I keep hearing about asking the “one question” or using the Net Promoter Score. It sounds pretty great, but how can just one question provide all an organization needs to improve customer loyalty?
The fact is that one number can’t provide all an organization needs either to assess or improve customer loyalty — the greatest appeal of Net Promoter, the simplicity of one number, is as well its greatest downfall. Frederick Reichheld has argued that the net promoter score (NPS), derived from the single survey question (whether customers would recommend a brand to a friend or colleague), provides a superior measure of loyalty — a very good predictor of customer behavior, and correlates strongly with measures of company growth. Not only does this appear to be far too simplistic to be true, but, there is now evidence showing how difficult it is to isolate specific customer-defined weaknesses, let alone put improvement action steps in place, with this one number approach. Methodologically, NPS and its calculation have some serious limitations. The percent top 3 responses minus percent bottom 3 responses on a 10-point recommend scale create issues around: • Lack of precision: scores are
