I've heard both sides—"I hate the NPS" and "I love the NPS." I understand the perspective of the naysayers. In 2003, when Fred Reicheld introduced the NPS in Harvard Business Review, he called it the "one number you need to grow." Great title, but obviously there is no one single number that can tell the whole story about your brand. That's like suggesting there is one number that can tell you all you need to know about the strength of the economy. Which number is it? GDP? That may be the most frequently used metric, but what about job growth, the deficit, housing starts, industrial production, and jobless claims? All of these together help paint a picture of what's really going on. Your brand is the same. NPS is one measure—a good and useful one. But it's not the only one you need to track to understand the health of your brand.
As I wrote in a blog post last July, NPS is a metric calculated based on the answer to the question, “How likely are you to recommend [college/university]? On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1=not at all likely, and 10=very likely, respondents who answer 1-6 are considered “detractors” while those who answer 9 or 10 are considered “promoters.” The NPS is the % of promoters minus the % of detractors. You can ask this question of your current students, your faculty and staff, parents of current students, or alumni. In fact, comparing the responses of different audiences can be quite revealing.
We’ve calculated NPS scores for all these audiences for a wide variety of institutions. It stimulates a lot of discussion among the administration when the NPS score varies widely among audiences or segments within the institution. In one case, a university had an NPS of 36 among alumni overall, which is quite strong. But, when we isolated the alumni who attended one of the institution’s satellite campuses, the NPS rose to 51. For that institution, the NPS also differed by up to 20 points depending on the decade the student attended the university. In another case, current students who attended one college within a university had an NPS of 63 while the current students in another college had an NPS of 8. It’s even possible to have a negative NPS. That means there are more detractors than promoters and it’s a serious indication of critical issues for an institution.
NPS is a strong and useful indicator, but it really should be combined with other measures to truly capture the full picture of your institution’s brand strength. What is aided and unaided awareness of your brand? How familiar are your target audiences with your brand? What level of quality is associated with your brand? To what extent is your brand preferred compared to alternatives? To what extent is your brand perceived favorably? And, are those perceptions better or worse than they were in the past? All of these questions, if asked of your target audiences, will generate metrics that can be combined with NPS to provide a complete report of your brand health. Regular measurement (every three years or so) will help you and your leadership develop a familiarity with these important measurements of one of your institution’s most important assets – your brand.
