Can you say in advance whether your prospective office technology partners are committed to staying up-to-date on the latest updates and innovations? Are they able to provide you with the best possible products and the best possible service for your business?
A recent independent study found that 82% of customers who experience great customer service from their company's providers are more likely to recommend them, and it is this fact that is core to using a Net Promoter Score to judge future purchases.
If you have never heard of an NPS, read on and let us change the way that you make your technology purchasing decisions.
What Is a Net Promoter Score?
Simply put, a Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a metric to measure customer loyalty. A company with a high score typically has many satisfied customers willing to recommend the product or service they use.
Those with lower scores have more dissatisfied consumers and fewer people promoting their products and brand.
The data from which the score is calculated is created by asking a single question to customers through an independent third-party survey:
"How likely are you to recommend this company or product to a friend or colleague?"
Respondents rate their response from 1-10 (with 10 being 'Extremely Likely' and 1 being 'Not At All Likely'), and are broken up into three categories accordingly:
- If the score is 9-10, they are considered Promoters
- If the score is 7-8, they are Passives
- If the score is 6 or lower, they are Detractors
While the names are not particularly important, what they represent is: those who are fanatics about a company's products, those who like them well enough, and those who would rather leave them behind. This is how it’s calculated:
NPS = (Responses of "Extremely Likely" - Responses of "Not At All Likely") / Total Number Of Responses * 100
An NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. While there's no hard rule about what a good score is, Last year, Apple and Microsoft both boast ratings in the high 40s, while Google's (add notes: good, excellent, world class) NPS is only 11.
An organization will want their promoters to be at least five percent higher than both their detractors and their passives in order for it to be considered positive or good.
Organizations that are below this benchmark means they don't have many customers who are willing to recommend them and thus signaling that there is significant room for improvement.
Companies who have been able to maintain their high rankings are able to do so because they offer excellent products that keep customers so happy that they can imagine going out of their way to tell someone else how great they are.
Why Is it Important To Buy From Office Technology Partners with High Net Promoter Scores?
Office technologies like printers, copiers, and scanners are important investments for businesses. They are not only expensive, but their user experiences can provide sizable productivity gains when they are good, or huge drops when they are difficult to use and prone to error.
When you choose an office technology vendor based on their NPS, you're making an investment that will pay off in the future. Don't make your decision solely on price.
Instead, consider how much time and money you'll save by choosing quality equipment that lasts longer than cheaper options and allows your workforce to act efficiently and without mundane stressors such as copier jams or other technological faults. These kinds of day-to-day frictions can build up in the workplace and cause huge problems in the long run.
How To Find A Potential Office Technology Supplier's NPS
Though the importance of a Net Promoter Score should now be clear, both in evaluating a company's products and how they can save your employee's heartache (and labor hours!), how exactly do you find out what a company's NPS is?
While you can sign up for expensive services that attempt to aggregate NPS scores, the fact of the matter is that no single service is used by every office technology supplier and thus, there is no single NPS aggregator that is really worth a subscription.
Instead, the right choice is even simpler: just ask.
Any time you receive a sales pitch, ask for the NPS. If you are curious about a new product you've seen, send their sales team an email asking for the NPS.
If you're on the fence about leaving a current technology partner for newer pastures, see what their NPS is—perhaps it will confirm your suspicions that the rest of their clients are as unhappy as you!
Any company that is offering a good product will be proud to tell you their NPS score. (Here at AIS, we shout our NPS score from the rooftops: last year during COVID, we ended last year with a score of 96! Since it is such a simple metric to calculate, there are no complicated spreadsheets that they need to show you or different survey methods that you need to compare across technology suppliers. It really is the one size fits all analysis tool that can help you judge a company instantly. And, of course, if you're in negotiations with a company and they refuse to share with you their Net Promoter Score, it may be time to look elsewhere. Make sure to contact us today to learn more about our products and offerings.
Topics:
