Can we talk about Net Promoter Scores for a minute?

For years we’ve asked customers over and over: How likely are you to recommend us?

We’ve assumed that if the customer will recommend us, then the following must be true of the customer:
1. They are likely to be more loyal
2. They had a positive experience
3. They are a customer that we want to engage

We’ve used NPS as a proxy score believing that a high score on the likelihood to recommend will lead to increased revenue. The ideal proxy metric does three things:
1. It shows you how to improve your concepts, solutions, operations, and current experiences.
2. It’s able to show that a solution will pay off for the company.
3. It’s designed for you and your company. You are not just comparing your company to other companies. And you understand it and know how to use it.

By itself, Net Promoter does not do 1 and 3 well and hits a plateau on 2. It’s known to
- Create a limited lift
- Drive very specific kinds of innovation
- Work mostly as a service model
- Emphasize functional improvement over other needs
- Be easily gamed

I’ve been working to create a new measurement, one that definitively identifies customer and business impact. If you were creating a new measure of success, what customer metrics would you be most interested in looking at?