose sight of their core customers, especially if they're in a highly competitive market.

These situations usually arise when an established brand starts to lose market share to a buzzworthy upstart. When that happens, a company's leaders might debate whether they should change course to chase a new competitor or try to reconnect with the brand's base.

Sarah Robb O’Hagan, CEO of the indoor cycling company Flywheel Sports, knows this scenario well. More than five years ago, she helped turn around PepsiCo's multibillion-dollar Gatorade brand when she was president of the sports drink's division. She went on to serve as president of the high-end gym operator Equinox before taking the helm at Flywheel Sports.

Sarah, who's also the author of Extreme You: Step Up, Stand Out, Kick Ass. Repeat, shares her experiences in this episode, including her views on what it takes to connect with customers. 

What if a company wants to adopt the Net Promoter System, but lacks the resources and time to fully implement each aspect of the framework? Is something better than nothing?

In this episode, Rob Markey welcomes back Maurice FitzGerald, the retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implementing the System. Together, Rob and Maurice will tackle this question and others submitted by members of the Net Promoter System Forum on LinkedIn, a group for Net Promoter practitioners that Maurice manages.

The Net Promoter System continues to evolve and improve based on the experience of thousands of companies. Maurice and Rob reverse their roles in this episode, allowing Rob to share the latest thinking on critical Net Promoter issues, such as best practices for questions and tactics for collecting deeper feedback from business-to-business companies.

Telecom executives are under pressure from their customers, shareholders and other stakeholders to become more digital, to exploit the new technologies and opportunities that will enable them to deliver more services and operate more efficiently.

Some companies approach their digital transformation as a series of boxes to be ticked: mobile apps, better web services, more online transactions. But these companies are missing out on an opportunity to reinvent themselves. The most forward-looking executives will take advantage of this pressure not merely to digitalize their companies, but to deliver remarkably better experiences for customers. 

In this episode, host Rob Markey talks to Bain Partner Frederic Debruyne. As head of Bain’s Telecommunications practice in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Fred has been helping companies tap digital technology to radically simplify their customer experience, using Bain’s Simple & Digital approach.

In the old days, shop owners were on a first-name basis with their customers. Of course, the owners cultivated these relationships within their communities for years, allowing for the intimacy that so many companies aspire to today.

It's tough to achieve—top leaders often drift further away from the front lines as a company grows. But technology is changing all that. Now companies are harnessing their customer data to form much deeper relationships at huge scale.

In this short episode, we look at these new opportunities in relationship building and how firms of the future will need to adapt to take advantage of them.

If you're an angry customer, the last thing you want is another generic offer from the company that has raised your ire. These missteps can irreparably damage a relationship.

But companies that know how to collect, analyze and act on customer data will learn to avoid these situations, says my colleague Tom Springer, who leads Bain's Advanced Analytics practice. They'll use that data to calibrate their offers based on a customer's level of advocacy, allowing them to expand relationships with promoters and avoid missteps that might leave detractors feeling exploited.

Most companies have vast amounts of customer data—such as the recency, frequency and value of purchases, as well as the number of service calls—but few are using it to its deepen those relationships. Tom is helping companies harness Big Data in ways we couldn't imagine 10 years ago, creating new opportunities to build loyalty.

Employees who are sincerely happy almost always provide a better customer experience. But what can companies do to make a meaningful difference in how employees feel about their work?

Shawn Achor, The New York Times best-selling author of The Happiness Advantage and Before Happiness, says that companies can do a lot. In fact, sometimes the solutions are as simple as encouraging social interaction and praise.

In this episode, Shawn discusses the connection between happiness and success, and his work with Fortune 100 companies that want to increase employee engagement. 

Long before social media and online surveys, shopkeepers relied on a simple measure of customer sentiment: whether their customers were smiling. 

In this short episode, Fred Reichheld and Rob Markey share the story behind the Net Promoter System's signature smiley face icons, and discuss how one number can become a powerful learning tool for inspiring lasting change. 

Do you shop online differently if the purchase involves clicking buttons vs. dragging an item into cart? Does a product search feel more fulfilling if it forces you to scroll through a vast trove of options? Do your survey responses change if the scale starts on the left or the right? 

These are the questions that Jonathan Levav, associate professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, explores. His research looks at the factors that influence consumers’ choices and judgment, such as biomechanics, context cues and product attributes. 

In this episode, Jonathan discusses his latest research projects and how businesses are increasingly turning to experimental psychology and behavioral economics for answers.     

One of the great philosophers said that a person who sets out to be happy probably won't achieve his goal. On the other hand, if a person sets out to help others and make the world a better place, he will probably end up happy.

The same logic applies to companies that set the vague goal of maximizing shareholder value, according to Roger Martin, former dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. In reality, successful companies create products their customers want and provide exceptional service—and increase shareholder value in the process.

Roger, who's the author of 10 books, including Getting Beyond Better and Playing to Win, and a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, shares his business philosophies in this episode.

By focusing on a single question, the Net Promoter System eliminates unnecessary complexity. Rob Markey and Fred Reichheld, inventor of the Net Promoter Score, explain the origins of the "likelihood to recommend" question. 

Steve Jobs. Charles Schwab. Howard Schultz. They all spotted an unmet customer need and made it their mission to meet it. They also founded iconic companies that started out as disruptors only to struggle as bureaucracy and distraction set in. In each case, it took the founder’s return to get the company back on track. 

It’s a story that will be played out again and again in business. But it doesn’t have to.

According to Bain Partner Chris Zook, these companies have battled the predictable crises of growth. In The Founder’s Mentality, a new book Chris cowrote with Bain's James Allen, Chris talks about how companies can hold on to the spirit of their founders as they grow. No surprise: It requires companies to focus on their customers. He recently joined me on the podcast.

Rob Markey discusses how he became a Net Promoter convert with Fred Reichheld, inventor of the Net Promoter Score.

Millennium Mat has developed a unique culture in which employees make production decisions for their teams and share in the financial benefits of their success. The leaders of these teams are called CEOs and they make all of the hiring and production decisions. Their employees, whom Millennium calls partners, are expected to bring forth their performance-improving ideas.

Companies of all sizes and in all industries could learn a lot from Millennium’s approach, which has propelled its business to almost 40 countries.

In this episode, Millennium Mat’s founder Ian Malpass discusses what it takes to forge a culture that’s truly self-directing and self-correcting.

Large companies live and die by traditional financial forecasts—earnings estimates, sales targets and so forth. After all, it’s how the market measures their value and whether they’re worthy of investment.  

The intense pressures to meet these goals can cause some executives to make short-term cuts that can undermine their long-term strategies. Some would argue that we need new gauges of corporate strength. The Net Promoter Score is a very powerful measure, but so is another: customer lifetime value. This measure helps companies identify their most valuable customers and build those relationships. 

Peter Fader, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, returns to the Net Promoter System Podcast to discuss the importance of measuring customer lifetime value. He recently founded a company called Zodiac that specializes in estimating customer value.  

The Net Promoter System's "outer loop" is used to prioritize and address problems that can't be resolved by individuals or small teams. Rob Markey discusses why a robust, rigorous and transparent "outer loop" is essential to a solid Net Promoter System in this short episode. 

Read more: The Net Promoter System's Outer Loop

A lot of companies find themselves a situation in which their competitors are increasingly adding value to their products, while they’re struggling to figure out which features and services might move the needle with customers. The leaders of these companies aren’t sure what level of service will capture more of their market—or if they should even focus on service.

It's the classic “how to play/where to win” question. Companies can't invest in everything. To succeed, they must distinguish themselves from competitors. Often this means meeting customers' deepest needs—aspirations they might not even be aware of.

Bain Partner Eric Almquist has spent much of his career researching these questions. In this episode, he discusses the 30 elements of value that draw customers most to a product or service. Companies that fulfill more of these needs have customers who are more loyal. 

Does the Net Promoter Score gauge a customer's broader relationship with a company or just the customer's most recent experience? Or both? Who should make follow-up calls to customers?

Rob Markey addresses these questions and more in this episode.

Why does the Net Promoter scale go from zero to 10? Why is passive not the same as neutral? Rob Markey answers these questions and others in this episode.  

Recommended reading: 

• The Benefits of a Competitive Benchmark Net Promoter Score
• Creating a Reliable Metric

The goal of the Net Promoter System is to create a culture that encourages employees to bring energy and creativity to their jobs. 

Developing that kind of culture requires inspiring leaders. We’ve all seen those people who seem born to be leaders. They have an uncanny knack for motivating the people around them. They show gratitude and connect with people in authentic ways.

You might chalk it up to charisma or a rare innate gift. While that might be true, it’s possible that they studied their own behavior and learned how to mobilize the best qualities of their personality.

In this episode, Rob Markey talks to Bain Partner Mark Horwitch, who has been studying what makes a leader inspiring. He says it comes down to 33 qualities. Most of us have some of them, but none of us have all of them. He says that when we know our strengths, we can develop them into true leadership assets.

Learn more: How Leaders Inspire: Cracking the Code

The team huddle is the part of the Net Promoter System that connects the inner loop to the outer loop. Rob Markey discusses why regular get-togethers—often daily or weekly—are a critical element of the system.

Read more: The Net Promoter System's "Huddle": How Employees Come Together to Focus on Customers and Teamwork

It’s a question just about every manager wrestles with: How do I get my employees to do what I want them to do? How do I get them to be more empathetic to customers? To take feedback and make meaningful changes?

