NPS: If you can't beat them, join them...
Talk about customer satisfaction to any colleague or consultant with a corporate background and they will almost certainly tell you about the hold “Net Promoter Score” (NPS) has on the commercial world when it comes to measuring it. It’s a simple enough concept. You ask a sample of consumers whether they would recommend a brand to a friend and minus those who would not (detractors) from all those who would (promoters).
But talk to voluntary sector colleagues and they will probably be skeptical as to its magic and to date have made little attempt to apply the measure in charity-specific research. This stubbornness is not without good reason. Like many other research issues, NPS can’t be as straightforward in the charity sector as the commercial sector, not least because around two thirds of donors generally don't speak to their friends and family about the charities they support.
Asking a typical NPS "would you recommend Brand X to your family or friends" question therefore doesn't feel like a particularly real or meaningful measure if it is not an activity the respondent would naturally do. It might be the case that some people answer no simply because they don't talk about charities, rather than because they are genuine detractors. Whereas for other respondents it may well be a question they are keen to answer yes to (so as not to seem critical of a charity they support), without even realizing they may never actually do so.
Many market researchers and academics also remain unconvinced that NPS is as predictive of loyalty as any other type of satisfaction question and of course it is better to get a range of feedback rather than use NPS as a single killer question.
But we are not writing NPS off completely. If we managed to create a version of NPS that is appropriate for the charity sector and interpreted within a range of other brand engagement measures, the benefits would be tempting. It’s a simple figure easy to ask across audiences and easy to benchmark both over time and against other charities.
So with the help of the Insight Manager of one of our members, we are trialing a version of NPS in our Charity Awareness Monitor – find out your score in the set of CAM results. Then if you want to recommend us to a friend or colleague, go ahead.