Social Tech | Lena West » TAG: Events

January 29, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Behind the scenes at Net Promoter Miami

TAGS: Events

This past week, I went behind the scenes at Satmetrix's Net Promoter conference in Miami.

I nabbed interviews (scroll down) with a few key people from the Net Promoter team: Fred Reichheld, Richard Owen, Deborah Eastman, Laura Brooks, Vince Nowinski and John Abraham. Feel free to listen in from your treadmill.

Top-Level Take Aways

• Based on Geoffrey Moore's "Core vs. Context," the conference highlighted that a successful company needs to have operational efficiency, product leadership and customer intimacy. It is this last point that Net Promoter and their Net Promoter Score (NPS) helps brands to drill down on.
  
• From Laura Brooks' presentation: It's not enough to have good products anymore, you need to have a high degree of customer intimacy.
  
• There are different personas for interacting with your brand: detractor (not good), passive (this is where the opportunity lies), promoter (good) and super promoter or NetWorked Promoter.
  
• She introduced a new key term: NetWorked Promoter. This term describes people who are expressive, charismatic and extremely influential, either locally or at large. They usually have a large following of people who respect their opinion.
  
• LISTEN to: trends and what's top-of-mind for your market
  
• ENGAGE for: innovation and to test the market
  
• ACTIVATE to: boost 1:1 marketing and amplify word of mouth (WOM)
  
• 80 percent of customers trust WOM more than advertising -- Forrester
  
• WOM is 9 times as effective (9!) as advertising -- Day
  
• A NPS increase of 5 to 7 percent is doing well, while a 10 percent gain is not unheard of, but few and far between.
  
• Almost all Net Promoter conferences are linked to certification courses. The cert classes usually happen before the conferences and this year in Miami was the first cert class and it was sold out with 47 people -- they had only planned for 40.
  
• Net Promoter has been able to link NPS's to actual money generated ... something they're calling "WOM economics" (look for more information on this at another time b/c I'm really interested in this topic).
  
• A new white paper from Satmetrix will be released soon that's all about the WOM economics topic.
  

Big brands that gave awesomepresentations:

• Enrique Salem, COO, Symantec, was the quintessential case study sharing the imperative at Symantec to use Net Promoter across their organization. If you thought Net Promoter was just for customers, think again. (I have to say that everyone whom I've met at Symantec lately has been authentic, up-front with their shortcomings and ready to make improvements. It's amazing.)
  
• Kip Knight, VP of marketing, eBay, discussed the ins and outs of creating and nurturing community through promoters and detractors at eBay
  
• Lee Boykoff, director of digital media at A&E Television Networks, got into the nitty gritty about A&E's digital success cocktail of microsites, community, NPS and A&E Insider to make sure their viewership watches more A&E!
  
• Ricardo Acevedo, general manager of the Four Seasons Hotel, Miami, hammered home the importance of The Golden Rule at work within The Four Seasons operations and how that one principle creates promoters.
  

Interviews

• Interview with Fred Reichheld, Author of the Ultimate Question, and Bain and Company Fellow: 3:25 minutes
  
• Interview with Richard Owen, president and CEO: 7:44 minutes
  
• Interview with John Abraham, general manager, Net Promoter Programs: 8:19 minutes
  
• Complete interview with Laura Brooks, vice president of Research and Business Consulting; Deborah Eastman, chief marketing officer and Vince Nowinski, principal methodologist: 30:00 minutes
  
• Interview with two attendees, Russ Cosentino and Tony Lopresti of Clarabridge: 3:59 minutes
  

Next Net Promoter Conferences

• April/May 2008 in the U.K.
  
• January 2009 in San Francisco
  

Posted by Lena West on January 29, 2008 04:00 AM

October 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Enough Social Media Theory Already!

TAGS: Events

(Info on a chance to get open access to my brain, below.)

As I go around the country speaking about social media, I'm noticing a thing or two about how corporations are approaching social media.

Sadly, many are desperately afflicted with 'analysis paralysis'.

And, here's why:

Corporations are sending their execs to conferences to learn all about various social media tools. (This is a good thing.)

But, many times speakers at these conferences want to impress you with Powerpoint slides featuring the colorful million-dollar logos of the companies they've worked with -- or with a heap of social media theory.

You know, the talk...the history of social media, why it's important, yada, yada. But, very few experts are really letting enterprises know what they should DO about social media. Thus, my delivery style is much more 'knowledge transfer' and less 'talking head'.

I say, let's start acting on what we already know. Is it always going to be correct? No. But, what is? Let's just START somewhere.

To that end, on Tuesday, November 6th, at 2:00pm, EST (11:00am, PST), I will be doing a Live Chat Session for InfoWorld's IT Exec Connect.

If you're sick of rhetoric and want the straight dope about what your organization can DO in re: social media, click here to be there.

Posted by Lena West on October 30, 2007 09:44 PM