Customer Confidential: Untold Stories of Earned Growth

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 pod...

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 arm...

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 c...

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 S...

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 c...

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 : T...

  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 soc...

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 Universit...

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...

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 me...

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 s...

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....

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 identif...

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-F...

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 th...

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 rig...

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 loya...

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.