NATIONWIDE Vehicle Contracts has launched a new on-line survey to measure customer satisfaction.
Since launching 15 years ago Nationwide has grown to become the UK’s largest vehicle leasing broker with continuous investment in people and innovation of its web-based platform benefiting over 60,000 customers.
However, aware that success cannot be built on price and technology alone – delivering a ‘great’ customer experience has always spearheaded Nationwide’s efforts.
Managing director Mark Smith says: “We realise that all successful companies put customer service at the forefront of their activities. A business that only focuses on profit is a poor business.
“As Nationwide continues to grow, we must therefore continually challenge and improve the way we do things. To achieve this, it is crucial for us to obtain feedback and understand from every one of our customers what we did well and, more importantly, what we need to improve.”
In 2011 Nationwide Vehicle Contracts became one of the first UK companies to work with Trustpilot, an independent web-based platform for customers to leave their reviews, and these are then used to generate a customer satisfaction measurement.
David Johnson, director of marketing at Nationwide, explains: “We bought into Trustpilot as a great way of interacting with our customers – their feedback has enabled us to facilitate improvements to the overall experience we deliver.
“When we started Trustpilot only enabled ‘genuine’ customers to leave feedback and this proved very successful. Today this condition has been removed allowing anyone to leave feedback. We believe this can result in questionable reviews, both positive and negative.
“Whilst we support the principles and ethos of Trustpilot, we wanted to obtain more detail regarding our customer’s experiences and willingness to promote Nationwide Vehicle Contracts therefore we decided to implement a more accurate way of measuring customer satisfaction – a ‘Net Promoter Score’ (NPS) enables us to do this more effectively.”
The NPS is an index ranging from -100 to 100 that measures the willingness of customers to recommend a company’s products or services to others.
It is used by many different types of businesses for gauging their customer’s overall satisfaction with products or service together with customer loyalty. NPS is calculated based on responses to one single question. Customers are asked to rate on a 10-point scale the likelihood of recommending the company or brand to a friend or colleague.
Respondents are grouped as follows:
• Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others, fuelling growth.
• Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offerings.
• Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth.
Subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters yields the Net Promoter Score, which can range from a low of -100 (if every customer is a Detractor) to a high of 100 (if every customer is a Promoter).
David Johnson says: “By using NPS as the key measure of our customers’ overall perception of service levels, because NPS is a leading indicator of growth, it provides the best possible anchor for our overall customer experience management programme.
“By complementing NPS with other measurements and insights we obtain from various points along the customer journey, the business has a comprehensive, actionable view of customer experience performance.
“After just three months our NPS score is at plus 66 and has been rising month on month; this is an excellent score and puts us at the top end of the performance band. Furthermore, the valuable feedback we are receiving will prompt us to strive for continued improvement.”
Following a lengthy review process Nationwide Vehicle Contracts decided to partner with APD Global Research to manage it’s bespoke customer satisfaction survey programme using their 360-degree customer platform.
APD has accumulated many years experience in providing customer survey programmes to manufacturers and leasing companies globally. Its independence and advanced platform ensures that Nationwide can receive feedback within minutes of a vehicle delivery covering a number of touch points during the sales and vehicle handover cycle.
In addition feedback can be displayed in ‘real time’ to all staff within the business achieving company wide ‘buy–in’ to the objective of delivering ‘great’ customer satisfaction with every purchase.
