Report: Tech Vendor NPS Benchmark, 2013

We just published a Temkin Group report, Tech Vendor NPS Benchmark, 2013, The research examines Net Promoter Scores and the link to loyalty for 54 tech vendors based on feedback from IT decision makers. We also compared results to the NPS data we published last year. Here’s the executive summary:

We surveyed IT decision makers from more than 800 large North American firms to understand how they view their tech vendors. One of the questions we asked provides Net Promoter Scores® (NPS®) for 54 of those companies. VMWare and SAP analytics earned the highest NPS while CSC IT services and Infosys IT services earned the lowest. The overall industry average NPS dropped nine points from last year. Our analysis also examined the link between NPS and loyalty, finding that compared with detractors, promoters are more than six times as likely to forgive a tech vendor if they deliver a bad experience, almost six times as likely to try a new offering from the vendor, and more than three times as likely to purchase more from them this year. When examining the loyalty levels for each vendor, we found that Oracle consulting and VMWare clients have the strongest purchase intentions, SAP analytics and Sybase have earned the most forgiveness, and VMWare and SAP analytics have the most innovation equity.

Download report for $495 (includes Excel spreadsheet with data)

Here are some of the findings from the research:

• With an NPS of 47, VMware came out on top followed closely by SAP analytics with 45. At the other end of the spectrum, four tech vendors have negative NPS: CSC IT services, Infosys IT services, Alcatel-Lucent, and Deloitte consulting.
• The average NPS in the tech industry went from 33.6 in 2012 to 24.7 in 2013. The percentage of promoters dropped seven points.
• Compared with detractors, we found that promoters are more than six times likely to forgive a tech vendor if they deliver a bad experience, almost six times as likely to try a new offering from the company, and more than three times as likely to purchase more from them in 2013.
• Forgiveness and willingness to try increase steadily starting at 3 while increased purchases begins steady growth at 5.
• Promoters most frequently wanted lower prices and better support, while passives and detractors were looking for better support.
• Oracle outsourcing has the strongest purchase intentions while Trend Micro has the weakest.
• SAP analytics and Sybase have earned the most forgiveness while Trend Micro has earned the least.
• VMware has the most innovation equity while Accenture consulting and Intuit have the least.

Download report for $495 (includes Excel spreadsheet with data)

The bottom line: When it comes to NPS, large tech vendors are heading in the wrong directions

Note: See our 2012 NPS ratings for tech vendors and the post 9 Recommendations For Net Promoter Score along with all of my other posts about NPS.

P.S. Net Promoter Score, Net Promoter, and NPS are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Satmetrix Systems, and Fred Reichheld.

Advantage Rent A Car and USAA Lead in 2013 Temkin Forgiveness Ratings

All companies, even customer experience leaders, make mistakes. But how much goodwill have companies built up for consumers to forgive them after those miscues? To answer this question, Temkin Group surveyed 10,000 U.S. consumers about companies with whom they’ve recently interacted. We used this data for the third annual Temkin Forgiveness Ratings of 246 companies across 19 industries.

Download entire dataset for $295

Company Results

Here are the highlights of the 246 companies in the 2013 Temkin Forgiveness Ratings:

• Advantage earns top spot. With an excellent score of 61%, Advantage earned the highest rating.
• USAA dominates forgiveness. USAA grabbed the next three spots for its banking, insurance, and credit card businesses.
• The rest of the top 10. H.E.B., Blackboard, Aldi, Alaska Airlines, credit unions and Publix round out the top 10
• No industry owns the top. The top 25 companies in the ratings comes form a variety of industries: Four grocery chains, three airlines, three retailers, two banks, two hotel chains, two investment firms, two software firms, one appliance maker, one auto dealer, one credit card issuer, one fast food chain, one health plan, one insurance carrier, and one rental car agency.
• HSBC dominates the bottom. HSBC earned the bottom two spots in the ratings for its credit card and banking businesses.
• Many TV service providers are at the bottom. Six of the bottom 12 companies are TV service providers: Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Verizon, Charter Communications, and Optimum (iO)/Cablevision.
• USAA most outperforms its peers. We compared company ratings with their industry averages and USAA came in the top three spots, 36 points above in banking, 31 points ahead in credit cards, and 28 points ahead in insurance. Three other companies are more than 20 points above their industry averages: Advantage (car rentals), credit unions (banking), and TriCare (health plans).
• HSBC most underperforms. HSBC fell the farthest below its industry average in two areas, 23 points behind its peers in banking and credit cards. Five other companies had scores that were 15 points and more below their industry: US Airways (airlines), Motel 6 (hotels), McAfee (software), Kia (auto dealers), and Hertz (rental cars).