Obviously, fair pay is essential, but there’s far more to it. After all, motivating people requires tapping into deep emotional needs for autonomy, purpose and affiliation.

In this episode, Rob Markey talks to Daniel Pink, author of the 2011 best-seller Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. In the book, Daniel breaks down the scientific research on motivation and explains why simple carrot-and-stick approaches rarely result in the behaviors that companies want. 

Recommended reading: Your Best Employees Work for Love, Not Money

The Net Promoter Score is a simple measure, but building a process and culture that results in deep customer relationships can be very complex. In this episode, Rob Markey answers listeners' questions on everything from competitive benchmarks to best practices for following up with customers. 

Do you have a question for Rob? Feel free to tweet your question to @rgmarkey on Twitter or write it in the comments field on any post on the Net Promoter System blog. 

The Net Promoter System has a mechanism called the inner loop that helps employees of all kinds get real-time feedback directly from customers. The feedback is usually positive—most employees do their job pretty well—so people typically become more engaged and enthusiastic. The occasional criticism or complaint about a specific interaction or decision can help individual employees and the organization learn to do their jobs better.

The challenge is to set up the inner loop in the right way, so that it reinforces learning rather than undermining it. 

In this short episode, Rob Markey discusses how the inner loop speeds learning. 

Learn more: The Net Promoter System's "Inner Loop": The Secret to Individual Learning and Connections with Customers

The best companies--loyalty leaders that grow profitably--do things to teach their employees to do their jobs better. In fact, the Net Promoter System was designed to help companies facilitate and accelerate that individual learning. The system's inner loop and huddle play important roles in encouraging feedback and coaching so that employees can serve customers better and contribute to the mission of the organization.

Some people think that developing deep expertise simply requires time and practice, but there's more to it.

Anders Ericsson, coauthor of the new book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, and his team have deconstructed what it takes to become a true expert in a variety of fields. What they've discovered has direct application to any company.

What qualities and experiences make for a successful chief advocacy officer? Not just anyone will do, regardless of how bright and ambitious he or she may seem to be.

The best CAOs aren’t always the people you might think of first, and they aren’t always working in predictable roles. But one thing is for sure: It's important to choose someone who has the respect of the organization's leaders.

In this short episode, Rob Markey discusses some critical considerations for companies that are choosing a CAO.

Learn more: Who Should Run Your Net promoter System?

Ride-hailing companies disrupted the traditional taxi and limo industry by offering unprecedented convenience. But less has been said about the customer experience at these fast-growing companies, which typically allow customers and drivers to rate their interactions. After all, these companies rely on thousands of independent drivers in markets across the country.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Mary Winfield, vice president of customer experience and trust at Lyft. She says that her company strives to create a culture of respect with drivers that empowers them to make authentic connections with passengers. The company does that by offering services that help drivers get paid quickly and resolve problems faster. Mary also makes time in her schedule to interact with customers and drivers. She shares more of Lyft's service philosophies in this episode. 

In this short episode of the Net Promoter System Podcast, Rob Markey explains how a customer advocacy office, or CAO, can be a focal point for learning about—and improving—the customer experience.

A customer advocacy office can serve as the project management office that coordinates product development, marketing and other functional groups in the organization to focus on the customer experience. Net Promoter provides the methodology and the tools; the CAO is the arm of management that puts the methods and tools to work.

Learn more: The Essential Role of the Customer Advocacy Office

Most companies that serve other companies solicit feedback, often in the form of quarterly or semiannual satisfaction surveys.

The Net Promoter System in a B2B setting also solicits feedback from customers. But that’s where the similarity to conventional methodologies ends. This system’s twin goals are to foster customer engagement and build strong client relationships. It isn’t so much a survey method as a means of facilitating relationship-enhancing conversations. It helps sales reps and account managers get involved in solving customers’ problems. It shows marketers and product designers and service engineers ways to make the customer’s experience better. The feedback it provides is continuous: It offers granular insights into what is troubling or delighting any given customer at any given time.

In this short episode of the Net Promoter System Podcast, Rob Markey discusses how the system can facilitate relationship-enhancing conversations.

Learn more: Get Real Feedback from Your B2B Customers

How do you get the best out of employees? Scripted interactions and oppressive rules are never the answer. The best companies hire the right people and set the right expectations, and they trust their employees to use their judgment to make customers happy. When executives step back, employees provide more authentic and empathetic service.  

Former Disney executive Lee Cockerell returns to the podcast to share his tips for striking that balance between loose and tight control. At Disney, Lee ran a operation with tens of thousands of employees who were spread across a huge physical space and ranged across a multitude of operational and service functions. What does it take to create a magical experience on that scale? Strong hires, high expectations and trust.  

