NPS: If you can't beat them, join them...

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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.
 

Patrick Brennan

 

Can NPS work in the charity sector? Or should it be left where it is? Why not comment on this article below.

Submitted by Jane Trenaman (not verified) on 23 Aug 2012

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Given the basis of NPS is recommendation, and people tend not to make recommendations for charitable organisations, I don't personally feel that NPS as a metric is not the most appropriate approach for measuring brand perceptions in the non profit sector. A broader question is also whether NPS is a brand metric, or a satisfaction metric...should it be used to guide communications strategies, or for identifying elements of the supporter experience that need improving? If it is more towards the latter, then a transactional NPS approach is more appropriate rather than an overall relationship NPS measure. It will be interesting to see the results of this trial, although an added methodological complication is that NPS is usually based on customers of that brand. With the level of fragmentation amongst charities, it will likely be difficult to achieve adequate sample sizes to report robustly for most charities. NPS requires adeuqate samples of both promoters and detractors to track statistically significant changes over time...which would again lead towards a more transactional approach. Unfortunately, I would query whether there are many charities out there that would have the time or resources to manage a range of transactional surveys across touchpoints or indeed the associated supporter experience programme to drive implementation.

Submitted by Jane Trenaman (not verified) on 23 Aug 2012

Permalink

Given the basis of NPS is recommendation, and people tend not to make recommendations for charitable organisations, I don't personally feel that NPS as a metric is the most appropriate approach for measuring brand perceptions in the non profit sector. A broader question is also whether NPS is a brand metric, or a satisfaction metric...should it be used to guide communications strategies, or for identifying elements of the supporter experience that need improving. If it is more towards the latter, then a transactional NPS approach is more appropriate rather than an overall relationship NPS measure.
It will be interesting to see the results of this trial, although an added methodological complication is that NPS is usually based on customers of that brand. With the level of fragmentation amongst charities, it will likely be difficult to achieve adequate sample sizes to report robustly given that NPS requires adequate samples of both promoters and detractors to track statistically significant changes over time...which would again lead towards a more transactional approach. Unfortunately, I would query whether there are many charities out there that would have the time or resources to manage a range of transactional surveys across touchpoints or indeed the associated supporter experience programme to drive implementation.

Submitted by Keren Burney (not verified) on 14 Mar 2013

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I was interested to see this topic mentioned and would like to keep up-to-date with NPS work in the charity sector.

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