We also examined year-over-year results for 204 companies that were in both the 2012 and 2013 Temkin Forgiveness Ratings. Here are some highlights of that analysis:

• Chrysler improves the most. With a jump of 29 percentage points, Chrysler is the most improved company.  Six other companies gained 20 points or more: Continental Airlines, Citigroup, Avis, EarthLink, Ameriprise Financial, and Alaska Airlines.
• US Cellular declines the most. With a drop of nearly 20 percentage points, US Cellular dropped the most in 2013.  Nine other companies fell by more than 10 points: Bright House Networks, HSBC, Cox Communications, Hertz, PNC, SunTrust Bank, Dollar Rental Car, Hyatt, and TD Ameritrade.

Industry Results

Here are the highlights of the 19 industries in the 2013 Temkin Forgiveness Ratings:

• TV service providers are unforgivable. TV service providers, as an industry, earned the lowest Temkin Forgiveness Rating of 12%. It was five points below Internet service providers and seven points below wireless carriers.
• Grocery chains are the most forgivable.  With an average rating of 39%, grocery chains are the highest scoring industry. Three industries are just four points behind: hotel chains, auto dealers, and rental car agencies.
• Credit cards make the most improvements. Credit cards made the largest improvement, nine percentage points, over the previous year.  Auto dealers, rental car agencies, and airlines also improved by more than five points.
• TV service providers head in the wrong direction. Led by TV service providers that dropped three points between 2012 and 2013, three industries earned lower scores in 2012. The other industries are retailers and appliance makers.

Calculating the Temkin Forgiveness Ratings

During January 2013, Temkin Group asked consumers to identify companies that they have interacted with during the previous 60 days.  For a random subset of those companies, consumers are asked to rate companies as follows:

How likely are you to forgive these companies if they deliver a bad experience?
Responses from 1= “extremely unlikely” to 7= “extremely likely”

For all companies with 100 or more consumer responses, we calculated the “net forgiveness” score. The Temkin Forgiveness Ratings are calculated by taking the percentage of consumers that selected either “6” or “7” and subtracting the percentage of consumers that selected either “1,” “2,” or “3.”

Download entire dataset for $295

To see all of the companies in the Temkin Forgiveness Ratings as ell as all of our other Temkin Ratings and sort through the results, visit the Temkin Ratings website

The bottom line: Forgiveness is an asset that you accumulate by consistently meeting customer needs.

Google and Apple Lead Software Industry in 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings

We recently released the 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings that ranks the customer experience of 246 companies across 19 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers. Here are highlights from the software industry:

• The software industry, on average, comes 11th out of 19 industries we studied. We did not study software firms in previous years.
• The top software firm, Google, earned a score of 67%, high in the “okay” range. The lowest-ranked software firm, McAfee, earned a 54%.
• McAfee earned the lowest score across all three underlying components, functional, accessible and emotional.
• Symantec earned the top spot  in the functional component.
• Google earned the top ratings accessible and emotional components.
• Apple, earned second place in the industry. While Apple is first place among its peers in the computer manufacturing industry, it received an even higher score for its software offerings—with a score of 67%.
• Here’s a link to industry results from the 2012 ratings.

Download entire dataset for $395

Report: What Happens After A Good or Bad Experience?

