The Net Promoter Score is ubiquitous and may be a victim of its own success. According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2018 the NPS was cited more than 150 times in earnings conference calls by 50 S&P 500 companies. And its usage seems to be increasing. The NPS, like all measures, has its shortcomings
Smoking causes cancer. Warnings on cigarette labels and from health organizations all make the clear statement that smoking causes cancer. But how do we know? Smoking precedes cancer (mostly lung cancer). People who smoke cigarettes tend to get lung and other cancers more than those who don’t smoke. We say that smoking is correlated with cancer.
Should you ask what people think? Are thoughts and feelings reliable indicators of future behavior? Asking about people’s attitudes—especially about their intentions (likelihood to use, recommend, or purchase)—gets a bad rap in UX research. There’s a sort of folk wisdom in User Experience research: People are poor predictors of their future behavior. And this distrust
You’ve probably heard of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment by Philip Zimbardo (especially if you took an intro psych class). The shocking results had similar implications to the notorious Milgram experiment and suggested our roles may be a major cause for past atrocities and injustices. You might have also heard about research from Cornell University that found,
The Net Promoter Score introduced a new language of loyalty. At center stage are the promoters and detractors. These designations are given to respondents who answer the How Likely Are You to Recommend (LTR) question as shown below. But what is the justification for the designations? Were they just arbitrarily created? Do they just
No one likes getting lost. In real life or digitally. One can get lost searching for a product to purchase, finding medical information, or clicking through a mobile app to post a social media status. Each link, button, and menu leads to decisions. And each decision can result in a mistake, leading to wasted time,
The one number you need to grow. That was the title of the 2003 HBR article by Fred Reichheld that introduced the Net Promoter Score as a way to measure customer loyalty. It’s a strong claim that a single attitudinal item can portend company success. And strong claims need strong evidence (or at least corroborating
Our attitudes both reflect and affect our actions. What we think affects what we do and what we do affects what we think. It’s not a perfect relationship of course. What people say or think doesn’t always directly correspond to actions in easily predictable ways. Understanding and measuring user attitudes early and often can provide
How satisfied are you with your life? How happy are you with your job or your marriage? Are you extroverted or introverted? It’s hard to capture the fickle nature of attitudes and constructs in any measure. It can be particularly hard to do that with just one question or item. Consequently, psychology, education, marketing, and
It’s the only number a company needs to grow. Or at least that’s what was proclaimed in the title of the now famous HBR article that helped popularize the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Lately it’s been taking on more criticism. The NPS is compelling to executives because of its simplicity and for what it purports
