📊 One big question—data of the week

Please take 5 seconds to answer next week's question. Multiple choice: What do you find most difficult about Net Promoter?

Here's last week's question:

Promoter activation (aka referrals & upsells) is typically one of the more advanced stages of an experience program.

But, as soon as you receive NPS survey feedback you can begin to work it into your account manager's processes.

In our article, How to Identify Upsell Opportunities with NPS, we recommend (as does Bain & Co) that you look for upsell opportunities by assessing:

• Do they consistently leave high NPS scores? (= Willingness to buy)
• Do they currently represent a small share-of-wallet?
• Do they have a large total addressable revenue?

This framework is one way your experience program can directly influence revenue growth in 2023.

💡 What we’re thinking about for Q1

“You don’t pay the plumber for banging on the pipe. You pay him for knowing where to bang.”

This week, we have a simple message.

In Q1, it’s important to remember that while the goal of your experience program should be this:

1. Revenue rescue
2. Earned growth

These are lagging metrics—the glory of banging on the pipe.

But the leading metrics? The hard graft inputs that create all the glory of success?

That’s where you should focus in Q1:

1. Improve response rates
2. Maximize coverage
3. Close the loop with Detractors
4. Activate Promoters

We could tell you about CX trends and innovations for 2023, but the truth is most companies aren't even sending feedback surveys yet.

And, for those that are, most aren't maximizing the opportunity in front of them.

In this short article, we give some quick tips for improving those leading metrics.

📚 How to Improve NPS in Q1 (Q&A)

Want to improve your NPS score in 2023?

A month ago, we asked the community about their best tips for improving Net Promoter.

Seven responses stood out:

What is your #1 'secret sauce' tip you'd share with someone trying to improve their NPS score?

1. "Don't focus on the score. It's the first and most common mistake to make. Think of it as an outcome, not the goal. The goal is to change behaviors. NPS results will reflect your success in being able to do that. And if it NEVER seems to correlate with financials? Don't beat yourself up. You will still have achieved a huge amount of change even without the evidence that NPS ties to increased profits."—Ben Phillips, Head of Customer Experience Performance at Fujitsu

2. "Follow up quickly and truly listen. Even if you don't agree with the feedback, it is real to the person that left it, so hear them out, and let them know that you want to improve things as a partnership."—Dave Barber, Head of Customer Success at CustomerGauge

3. "Closing the loop is about solving the problem the customer has but also fixing the underlying issues (the root cause of the problems)"—Anonymous

4. "Focus on the number of responses you’re getting and not the score."—Marianne Christensen, Service Operations Specialist at Dun & Bradstreet

5. "Your best ROI Sweet Spots: Where improvement efforts are connected to the most significant Revenue impact for both Customer AND Employee Journeys. Master those."—Roger Nicholas, Sales at CiteUp

6. "Just after the rating, offer your clients some pre-written reasons to be happy or unhappy (drivers), ready to be selected, and start gathering data about it."—Florent Darrault, CMO at Supervan

7. "Make a realistic plan to really 'WOW' your promoters every 3 months and assign a dedicated team to provide honest, authentic attention monthly to every detractor. Always get back to them, even if there is no direct solution to their question."—Charlene Soerodimedjo, MD at Door Advisory

Thank you to these experts for the extra reminder: the score is an outcome of investing in a great experience, it is not the goal itself.

👻 Bonus material

Our amazing content manager, Sabrina Tessitore, came up with this idea for an Account Experience Halloween cartoon for our social media.

Quick reminder: Account Experience is the intersection between experience feedback management, monetization, and account-based methodologies within the B2B business model. Read our white paper on it here.

🎧 What we’re listening to in the office this week

FKJ, Ylang Ylang, Live Sessions: "Vincent Fenton, known professionally as French Kiwi Juice is a French multi-instrumentalist, singer, and musician from the city of Tours."

CustomerGauge provides B2B experience management software to companies in complex industries like CPG, Manufacturing, Logistics, and Technology. Interested in working with us? Just reply to this email.