We just published a Temkin Group report, What Happens After A Good or Bad Experience? This large-scale consumer study uncovers negatively biased feedback and significant upside from good service recovery. Here’s the executive summary:

We asked 5,000 U.S. consumers about their experiences with 179 companies across 19 industries. More than 60% who had a bad experience with a fast food chain, credit card issuer, rental car agency, or hotel cut back on their spending, and many stopped completely. But service recovery helps. For every level of improvement in how they responded to a bad experience, companies were rewarded with more sales. Unfortunately, firms aren’t very good at service recovery, especially banks and credit card issuers. TV service providers delivered the greatest number of bad experiences while grocery chains had the fewest. At a company level, ING Direct and Holiday Inn had the lowest number of bad experiences, while QVC and Best Buy had the highest. We also examined how consumers share their good and bad experiences, across age groups and income levels, and compared results from last year. This analysis uncovered a negative bias in how consumers give feedback. Motel 6, ING Direct, Albertsons, and RadioShack have the most negative bias in the feedback they get directly from customers; Cox Communications and Symantec have the most negative bias in feedback on Facebook; and Verizon and GE face the most negative bias on Twitter.

Download report for $195

The report has 20 graphics full of data on consumer behavior and company ratings. It starts by looking at the prevalence of bad experiences. It turns out that 20% of consumers have had a bad experience with a TV service provider while only 5% have had a bad experience with a grocery store.

One of the streams of analysis looks at how consumers give feedback. As you can see, companies are more likely to hear about bad experiences than good experiences.

Here are some of the other findings in the research:

• ING Direct (2%), Holiday Inn Express (2%) Whole Foods (3%) and Holiday Inn (3%) had the fewest occurrences of bad experience, while Best Buy (29%), QVC (29%), Gap (28%), and eBay (26%) had the most.
• After a bad experience consumers were most likely to completely stop spending with rental car agencies (40%), credit card issuers (39%), computer makers (35%), and auto dealers (35%), but least likely to stop spending with retailers (9%) and Internet service providers (10%).
• When companies responded very poorly after a bad experience, 47% of consumers stopped spending completely with the company. When they had a very good response, only 6% stopped spending and 37% increased their spending.
• Retailers (46%) most often recovered well from a bad experience while Internet service providers (15%) and health plans (15%) were the worst at recovering.
• 38% of consumers gave feedback directly to the company after a very bad experience, but only 31% gave feedback after a very good experience.
• 14% of consumers gave feedback on a rating site like Yelp after both a very good or a very bad experience.
• The use of twitter to communicate about a very bad experience has grown from 4% to 9% of consumers over the last year.
• 33% of 18- to 24-year-olds have posted about a good experience on Facebook, compared with only 5% of those who are 65 and older.
• 18% of 18- to 24-year-olds have tweeted about a good experience, compared with only about 1% of those who are 55 and older.
• 17% of consumers who earn $100K or more have tweeted about a bad experience, compared with only 7% of those who earn less than $50K.
• Given their customer demographics, Motel 6, ING Direct, Albertsons, and RadioShack are the most likely to receive direct customer feedback that is negatively biased while Cablevision, Avis, Nissan dealers, and Dodge dealers are the most likely to receive positively biased feedback.
• Given their customer demographics, Cox Communications, Symantec, ING Direct, and TracFone are the most likely to have negatively biased comments on Facebook, while Cablevision, AOL, Kaiser Permanente, and Holiday Inn are the most likely to have positively biased comments.
• Given their customer demographics, Verizon and GE are the most likely to have negatively biased comments on Twitter, while Avis and Edward Jones are most likely to have positively biased tweets.

Download report for $195

The bottom line: Customer feedback is an under utilized asset.

Cloud Computing Leaders: Google, Microsoft, and ACS

The “cloud” is a popular topic in IT circles. So we decided to examine how much it will affect companies and how prepared technology vendors are to satisfy those changing customer demands. During January 2012, we asked 800 IT professionals from companies with at least $500 million in annual revenues two questions about cloud computing:

• Cloud importance: To what degree will the shift to cloud computing influence your company’s IT strategy over the next three years? (Note: 79% of IT professionals say it will have a significant influence)
• Cloud capabilities: Given your company’s plans for cloud computing, how would you rate the cloud computing capabilities of the IT vendors that you interact with compared with where they need to be?

