For years we’ve looked for the “perfect” way to measure how we’re doing on customer service. Or, if not perfect, at least some measure that all of the managing partners here at Zingerman’s could agree to use in each of our businesses. We believe that measuring helps us know where we are now and gives us a powerful tool to track progress over time, and now we finally have a measurement tool that we are all using and that is giving us useful information. Hurrah! For those of you who haven’t yet met, it’s my pleasure to introduce the Zingerman’s Experience Indicator or, as we like to call it, ZXI. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty darned good!

We learned about this new (to us) measurement tool when Ari read a book called The Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld. The book explains how to use a customer loyalty measure called “Net Promoter Score” or NPS for short. Of course, we can never just “adopt” someone else’s idea, so we’ve “adapted” NPS to make it a bit more “zing-y” – thus the new name that reaffirms our mission, which is to bring the Zingerman’s Experience to as many people as we can.

You really do need to read the book to get the details, but here is a bit of background about this approach. A company’s NPS is derived by asking the “ultimate” question, which is some variation of, “How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?” Responses are on a zero-to-ten scale, where ten is “extremely likely” to recommend and zero is “not at all likely.” Customers who answer 9 or 10 are considered “promoters.” Those who answer 7 or 8 are “passives.” Anyone who answers 6 or below is considered a “detractor.” The percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors equals a company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Research has shown that increased sales and profitability are correlated both with increasing an organization’s number of promoters and with decreasing the number of detractors. I’ll share some of the ways we’re doing both of these over the next few OnTracks. In the meantime, I’m interested in finding out if any of you are using the NPS approach and, if so, what your learnings have been – so that I can include those as well. Thanks in advance for sharing via email zingtrainzingermanscom!

Hope you all had a wonderful summer!