If you missed Lee's first interview, you can check it out here: At Disney, the Show Must Go On 

What do you call the space between you and your customer? According to Dayton Semerjian, that's where you'll find the true value of a customer relationship. Dayton is general manager of global customer success and support at the IT services firm CA Technologies. 

CA's customers tend to be large companies, and the decision to buy its software and services is usually made by big groups of people armed with heavy analysis. Customer relationships can be very complex, involving many internal teams that handle sales, implementation and tech support.

It’s not that uncommon for some customers to feel like they've fallen through the cracks in situations like these. In this episode, Dayton shares what it takes to earn promoters in complex client relationships.

Learn more: Do Your B2B Customers Promote Your Business?

Hotels didn’t always give out free toiletries. It wasn’t until the 1970s, when a Four Seasons hotel in London first started offering shampoo in showers that other hotels started following suit. And Four Seasons has been setting high standards for luxury travel—and hospitality in general—ever since.

Barbara Talbott, former chief marketing officer at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, shares how the company grew from a small chain to a global luxury brand during her two decades with the company. She left to start GlenLarkin Advisors in 2009, and now shares her keen sense of customer experience with other companies.

Employees need to see the fundamental connection between the work they do every day and its impact on customers. They must experience firsthand the deep satisfaction of earning their customers’ heartfelt gratitude and loyalty. If they don’t, then their jobs are just jobs—they may do as they’re told, but they won’t bring much energy, enthusiasm or creativity to the workplace.

In this Net Promoter System Podcast short, Rob Markey explains how companies can create an environment where employees bring their best to work every day on behalf of the company.

Learn more: Energetic, Enthusiastic and Creative

To close the loop is not only to let customers know that you have heard their feedback but also to bring the customer’s voice right inside the organization. Employees get a direct line to the people they are serving. They see and hear how they are creating or destroying loyalty and what they can do to improve the customer experience. 

In this short episode, Rob Markey explains why this step is a central element of the Net Promoter System.

Learn more: Closing the Loop

Creating a pilot or prototype is an essential part of designing a robust Net Promoter System. These small-scale efforts allow a company to experiment with the system's essential elements, helping the company to create an effective program it can expand to other parts of the organization. In this Net Promoter System Podcast short, Rob Markey shares some best practices for prototypes.

Learn more: The Value of Prototypes

A number rarely tells the whole story. That's why leading Net Promoter companies ask customers to discuss their experiences in their own words.  

Bain Fellow Fred Reichheld returns to the podcast to talk about the shortcomings of multiple-choice surveys, the power of verbatim feedback and some common customer service myths.  

Some people have a knack for forming genuine human connections whether it's with customers, colleagues or employees. They have a gift for making people feel special. The ability to speak with authenticity and authority might come natural to some people, but it's a skill that can be learned, says Jordan Harbinger, cofounder of The Art of Charm, a program that teaches people how to improve their social skills. Why should this matter to Net Promoter companies? These skills are critical to delighting customers and engaging employees as Jordan explains in this episode.

Recreating the same customer intimacy that an individual shopkeeper can provide is possible for large organizations if they have an operational infrastructure that can foster high-quality interactions on a bigger scale. Rob Markey explains how in this Net Promoter System Podcast short.

In the US, we're used to seeing sale signs that tout 40% discounts. However, consumers in China are more likely to see signs that promote the percentage a customer will have to pay after the price cut. This seemingly subtle shift speaks to the underlying motivations that inform a customer's buying decisions, says Angela Lee, a consumer psychologist and marketing professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. In this episode, Angela discusses how culture and emotions influence brand loyalty and buying choices.

Have you ever found it hard to tell an employee that his work simply wasn't cutting it? Maybe you were afraid of hurting the employee's feelings or creating tension, so you decided not to say anything. Kim Scott, an executive coach and former Google executive, considers these situations missed opportunities for growth. She argues that honest criticism that's shared with sincere concern can empower employees at every level of a company. In this episode, Kim discusses her Radical Candor framework and the power of saying what you think.

It's a scenario that we routinely face: a company starts off using the Net Promoter System with great enthusiasm, gets a number of quick wins and then hits a wall. They inevitably ask themselves: "What are we doing wrong?" My colleague Aaron Cheris, one of the chief architects of Bain's Net Promoter System, gets this question a lot. So he helped craft an assessment tool that allows companies to measure their efforts in a straightforward and quantitative fashion. His premise was simple: find out what Net Promoter leaders are doing and work backward to understand why their results are so stellar. In this episode, Aaron discusses how companies use the assessment tool and what Net Promoter leaders do differently.

Maurice FitzGerald, the recently retired vice president of customer experience for the software business at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, has been happily married for more than 25 years. But one Valentine’s Day, he had an epiphany about why some couples stay together for the long haul and others don’t—and why that knowledge is so critical to improving an organization’s customer experience. Maurice shares those insights and others from his Net Promoter experience at HP Enterprise in this episode.