To fully understand how prepared tech vendors are to meet their client’s changing IT needs for cloud computing, Temkin Group created the Cloud Readiness Index (CRI), a measure of where vendors are in their cloud capabilities compared with the needs of their customers. The CRI takes the cloud importance results and divides it by the cloud capability results as follows:

Here is the Cloud Readiness Index data for 60 tech vendors. Google, Microsoft’s business applications, and ACS are on top of 15 tech vendors in the “leading” category. At the other end of the spectrum, Autodesk, Check Point, and CGI are on the bottom of 25 tech vendors in the “lagging” category.
You can download the data from this post in an Excel spreadsheet for $195. The file includes detailed data for the Cloud Readiness Index as well as details for Cloud Importance and Cloud Capabilities. The spreadsheet includes the data for the 60 tech vendors listed in this post as well as for 28 other tech vendors with smaller sample sizes.

 The bottom line: Tech vendors need to meet their client’s cloud needs

Net Promoter Score and Market Share For 60 Tech Vendors

Temkin Group recently surveyed 800 IT professionals from large companies and asked them a series of questions about tech vendors. This research has fueled some of our previous posts: Temkin Experience Ratings for Tech Vendors, How IT Professionals Share Feedback About Vendors, and Tech Vendors: Benchmarking Product and Relationship Satisfaction of IT Clients.

We also asked the IT professionals to rate each tech vendor on the Net Promoter Score (NPS) scale.* NPS is based on one question: How likely are you to recommend the tech vendor to a friend or colleague? IT professionals choose an answer on a scale from 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely). Responses are put into one of three categories:

• Promoters (score 9 or 10)
• Passives (score 7 or 8)
• Detractors (score 0 to 6)

NPS is calculated as the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors. (If you’re interested in best practices for using NPS, read my post 9 Recommendations for NPS which is also part of our VoC resource page).

Here is the NPS for 60 tech vendors, ranging from Intel, Microsoft and Cisco in the 50s down to Compuware, Unisys, Cognizant, and Capgemini below 10.

We also asked the IT professionals how much their company was planning to spend in 2012 compared with 2011 and mapped this data with NPS. It turns out that we found four bands of performance in this market based on NPS scores:

• More than 40: These companies have much higher purchase momentum and are poised to grab a lot of market share
• Between 28 and 40: These companies have above average purchase momentum and are poised to gain market share
• Between 23 and 28: These companies have below average purchase momentum and are poised to lose market share
• Less than 23: These companies have much lower purchase momentum and are poised to give up a lot of market share

You can purchase the data in an excel spreadsheet for $195. The file includes details on the 60 tech vendors shown in this blog post as well as 28 other tech vendors with sample sizes too small to be included in our published research. The data includes sample sizes for the companies, percentages for promoters, detractors, and NPS score, as well as the percentage of companies with increasing spending plans and those with decreasing spending plans.

*Note: Net Promoter, NPS, and Net Promoter Score are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Bain & Company, and Fred Reichheld

Tech Vendors: Benchmarking Product and Relationship Satisfaction of IT Clients

We just published a new Temkin Group data snapshot: Tech Vendors: Benchmarking Product and Relationship Satisfaction of IT Clients. This new research highlights how IT professionals rate tech vendors in two key areas of experience: Products and relationships.

During January 2012, 800 IT professionals from companies with at least $500 million in annual revenues rated the products of and their relationships with 60 tech vendors. Some of the findings include: Intel dominates in product flexibility, Cisco leads in product features, Compuware’s product features are severely lacking, Google has a big lead in cost of ownership, Intel dominates in product flexibility, Apple leads in innovation, and Wipro is far behind in technical support.

Download report for $295

As you can see below, we found a wide range of ratings across the 60 tech vendors for each of the eight criteria we examined:

The data snapshot includes eight graphics that show the scores for each of the 60 tech vendors for each of these criteria. Here’s a summary of the firms with the highest and lowest average ratings:

Download report for $295
(includes spreadsheet with data)

The bottom line: Tech vendors need to improve their product and relationship experiences

Report: 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings of Tech Vendors

We are excited to be publishing this first report from our large-scale research on customer experience in the IT sector.

