Many companies use some type of metric to measure and evaluate customer loyalty, such as CSAT and CES. For a lot of those businesses, it’s more about chasing an ideal score than building relationships with customers to reach that goal together.

At Genesys, we wanted more structure and a more humanizing process. We also wanted a mechanism to improve overall customer experience with Genesys. So, we adopted the Net Promotor System, also called NPS, a methodology and set of tools around collaboration, culture, improvement and innovation. It gives Genesys a consistent way to track progress on customer-centric improvements—whether it’s long-term strategies that shape the industry or tactical actions to solve current needs.

For several years, we’ve used the NPS methodology to improve our PureEngage solutions. Once we completed the acquisition of Interactive Intelligence, we decided to use NPS to set a baseline for PureCloud and PureConnect, so that one consistent system measures all our solutions.

How the NPS Methodology Works at Genesys

It’s all about feedback. From our semi-annual relationship surveys, transactional surveys, and episode surveys, we discover what you want and need most. Our NPS team looks beyond the score to review customer feedback and uncover high-level trends. We use these to make recommendations for what to focus on. After this initial analysis, the team sets up a workshop with influencers from across Genesys, such as engineering, operations, product management, marketing, finance and legal. We work in a collaborative mode and ask these experts: “Here is a problem facing our customers, what do you think we should do about it?”

An important part of the process is digging into the “why” of a problem to determine if it’s chronic or systemic. Sometimes customers want a certain feature added, but it might be a perception issue. For example, the feature works fine but we need better training or documentation on how to use it. Or, a particular group’s hard work is not having the right impact for the customer. NPS gives us data we can use to formulate the best approach to fix the problem.

We also gain executive backing for the selected improvements before getting down to work. Ultimately, Genesys CEO, Paul Segre drives these improvements as he reviews for customer-centricity and outcome-driven actions critical to our business.

Finally, we consider the closed-loop process one of the most critical elements of our NPS System. We reach out to engage personally with customers and partners who have responded. It humanizes our process and gives us a better understanding of who they are, how they use our solutions, and how they want to work with us.

How Do the Results Stack Up?

Many of the major changes at Genesys have been NPS-driven improvements. Most noteworthy are the strides made within our Customer Care and Professional Services organizations.

In May 2017, we began collecting surveys for all Genesys solutions. The initial results gave us several clear points of focus:

  • Better and clear communication around the future of PureConnect
  • More investment in platform stability for PureEngage Cloud
  • More robust and complete capabilities for PureCloud

With our customers, we are shaping the future of our industry by allocating investments in strategic areas so that customers can bring more intelligence to each interaction. That work is under way and ongoing. For example, in CX Insider, Genesys President Tom Eggemeier talks about our ramped up investments in PureConnect and there are even more new capabilities coming in 2018.

Some issues not selected during one review cycle come up again, and we take a fresh look at them. Just as priorities change for our customers, so do our priorities for continual improvements.

How We Turn Innovation into a Customer-Centric Best Practice

We focus on feedback, not scores, for a good reason: NPS is a corporate metric and part of the way we do business. It’s tied to our culture of innovation and it’s critical to becoming customer-centric.

Stepping up to such a challenge can be disruptive to old ways of working. Bank of Ireland went through a similar process as it put aside biases to better address the unique needs of various customer segments, such as customers who are new to Ireland, and those who need extra help to complete a process.

At Genesys, NPS results influence everything from staffing decisions to product enhancements. Because we emphasize a culture built around customers, teams involved in these decisions fully understand the “why” behind these actions. They often become advocates inside Genesys to help other parts of the organization make customer-centered decisions. You can say it is in our DNA. NPS-driven improvements have become an expected part of everyone’s work.

The Power of Improving Customer Experience

As we close on 2017, we’re in the process of analyzing our second-half Relationship NPS results. We’ll compile these into a comprehensive set of recommendations for 2018. It’s clear we’ve made improvements since May as we’re hearing more positive feedback across the board. By truly listening, we hear tone and we gain insights into how our customers are feeling. This enables us to point the compass in the right direction and make the best impact for our customers.

Transparency is a valuable practice for building trust. Every business has problems, but it’s how we address them that sets us apart. As our NPS practice continues to mature, look for ongoing improvements to the quality and usefulness of our products and services. Our goal is to create a true business partnership over the long-term with our customers and our partners.