Under Jack Brennan's leadership, Vanguard became an early adopter of the Net Promoter System. With it, customer loyalty became core to how the investment company operated. Jack pushed employees to ask "Are we doing the best thing for the client?" until the question became second nature to them. The goal was always to keep clients for life and to never take on a client they couldn't keep that long. In this episode of the Net Promoter System Podcast, Jack shares some of the practical lessons he learned from his experience at Vanguard.

VimpelCom is one of the largest telecom companies in the world, but a few years ago the company started facing more competition from a new crop of Internet-based rivals. The company decided to become more serious about its mission to focus on customers, adopting the Net Promoter System to guide its efforts. To gauge its progress, VimpelCom used Bain's Net Promoter System assessment tool to identify weak spots. In this episode, Rob Markey talks to VimpelCom executives Anton Telegin and Natalia Macpherson about what it took for the company to make this cultural shift.

The Net Promoter System is about creating a culture in which companies make better decisions on behalf of their customers. The only way to do that is to get reliable feedback from customers, says Rob Markey in this Net Promoter System Podcast short.

Customers can explain what's bothering them or what they like about a company. But they don't always know the full story behind their own feelings. Rob Markey discusses the importance of digging deeper into customer feedback in this Net Promoter System Podcast short.

Customer feedback has traditionally been used to evaluate performance, not necessarily improve it. The Net Promoter System, however, seeks to empower employees by teaching them the skills they need to generate loyalty and enthusiasm among customers. Rob Markey explains how in this Net Promoter System Podcast short.

Fifty years ago, few people could have guessed some of today's most common habits. Habits like having a mobile phone within arm's reach at all times; checking Facebook or email multiple times an hour, or calling an Uber instead of a cab. All companies dream of inspiring such new and compelling habits in their customers, but few manage to achieve it. Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, shares his theories on what sets these products apart.

The Net Promoter System is simple in concept, but adopting it can be a cataclysmic event for an organization. From asking frontline employees to reach out to customers to asking finance to manage new metrics, turning Net Promoter into tangible results typically requires significant culture change. Bain Partners Andreas Dullweber, Jason Barro and Maureen Burns discuss some of the biggest hurdles they encounter as they help companies build customer-centric cultures.

Earning goodwill among your customers isn't enough to ensure long-term growth. Leaders must also create the conditions that enable and encourage loyal customers to do what they’re inclined to do anyway. They have to offer customers a continuing stream of products or services that stand out from the competition. They have to deliver those goods at the right price, at the right time, through the right channels, using the right messages. And sometimes they have to help customers communicate their experiences to friends, relatives and the world at large, as Rob Markey explains in this Net Promoter System Podcast short.

Customer feedback is pointless if a company doesn't use it to improve the customer experience. To create loyalty, Net Promoter System companies use this input to address individual customers' concerns and inform systemic improvements, explains Rob Markey in this Net Promoter System Podcast short.

Greatness doesn't come just from getting the managerial levers right. It comes from inspiration, from people at every level feeling excited about doing the right thing by customers. That's the objective that underlies a CEO's commitment to focus on customers, to lead by example and to coach others in the organization. In this Net Promoter System Podcast short, Rob Markey discusses why putting loyalty at the heart of a business requires executives to view their jobs in a new light.

Unless you know how much more valuable your top customers are, you are flying blind. It's impossible to know how much to invest in efforts to create and retain more of these customers. In this Net Promoter System Podcast short, Rob Markey explains how companies use the Net Promoter System to understand the needs of their most valuable customers.

If you’re struggling to find pants that fit, the last place you probably turn is the Internet. But men's clothing retailer Bonobos is using customer service, feedback and design to challenge this assumption. On the latest episode, Bonobos Cofounder Andy Dunn shares his philosophy for creating memorable customer experiences both online and in stores.

Mobile phone stores increasingly depend on loyalty economics to drive their businesses. As a result, every customer interaction in one of these stores is vital. It’s a chance to wow a customer with a great experience, or to frustrate them with long waiting times, pushy salespeople or poorly trained technicians. Yet store owners generally struggle to get enough customer feedback to know how their customers’ purchasing experience feels to them, or what needs to be improved. Jimmy Salamanca, who runs six U.S. Cellular stores, discusses how he uses Fosubo, a feedback collection tool that uses text messaging, to gauge the customer experience. Fosubo CEO Misa Chien joins the discussion to explain how the tool works.

Learn more about this episode

Why are so many of the global loyalty leaders run by their founders or their founders’ family members? What do they do that increases their ability to achieve and sustain customer loyalty? James Allen, head of Bain's Strategy practice, has studied successful founder-led companies in great detail. On the podcast, he discusses how companies can preserve what he calls the Founder’s Mentality while they grow into some of the largest firms in the world.