We just published a new Temkin Group report, 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings of Tech Vendors. The report analyzes feedback from 800 IT professionals to rate 60 tech suppliers. Congratulations to the top firms:

1) Microsoft (business applications)
1) Cisco
3) IBM SPSS
3) Microsoft (servers)
5) Microsoft (desktop software)
5) IBM software (other than SPSS)
5) Intel

Here is the executive summary from the report:

To understand the customer experience delivered by IT vendors, we surveyed 800 IT professionals from large companies. Using their feedback on the functional, accessible, and emotional components of experiences with vendors, we created the 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings for Tech Vendors which rates 60 large IT suppliers by their customers. Microsoft business applications, Cisco, IBM SPSS, and Microsoft servers were at the top of the list with “excellent” ratings. At the other end of the spectrum, Compuware, Capgemini, and Fujitsu were at the bottom of nine companies with “very poor” ratings. Our research also looked at the 2012 purchase plans for these IT buyers. When we chart the Temkin Experience Ratings for Tech Vendors with the purchase momentum for these 60 firms, it shows the clear connection between customer experience and revenues.

Download report for $295

The Temkin Experience Ratings for Tech Vendors are based on evaluating three elements of experience:

1. Functional: How well do experiences meet customers’ needs?
2. Accessible: How easy is it for customers to do what they want to do?
3. Emotional: How do customers feel about the experiences?

Here are the ratings for all 60 tech vendors that had feedback from at least 60 IT professionals:

The report also examined IT purchasing plans. We created a purchasing momentum index, equal to the percentage of companies planning to increase spending in 2012 minus the percentage that were planning to decrease spending. The report contains the purchasing momentum for all 60 tech vendors in the study. It turns out that the Temkin Experience Ratings are highly connected with purchase momentum:

Download report for $295

The bottom line: Customer experience and loyalty go hand in hand in the tech sector.

Congrats to VoC Winners: Experian, Progressive, and Vanguard

Well, it’s been a wild day; the Grand Hyatt was hopping today as we kicked off our Customer Experience Forum.

My opening keynote speech seemed to go over really well. I weaved the story of the customer experience journey together with the story of Dorothy’s journey in the Wizard Of Oz. I actually ended my speech with a rewritten version of the song “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.” I also showcased some data from my new report that went live today called “Customer Experience Boosts Revenue.” I’ll talk more about my speech and that research in future posts.

For now, I want to congratulate the three winners of Forrester’s 2009 Voice Of The Customer (VoC) Award: Experian, Progressive, and Vanguard. We received 40 strong nominations, so these winners did a really great job. They all were adept at the four key elements of a VoC program: Listening, Interpreting, Reacting, and Monitoring and were able to identify significant business results from those efforts. You can download their nomination forms from Forrester’s customer experience blog.

There were so many outstanding nominations, that we named 11 finalists:

• Cardinal Health
• CIGNA
• Experian
• Gaylord
• Hyatt Place
• iRobot
• Logitech
• Oracle
• Progressive Insurance
• Symantec
• Vanguard

Voice of the customer is a critical component for just about any customer experience effort. And the trends indicate that VoC will become even more important in the future. A lot of the advances in VoC are coming from innovative work from a number of vendors. That’s why one of the questions we asked was: ”What technology vendors or service providers are critical to your success?”

Here’s a shout out to the vendors that were mentioned by the 11 finalists:

Bain and Company, Burke Research, CAHPS, Clarabridge, Cognos, Convergys, ECHO, Healthways, iModerate, JD Power, Lotus Notes, M/A/R/C, Medallia, Microsoft, National Committee for Quality Assurance, NICE, Opinion Lab, Oracle, Radiano, RightNow Technologies, Satmetrix, Somentics, TeaLeaf, Vovici, and Webtrends.

The nominations were loaded with great insights, so I’ll be writing a lot more about what we found.

The bottom line: Congratulations to all of the winners, finalists, and the vendors that helped!