Tag Archives: Net Promoter Score

The Iconic Culture Creating Entrepreneur

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We entrepreneurs live in a time where differentiation can be the determining factor between success and failure. As such, we are constantly looking for that silver bullet that elevates our product or service above the competition. Yet in our quest for this elusive competitive edge, we encounter a myriad of challenges involving everything under the sun. Often, we have people issues – we struggle to find and retain qualified talent, or there may be low performance. Perhaps we endure periods where it just doesn’t seem that we can do anything right for our customers. Bottom line – entrepreneurship isn’t for the faint of heart.

There is a differentiating factor that offers a nearly 100% guarantee of success – but is frequently overlooked by entrepreneurs. This differentiator is an iconic entrepreneurial culture. Well duh, you may be thinking. How could this possibly be overlooked? The reason is the fact that it takes a long time to build an iconic entrepreneurial culture. And we live in a society of instant gratification. The key is to start right now with this process. By taking positive steps every single day, we eventually will realize this objective.

So exactly what does an iconic entrepreneurial culture look like? It starts with a clear vision for the enterprise. Where are we going and what does it look like when we get there? This vision should be inspirational and easy to communicate. Then we must get the right people on the bus. We recruit and hire folks that share our dream and are committed to taking the necessary steps to achieve it. This is where many attempts to build a culture fall flat. We’re in a tight economy and acquiring talent is extremely difficult. Settling for a warm body (because we’re desperate) may be detrimental to the culture we are building.

Our team members need well-defined written roles and accountabilities. Without them, chaos ensues, and many things fall between the cracks. Team members also need the proper training as well as the resources necessary to accomplish that for which they are responsible. I’ve written many times about our Why – that is, why we do what we do. Simon Sinek has identified the nine Whys – one of which makes each of us tick. When we can match the roles and accountabilities of our team members with their respective Whys, we’re well on our way to keeping them challenged and engaged. Team members want to feel valued and appreciated, so we do this in a genuine and authentic manner whenever possible. We express gratitude for the contributions made by our team, and we recognize individuals for their achievements.

Incentive compensation tied to performance can be a strong motivator. Of equal importance is ensuring that each team member understands the importance of his role in the overall march toward reaching the vision. And team members need to be shown a path for their growth. This may involve opportunities for education, mentorship, and career advancement.

Developing core values for the organization is another crucial steppingstone along the cultural path. Once established, advocate them, and live them every single day. It goes without saying that core values are meaningless unless leaders model them consistently. In our company, we’ve heard from many new hires that the reason they joined was because it was obvious that we put our core values into practice.

An iconic entrepreneurial culture nurtures an environment of collaboration. Leaders work to obtain buy-in for decisions involving the team. It’s an environment that encourages experimentation and creativity. We promote the notion of a “laboratory mindset” for mistakes. In other words, when mistakes occur, they are analyzed for what can be learned as opposed to being used as a reason to criticize and bludgeon.

An iconic entrepreneurial culture is positive and optimistic. Fear is eliminated and conflict is handled in an open and forthright manner. Team members are honest with each other and avoid triangulation. They celebrate together and cry together. Systems and processes support strategic thinking – but avoid becoming bureaucratic. Staying nimble is the eternal mantra. Finally, the entire team subscribes to a customer-centric ideology that worships at the altar of the Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Creating an iconic entrepreneurial culture is difficult and time consuming . . . but it is possible. And once it has been achieved, it becomes one of the most powerful differentiators there is.

This blog is being written in tandem with my book, “An Entrepreneur’s Words to Live By,” available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle (My Book), as well as being available in all of the other major eBook formats.

The NPS Entrepreneur

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Every entrepreneur understands how critical it is to take care of the customer – that’s old hat. We know that unhappy customers will cause our businesses to suffer. This fact has been magnified by social media and how a few damaging reviews can really cause severe and long-term problems. If your organization is like ours, you regularly send out customer satisfaction surveys. Much time is spent parsing the verbiage and trying to determine exactly the right questions to ask. All this is fine and good – we need to ask several questions to better understand who our customers really are and what they prefer. But how do we get an overall handle on exactly what our customers think about us and our product(s)? Enter the NPS.

OK, you are probably wondering what NPS means. It stands for Net Promoter Score and is a tool that measures customer loyalty. The Net Promoter Score was developed in 2003 by Fred Reichheld, the private equity firm Bain and Company and Satmetrix (and is also a registered trademark of these individuals and companies). It is based upon the theory that our customers are either detractors or promoters. A detractor is unhappy to the point that they can drive away other customers. Promoters do just the opposite. The NPS is calculated based upon the response of a single question, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this company’s product or service to a friend or a colleague?” The numerical answers to this question become an index ranging from -100 to +100. A raw score of six or less puts the respondent in the Detractor category. Passives are those who give a score of seven or eight. And Promoters give a score of nine or ten. The NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of Detractor respondents from the percentage of Promoter respondents (Passives are disregarded). Generally, an NPS of +50 or greater is considered outstanding.

