Satmetrix, the Net Promoter Score co-creators with Fred Reichheld and Bain, distinguish between 2 'types' of NPS initiatives; transactional and relationship.
Relationship NPS (we also call this 'top-down') is the use of NPS that gets most of the attention - and criticism. It measures the likelihood that people will recommend a company/brand/firm to others. It must be related to growth, as are many measures of customer satisfaction and engagement, but a low score simply tells you something is wrong between you and your customers. It does not tell you exactly what you have to do to change the score by fixing the problem.
Nor does it claim to.
That's where transactional NPS comes in - we also call this 'active' or 'bottom-up' NPS.
I believe active NPS has a lot in common with the way manufacturing planners apply the 'theory of contstraints' to production lines.
To optimise the velocity of work through a manufacturing process, planners identify the bottle-neck work centre and load all other workcentres with just enough work to drive the bottleneck at 100% of capacity. This optimises throughput while the capacity constraints at the bottleneck are addressed. This often requires a root cause analysis to determine what the critical constraint is, or the 'key driver' of the throughput challenge, and how to fix it.
Once the constraint is lifted, the process is repeated with the next bottleneck that results.
Active (transactional) NPS works on similar principles in my view.
It involves defining the customer experience 'workcentres' at the transactional level; these have been called 'moments of truth' since the 1980's. Examples are; the return of a hire car, the depositing of a cheque, checking out with a trolley full of groceries etc. The NPS question, asked of a sample of customers as they experience these transaction stages acts as the customer experience equivalent of the Taylor-ite stop watch in manufacturing.
THe NPS question allows you to identify the 'moment of truth' that is currently rated lowest by customers. This, combined with the handfull of other questions, verbatim comments and transaction variables allows you to determine the root cause of the problem at this experience workcentre and to take action to 'remove the constraint'.
Then you re-measure and move to the next lowest customer-rated one.
How do you know if these tactical actions are having an overall impact?
You use relationship NPS to measure the cumulative effect. Or perhaps you can relate it to company growth?
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