Learn more about this episode

A few years ago, Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith realized that there were 130,000 different versions of Net Promoter surveys in the survey company's system. The Net Promoter Score had become wildly popular among its customers, yet there was little consistency in its application. Ryan saw an opportunity to make it easier for Qualtrics customers to measure their Net Promoter Score. On the podcast, Ryan talks about Qualtrics' history, its Net Promoter tools and how it uses the Net Promoter System to keep the voice of the customer inside the company as it grows.

Learn more about this episode

DonorsChoose founder Charles Best and CMO Katie Bisbee discuss how their nonprofit gives schoolchildren the supplies they need and donors the transparency they want. Learn more about this episode

In this Net Promoter System Podcast short, Rob Markey explains why it's important to create conditions that will help employees succeed before connecting Net Promoter Scores to compensation. Learn more:

• Your best employees work for love, not money
• Converting loyalty into economic advantage

In a previous episode of the Net Promoter System Podcast, we heard how Safelite applied the Net Promoter System and became a "people-powered" and "customer-driven" organization. It started with helping frontline workers change the game so they could build customer loyalty. In our latest discussion, CEO Tom Feeney and senior executives Natalie Crede and Renee Cacchillo explain why it's equally important to reset the priorities of leaders and their views of their own roles. Learn more:

• Leading a Net Promoter System company
• Energetic, enthusiastic and creative employees
• Learn more about this episode

Innovative restaurant companies such as Patxi's Pizza and Tomatina are putting a range of technologies to work to collect Net Promoter feedback from customers. One tool in particular, Thanx, offers restaurants a prepackaged rewards system and an easy way to gauge diner sentiment through a mobile app. Learn more:

• The economics of loyalty
• Closing the loop
• The infrastructure behind a Net Promoter System
• Learn more about this episode

Leading practitioners of the Net Promoter System seek feedback not only from their own customers but also from their competitors' customers. Competitive benchmark Net Promoter Scores provide an objective and fair basis for comparing your company's feedback to the feedback your competitors earn. Done right, they can provide the basis for goal setting and prioritization at the highest levels of a company. Learn more:

• The benefits of a competitive benchmark Net Promoter Score
• The Net Promoter System's "outer loop"
• Net Promoter System: Creating a reliable metric

The LEGO Group nearly went bankrupt a decade ago. It's hard to imagine. The company's return to profitability came from refocusing on its core: the bricks and the people who love to build with them. Conny Kalcher, vice president of marketing and consumer experiences at the LEGO Group, discusses how the company introduced the Net Promoter System and started collecting regular feedback to learn what Lego customers want. Conny says that Net Promoter gave the company a shared language that it could use to evaluate its products and that the system helped the company bring about broader culture change. Teams became more collaborative in working toward the ultimate goal of delighting customers.

E.ON's Olivier Mourrieras, Rene Matthies and Guntram Wurzberg discuss how market shifts prompted the energy provider to change its approach to service (3:45), its use of internal NPS (17:00) and loyalty economics (34:20).

In part two of our conversation with former Telstra CEO David Thodey, he discusses the benefits of regular team huddles (1:48), his approach to evaluating potential investments (10:40) and what he would do differently if he could (16:31).

In the first of a two-part interview, former Telstra CEO David Thodey discusses his decision to put customers first at the Australian telco (2:50), the difference between satisfaction and advocacy (10:50), and his approach to balancing investor expectations (25:50).

Darrell Rigby, head of Bain's Global Innovation practice, discusses what it takes to turn a great idea into an innovation (2:30), the "BothBrain" innovation concept (4:25) and the dangers of multitasking (35:00).

In honor of the podcast's 50th episode, Rob Markey highlights some of his favorite stories and lessons from podcast guests, including former Disney executive Lee Cockerell (2:05), hotelier Horst Schulze (9:53) and JetBlue's Bonny Simi (19:49).

Joshua Rossman, who leads loyalty efforts at eBay, discusses the early challenges the company faced as it adopted the Net Promoter System (2:30), the importance of building trust (13:20) and what it takes to become customer-centric (38:45).

Leela Srinivasan of restaurant reservation service OpenTable discusses the challenges of running a restaurant (8:10), shares key lessons from Net Promoter feedback (12:20) and talks about the company's mobile payment app (23:21).

Bain's Fred Reichheld returns to the podcast to share his early experiences with team huddles (1:50), the ways that companies use them to connect employees to the larger business mission (7:45), and tips to make them more effective (31:55).

Jeanne Bliss, who pioneered the role of chief customer officer, discusses the dangers of reactionary behavior (3:00), the traits of an effective chief customer officer (15:30) and the companies she admires (23:50).

