June 26 2018

Revealing the 4 things that could transform your Net Promoter Score

Insight is a wonderful thing. In the retail sector it has the power to turn customer experience around, boosting satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Scores (NPS) in the process. And this is why, for some years now, Yodel has invested heavily in customer research.

By constantly refining our research processes since we first started collecting customer feedback in 2013, we’ve been able to work out how specific factors impact on net promoter scores. In turn, this has led us to uncover the four elements of delivery that have the greatest impact on overall satisfaction.

As market intelligence goes this is pretty valuable stuff. It tells us where to place our focus, pin-pointing exactly where improvements need to be made if we really want to make a difference. By enhancing services in-line with the four key influencing factors, we’ve seen our own Net Promoter Score rocket and now we’re helping our retail partners to achieve the same.

How we do our research

Our bespoke Have Your Say survey gathers live feedback from customers on their delivery experience from start to finish. This includes the attitude of our staff, the user friendliness of our parcel tracking website and how they would like to see the delivery service improve in the future. The feedback programme has gathered over 5 million reviews since 2013 and more than 5,000 Yodel customers now share feedback through the programme every day

Response to this feedback enabled us to secure a 12 point improvement in our Net Promoter Score in the space of just 12 months – we then took the platform to clients and now share customer reviews with them through dedicated real-time dashboards, bespoke reporting, demographic profiling and guest questions.

Have Your Say measures customer satisfaction with nine specific elements of the delivery process. And now, thanks to the magic of data analysis, we can reveal which four of these possess the biggest influence on your Net Promoter Score.

Introducing The 4 Whats

We’ve discovered that getting the following four things right results in a very strong average NPS score of +88:

•         Delivering the parcel on time
•         Delivering the parcel in a good condition
•         Delivering the parcel with a good attitude
•         Keeping the customer informed about their delivery

On the flip-side, scoring poorly on just one of these criteria has a significant negative impact on NPS.

One 4 All and All 4 One

The 4 Whats provide a fascinating window on customer expectations and we’ve been able to quantify exactly how far dissatisfaction with each element impacts on overall net promoter scores.

o   If the customer is dissatisfied with On Time but satisfied with the other 3 elements, average NPS is -64

o   If the customer is dissatisfied with Condition but satisfied with the other 3 elements, average NPS is -44

o   If the customer is dissatisfied with Attitude but satisfied with the other 3 elements, average NPS is -77

o   If the customer is dissatisfied with Informed but satisfied with the other 3 elements, average NPS is -41

The 4 Whats are all very closely correlated and interact to produce linked results. When scores relating to ‘On Time’ move up or down, for instance, ratings under the ‘Informed’ header go up or down too. This is because customers expect to be proactively contacted if there is a delay with their parcel.

So, it’s imperative to ensure all 4 Whats are satisfied in accordance with customer expectation if we want to drive up Net Promoter Scores. Prioritising one at the expense of the others could easily backfire.

Our journey of discovery into the drivers of NPS is continuing as we seek to constantly enhance and improve our services. And, having arrived at the 4 Whats, we’ve gone on to establish what things Yodel can do and what things retailers can do to improve customer satisfaction in each of the four key areas.

We’re also developing ever-more sophisticated ways of helping retailers to understand and predict their Net Promoter Scores. If we know how to deliver the very best customer experience, we will secure the Net Promoter Scores that go along with it.