June 11, 2008
An Army of Promoters
Net Promoter Score, and what it actually measures inside a company.
The question is famously simple: how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague? What makes it useful is not the number but who has to look at it.
At Rackspace we put the score where everyone could see it, and the effect was cultural before it was commercial. People will optimise what they are measured on; the trick is to measure the thing you would want them to do anyway.
An army of promoters is cheaper than an army of salespeople, and considerably harder for a competitor to copy.