Bonny Simi, vice president of talent at JetBlue, shares the airline's approach to inspiring employees (8:00), encouraging teamwork (10:45) and creating a culture that puts customers first (23:05).

Ann Goggins Gregory and Mark Andrews of Habitat for Humanity discuss their efforts to pilot the Net Promoter System with volunteers (9:27), the surprising clarity that open-ended questions can provide (16:00) and the complexities that come with running a major nonprofit (30:00).

Birchbox cofounder Hayley Barna discusses how the beauty e-commerce company got its start (3:02), how it rigorously tracks customer buying behavior (14:36) and its decision to open physical stores (27:46).

Telecom executive John Dwyer discusses the benefits of the Net Promoter System's outer loop process (13:45), the company's approach to delighting mobile customers (16:10) and its strategies for supporting frontline employees (27:09).

Former Disney executive Lee Cockerell shares what it takes to maintain high-quality service at the company's theme parks and resorts (4:52), anticipate customers' needs (16:41) and spread that signature Disney magic (26:52).

Alan Balmer and Fernando Cadena of Elwood Staffing discuss how they use Net Promoter to improve conditions for employees in temporary placements (18:34), build lasting relationships (35:28) and improve the staffing experience for clients (42:43).

Dave Gilboa, cofounder of the eyewear company Warby Parker, discusses his mission to change the way consumers buy glasses (5:20), the decision to open physical stores (18:56) and how the company uses Net Promoter to maintain a strong customer experience (32:11).

Bain Fellow Fred Reichheld discusses the risks of tying Net Promoter Scores to compensation (4:00), the consequences of gaming a feedback system (11:33) and what it takes to get to the true root cause of a complaint (17:49).

Jim Clark of the Steamboat Springs Chamber Resort Association and Rob Perlman of the Steamboat Ski and Resort Corporation discuss when led them to gauge visitor sentiment across their town (6:40), what they learned (12:10) and how they're improving the tourist experience (21:26).

Harry's cofounder Andy Katz-Mayfield discusses what inspired him to enter the razor market (4:40), his company's personal approach to customer service (21:23) and the challenges of building a customer-centric culture at a growing company (32:07).

Bain Fellow Fred Reichheld discusses the Net Promoter System's inner loop mechanism for collecting and sharing feedback (9:56), the qualities that make NPS popular worldwide (17:09) and the perils of using mystery shoppers (24:10).

Delighted CEO Caleb Elston discusses his company's Net Promoter origins (3:29), its minimalist approach to feedback (9:00) and how its clients use its software to understand customers (39:21).

Safelite AutoGlass CEO Tom Feeney discusses what it takes to make car repairs less painful (12:23), teach customer-centric behaviors to staff (18:14) and inspire cultural change (30:23).

Bain Partner Michael Mankins discusses what it takes to truly engage employees (8:59), tactics for managing star players (20:50) and the importance of inspirational leadership (26:17).

Gautam Mahtani of Customer Feedback Systems LP, along with Phil Fegan and Sarah Cooper of HealthCare Partners of Nevada, discuss their strategies for collecting patient feedback (4:24), addressing the unique needs of healthcare providers (29:28) and organizational changes designed to improve care (33:26).

Jennifer Cunningham of Cornell University and Linda Reed of Stanford discuss the crucial role of college alumni (16:33), how they use Net Promoter System to build loyalty (25:30) and their strategies for following up with detractors (46:59).

Satmetrix CEO Richard Owen discusses his company's approach to customer experience management (3:50), the use of social media as a feedback tool (22:30) and the future of surveys (29:10).

Omar Hashem, chief customer officer of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, discusses his role as a customer advocate (9:35), the challenges he encounters (14:08) and the Net Promoter System's impact on his company (31:08).

Andrew MacPherson of the UK National Health Service talks about the organization's Friends and Family Test (15:12), the challenges of measuring customer service in healthcare (17:36) and what's next for its Net Promoter program (46:34).

Lori Cobb and Dave Crompton, executives at the engine maker Cummins, discuss their Net Promoter System efforts (11:40), the complexities of B2B markets (15:09) and what it takes to forge an outwardly focused culture (32:54).

Howard Behar, who spent almost two decades at Starbucks, discusses the importance of letting employees be themselves (9:41) and encouraging creativity (14:35), and the origins of the Frappuccino (27:47).

Chad Keck of Promoter.io discusses his experience with the Net Promoter System (4:02), his goals to simplify feedback collection (16:11) and what's next for his company (46:40).

Bain Fellow Fred Reichheld returns to the podcast to discuss the employee engagement tool he's developing (3:44), the power of teams (14:45) and the state of surveys (22:37).

Peter Fader, co-director of the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania, talks about using data to understand consumers (5:20), become more customer-centric (13:08) and target the most valuable customers (32:22).

