Page 205 - Social Media Marketing

Having one or more metrics that apply to all divisions, departments, groups, and 183
functions may seem a stretch, but consider this: Everyone who plays a part in creating
the experience that your customers, members, or constituents subsequently talk about ■ ╇ T hree T hings to D o ( and W hy )
is “covered” under a single metric like the Net Promoter Score. Referencing the earlier
sidebar, “Alternatives to the Net Promoter Score,” if NPS isn’t right for your organiza-
tion, develop your own simple, easy-to-understand metric that is. Take a look at Fast
Company’s “Business Advice from Van Halen” (March 2010) for more on the power of
simple, insightful metrics applied to business.

To see this, deconstruct an experience. Suppose you consistently see on Twitter
that the prices charged for your product or service are too high. As a result, some
people—even many people—fail to recommend you highly and unconditionally, and
instead say things like, “If you can afford it…I’d highly recommend them.” On the Net
Promoter Score, that’s about a six, on a good day maybe an eight. Not only do sevens
and eights not count (you throw those out, because the recommendations—like the one
in this case—are weak), the six actually counts against you.

Get Everyone on the Same Page

If there is an emergent reality of social business and “managing” conversations on the
Social Web, it’s this: Social business is bigger than marketing. It is a holistic approach to
organizing a business around its customers—going as far as to integrate its customers
into its formal business processes—and to thereby consistently improve and evolve in
ways that generate customer delight. The big question is, who is responsible for internal
alignment of business processes? The CEO, the COO, and CMO, right? Partly, but not
completely. How about the supply chain manager who is negotiating better prices from
suppliers while failing to maintain quality standards? How about the HR manager who
is vetoing training that would otherwise increase retention and thereby reduce the cost
associated with turnover in your department? How about each and every employee who
leaves a light on or uses two paper towels in the washroom where one would do instead?

This may seem petty—and counting paper towels (or admonishing employees to
only ride the elevator when rising more than two floors…true story) is a bit extreme.
But what it all boils down to is this: Each and every officer, director, employee, and
supplier is potentially responsible for some aspect of the experiences that are associ-
ated with whatever it is that is produced and sold by your firm or organization. The
power of a metric like the Net Promoter Score is that it puts everyone in the business
on the same page of customer accountability. The question to the customer is, “Would
you recommend us?” The customer’s response is based on the sum total of all of the
moving parts that resulted in a particular experience, upon which the likelihood of a
recommendation is predicated.

When the entire organization is looking at a holistic metric like the Net Promoter
Score (or your preferred equivalent), questions get asked that wouldn’t otherwise be