The hot new(ish) buzzword among consumer-facing companies is Net Promoter Score. (Okay, technically three buzzwords.) The NPS is a measurement of how will your customers are to recommend you to a friend, a good indicator that you’re doing things right. A company called Satmetrix compiles these scores in their annual Net Promoter Industry Benchmarks survey of more than 24,000 consumers, and they include more than 200 brands in 22 specific consumer sectors, such as Travel & Hospitality. The survey asks consumers to rank their willingness to recommend a company on a scale of 1 to 10. The score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors (those scoring the company 6 or below) from the number of promoters (scoring 9 or 10).
Rising to the top of the hotel sector once again is Marriott with a NPS score of 62 percent, six points higher than last year, the first year that hotels were benchmarked. In the airline sector, Southwest zoomed up 9 points to 66 percent while last year’s NPS leader, Virgin America, tumbled 15 points. American Airlines improved by 14 points, but was still below average for loyalty drivers such as attitude and friendliness of cabin staff. United Airlines fell to last place, with an NPS score of 2%.
While leaders in the hotel and airline spaces were scoring in the 60s, travel web sites are not so warmly recommended. TripAdvisor ranked as the top travel website but their NPS score was only 36%. Yahoo! Travel was rated the lowest in the sector at 14%.
What are the companies that you are willing to recommend? If there’s one thing we’ve learned about travelers, they are not afraid to tell anyone who will listen about their experiences with a company, good and bad. If that sounds like you, let us know who you recommend – or don’t – with a Comment!
