Advocacy

There is no greater marketing than customer recommendation but many businesses simply do not understand what drives recommendation or how to exploit it. Populus’s loyalty research demonstrates to clients how they can better engage with customers and enhance advocacy.

The most widely used advocacy metric is net promotion or net recommendation. A net recommendation score is obtained by asking respondents: How likely is it you would recommend (company x) to a friend or a colleague? Please use a scale of 0 to 10, where 10 is ‘extremely likely’ and 0 is ‘not at all likely’. Those respondents who give a score of 9–10 are classified as Recommenders, those scoring 7–8 are Passives and those scoring 0–6 are Detractors. The percentage of Detractors is then subtracted from the percentage of Recommenders to obtain a net recommendation score.

The debate regarding net recommendation tends to be polarising. To some it is the silver bullet question providing businesses with all the answers they need. To others it is the monster that a silver bullet is designed to kill.

At Populus we are not in the anti or pro camp and instead believe in choosing the right approach for our clients rather than sticking to dogma. We believe enthusiastically in the power of customer recommendation and believe it is a laudable aim for any business. However, we don’t propose an advocacy programme for all clients and will instead suggest other customer based initiatives (overall satisfaction, likelihood to churn) when appropriate.