In January 2018, our companies implemented the NPS. It’s fascinating how focused we have become on trying to move the number. Incentive compensation plans can be tailored to include the NPS – especially for team members who are able to greatly influence customer satisfaction. What we’ve learned is how very important it is to have as large a survey response as possible. Sending out 500 surveys and generating 15 responses that lead to an NPS of +60 may be very misleading. Smart companies have figured out techniques to boost the number of responses including drawings for prizes and continuous follow-up with the customer until a response is rendered.

For the NPS to be most effective, customers need to be identified when responding to a survey. This does present a bit of a dilemma as some customers are reluctant to share their true feelings when a survey is not anonymous. But the value of being able to follow-up and resolve issues that may have been encountered by the customer is well worth the extra effort to solicit responses for non-anonymous surveys. The goal is to ultimately convert Detractors and Passives into Promoters.

Hundreds of large companies including Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Citigroup, Best Buy, Sony, GE, Apple, American Express, Four Seasons Hotels and AT&T are using the NPS. A large percentage of entrepreneurs with whom I’ve spoken are unfamiliar with NPS. Having a universal methodology to measure customer satisfaction and enable “closing the loop” with the customer does not have to be limited to the big boys in the business world. And software is available that can help take the NPS question from survey results and calculate a running score.

This is a new journey for us and we’re still working to get “buy-in” from all our team members. One of the advantages of NPS implementation is that everyone can see the difference they make – positive or negative – with customer satisfaction. If the product is defective, the bathroom in the store is dirty, or the service is sloppy – all can show up in the survey results. The “weak link” in the chain may drag down the score from nine or ten to a six. We expect accountability from peer pressure will improve over the next few months and years.

Our customers are the lifeblood of our businesses. We can become more precise at measuring their satisfaction with our products and services by utilizing the Net Promoter Score.

This blog is being written in tandem with my book, “An Entrepreneur’s Words to Live By,” available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle (My Book), as well as being available in all of the other major eBook formats.

The NPS and You

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Every entrepreneur understands how critical it is to take care of the customer – that’s old hat. We know that unhappy customers will cause our businesses to suffer. This fact has been magnified by social media and how a few damaging reviews can really cause severe and long-term problems. If your organization is like ours, you are regularly sending out customer satisfaction surveys. Much time is spent parsing the verbiage and trying to determine exactly the right questions to ask. All this is fine and good – we need to ask a number of questions to better understand who our customers really are and what they prefer. But how do we get an overall handle on exactly what our customers think about us and our product(s)? Enter the NPS.

OK, you are probably wondering what NPS means. It stands for Net Promoter Score and is a tool that measures customer loyalty. The Net Promoter Score was developed in 2003 by Fred Reichheld, the private equity firm Bain and Company and Satmetrix (and is also a registered trademark of these individuals and companies). It is based upon the theory that our customers are either detractors or promoters. A detractor is someone who is unhappy to the point that they can drive away other customers. Promoters do just the opposite. The NPS is calculated based upon the response of a single question, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this company’s product or service to a friend or a colleague?” The numerical answers to this question become an index ranging from -100 to +100. A raw score of six or less puts the respondent in the Detractor category. Passives are those who give a score of seven or eight. And Promoters give a score of nine or ten. The NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of Detractor respondents from the percentage of Promoter respondents (Passives are disregarded). Generally, an NPS of +50 or greater is considered outstanding. 

In January 2018, our companies implemented the NPS. It’s fascinating how focused we have become on trying to move the number. Incentive compensation plans can be tailored to include the NPS – especially for team members who are in a position to greatly influence customer satisfaction. What we’ve learned is how very important it is to have as large a survey response as possible. Sending out 500 surveys and generating 15 responses that lead to an NPS of +60 may be very misleading. Smart companies have figured out techniques to boost the number of responses including drawings for prizes and continuous follow-up with the customer until a response is rendered.

For the NPS to be most effective, customers need to be identified when responding to a survey. This does present a bit of a dilemma as some customers are reluctant to share their true feelings when a survey is not anonymous. But the value of being able to follow-up and resolve issues that may have been encountered by the customer is well worth the extra effort to solicit responses for non-anonymous surveys. The goal is to ultimately convert Detractors and Passives into Promoters.

Hundreds of large companies including Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Citigroup, Best Buy, Sony, GE, Apple, American Express, Four Seasons Hotels and AT&T are using the NPS. A large percentage of entrepreneurs with whom I’ve spoken are unfamiliar with NPS. Having a universal methodology to measure customer satisfaction and enable “closing the loop” with the customer does not have to be limited to the big boys in the business world. And, software is available that can help take the NPS question from survey results and calculate a running score.

This is a new journey for us and we’re still working to get “buy-in” from all of our team members. One of the advantages of NPS implementation is that everyone can see the difference they make – positive or negative – with customer satisfaction. If the product is defective; the bathroom in the store is dirty, or the service is sloppy – all can show up in the survey results. The “weak link” in the chain may drag down the score from nine or ten to a six. We expect accountability from peer pressure will improve over the next few months and years.

Our customers are the lifeblood of our businesses. We can become more precise at measuring their satisfaction with our products and services by utilizing the Net Promoter Score.

You can also listen to a weekly audio podcast of my blog. What you hear will be different than what you read in this blog. Subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also click on this link –

This blog is being written in tandem with my book, “An Entrepreneur’s Words to Live By,” available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle (My Book), as well as being available in all of the other major eBook formats.