Bain & Company Partner Gerard du Toit talks about the struggle banks face in attracting new customers (7:25), the companies that have made the biggest strides in service (23:32), and the importance of digital tools in fostering loyalty (31:14).

Horst Schulze, CEO of Capella Hotel Group and one of the founders of Ritz-Carlton, reflects on what it takes to set a high bar for service (7:34), engage employees (16:02) and earn customers' enduring loyalty (38:31).

Host Rob Markey and Herman Miller's Pam Carpenter talk about the challenges of enacting cultural change (8:31), the benefits of a customer advocacy office (15:56) and the company's process for choosing technology support for its Net Promoter efforts (31:20).

Amy Pressman, co-founder of Medallia, talks about the customer experience company's NPS work (5:46), the unique tactics of customer-centric companies (8:02) and the importance of sharing feedback with front-line employees (16:33).

Pam Carpenter and Michael Ramirez talk about the next steps in Herman Miller's NPS journey (3:16), the challenges of turning feedback into action (15:37) and lessons they've learned (36:35).

Adam Ramshaw, founder of Genroe, talks about common mistakes companies make when they adopt the Net Promoter System (11:28), his views on benchmarking (25:16) and how service companies are looking to manufacturing for new ways to improve performance (40:24).

Herman Miller's Pam Carpenter returns to the podcast to discuss the company's NPS pilot efforts (5:55), its response rates (16:04) and an experiment that's giving the company a window into the customer experience (34:59).

Tony Ezell, vice president of global market research at Eli Lilly & Co., discusses how trust (7:10) and a company's culture (21:22) play a role in developing loyalty, and the dangers of "invisible fence syndrome" (23:00).

Rob Markey talks to Humm CEO Bernard Briggs and Robert Irvine, host of the Food Network's Restaurant: Impossible, about Humm's customer service tools (11:30), the surprising lessons of real-time feedback (15:13) and what's next for the company (41:21).

Rob Markey talks to Ruth Veloria, executive dean of the University of Phoenix School of Business, about the unique challenges of a for-profit college (4:41), how it's using NPS to improve the student experience (7:23) and the benefits of real-time feedback (10:24).

Rob Markey checks back in with Herman Miller's Michael Ramirez and Pam Carpenter about how a small pilot had a big effect (5:06), the challenge of rallying employees to address a single complaint (6:30) and identifying the ROI of doing so (11:30), why middle-management needs those numbers (18:24) and how the economics vary by customer segment (36:00).

Richard Watts, who led the adoption of the Net Promoter System at Progressive, the insurance company, talks with Rob Markey about what led an analytical company to choose such a simple measure (4:22), challenges to adoption (7:44), how NPS became one of the company's key metrics (14:21) and what he would do differently if he had to do it all over again (29:22).

Borge Hald, founder and CEO of Medallia, explains how the company captures a wide variety of customer feedback and shares it with company employees (6:50), how Medallia got its start in the hotel business during a difficult time (8:15), the importance of company cultures that treasure feedback (28:28) and what he thinks the future of customer feedback will look like (41:25).

Mattersight CEO Kelly Conway talks with Rob Markey about algorithms that analyze customer calls in near-real time (5:52), implementing them in call centers (17:18), client success stories (34:17) and matching employees to your customers' predominant personality (38:48).

In part two of Rob's discussion with Linda Verba of TD Bank and Brian Andrews, formerly of Intuit, they talk about what happens in NPS Loyalty Forums and discuss the importance of senior leadership support for NPS initiatives (5:23), loyalty across a broad range of industries in Asia (8:23), the need to selectively tackle NPS opportunities (20:10) and a problem with pasta on a plane (28:30).

Linda Verba of TD Bank and Brian Andrews, formerly of Intuit, discuss the difference between Net Promoter Score and Net Promoter System (11:22), accountability within the system (22:41) and the importance of authentic, human employees (30:34).

Pam Carpenter talks about the office-furniture maker's NPS pilots (2:06), lessons about e-mail surveys (5:05), how to write effective feedback requests (13:28) and how to turn feedback into action (29:22).

Martha King discusses the firm's Net Promoter System journey (6:08), including recent pilots that aim to collect better touchpoint feedback (18:55). She also offers advice to others who are considering adopting the system (47:02).

Gillian Smith explains how the nonprofit uses the Net Promoter System to gauge its impact on schools it serves (10:04) and employee engagement (17:20). She also shares what she wishes she knew before she started using NPS (30:56).

Fred Reichheld talks about the challenges companies face in engaging employees (8:45), the question of linking NPS to compensation (18:05) and how Net Promoter can enhance innovation (30:15).

Michael Ramirez and Pam Carpenter discuss how the office furniture maker approaches customer loyalty (10:35), gathers feedback (16:33) and turns scores into action (31:38).