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Net Promoter Score

In the case you never heard about Net Promoter Score (NPS) then please first have a look to the NPS entry on Wikipedia. You’re wondering why I’m writing about it? The answer is simple: It is a great approach. And improves services and products. The biggest route to market for IBMs training are partners. So you could ask why worrying in this about NPS. And this is a fair question. But IBM and our Partners are treating the word “Strategic Partnership” serious. We’re trying together to achieve the best for our clients.

Why introducing Net Promoter Score in Training

We use NPS in general in IBM because we’re interested to do the right thing for our Clients. Around Training there are statements in the Internet in favour of NPS for Training and others are against. There is for example a well known one that speaks about “NPS is stupid for Training”.

You need to know that our Training Model is unique and very successful from coverage as well as quality view. Instructor Quality is on highest level since some years. So, there was no real reason to try to improve. But we were thinking of our first IBM value “dedication to every client’s success”. So, introducing NPS made sense, and our Partners anyway did start already certain similar approaches.

Net Promoter Score Examples in Training

Let me tell you about two examples – representative and impressive.

Example one happened right at the beginning after introduction. As mentioned above, Instructor Quality Score is very high since years at all our Partners. So when one partner realized that their NPS looked relatively low compared to others they did a deep dive. They motivated Clients to give details. And interesting results: The used e-book format was not appreciated by the students. After solid investigation a project was started to change the format – and NPS increased significantly right after the change. Could this have happened without NPS? Yes. Did NPS help? Yes. Did we do the right thing for our Clients? Yes!

Example two was similar. NPS looked not bad, but was lower as expected. Deep dive resulted in the finding that there was really a class that went wrong. Actions had been already taken to improve. But: the deep dive also discovered missing evaluations and a mistake in a process. It got fixed. Results increase similar to Example one. Could this have worked without NPS? Probably. Did NPS help to make sure the process got fixed: Yes.

I could now go on. There are more and more examples. And I’m happy that we introduced NPS. And I hope everybody understands, that NPS is even in Training a proven and valuable approach for companies who are dedicated to every client’s success.