NPS and Culture Change

Over the years, NPS has grown from a metric used by key executives to an overall program that defines the culture of a business. While the metric itself is highly valuable, the real impact comes from the change in culture brought about when everyone focuses on the same goal of delighting customers.

Certain elements must be in place to successfully weave NPS into company culture. The most important is executive leadership. Employees must hear consistently that the company executive leaders are the sponsors of the NPS program. Leadership must be vocal and visible in reviewing NPS scores and working with management to craft strategies that improve scores.

The individual or team responsible for running the NPS program companywide must report directly to a C-level individual. This structure is critical. If the individual running the program does not report to the C-level, the program has a much lower chance of creating success and value for the company. This individual should be the executive "face" of the overall program.

Executives must also communicate that a commitment to implementing NPS is a journey and not a singular event. When initially gathering feedback, a company may find negative trends that point to a specific part of the customer experience as delivered by a particular department or team. Executives need to work in a proactive and positive manner to address these problems while not damaging the morale of this team. In fact, it's likely that individuals from this department or team already have great ideas for improvements but did not have an open communication channel for them.

Even though being transparent about customer experience feedback through an NPS program can result in uncomfortable conversations internally - the overall experience of fixing these problems serves as a great team builder. A more mature NPS program allows all departments and individuals to be rowing in the same direction, speaking the same language about customer experiences and celebrating successes together as a large team.

A successful business will quickly find by embedding NPS in the company culture that it changes the way it attracts and hires new employees. Attributes such as collaboration, innovation and a customer service mindset will become much more important. Additionally, new hire orientation becomes the perfect opportunity to train new employees on the NPS program culture. A company at this stage of adoption will know it is far along the path to creating a customer obsessed company culture.

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