I recently attended the 4th Annual Executive Customer Feedback Summit put on by IQPC in Las Vegas.

The summit was attended by those that are responsible for collecting and analyzing customer feedback as well as how to use that feedback to improve the overall quality of the customer experience. The quality of topics and speakers were exceptional.

We heard from representatives of companies such as JetBlu, Coca-Cola, Ebay, CitiGroup, Harrahs, Zappos, Microsoft and even the NBA’s Seattle SuperSonics among many others.

The common themes from some of the more advanced customer experience companies was to determine the Net Promoter Score of your customers. In its simplest form, taking the results of a 1-10 scale question to their customers of “would you recommend this company to others”. Then determining your NPS by doing the following calculation:

Those who scored 9&10’s
divided by
Those who scored 0-6’s

We also learned how JetBlu used some new data mining technology to search through the 16,000+ e-mails they received in one day in January 2007 when their planes were grounded. The data mining helped them quickly determine what their customers were really saying and ultimately helped them design their Customer Bill of Rights.

Zappos talked about their leading edge customer policies such as free shipping both ways (returns included) and a 365 day return policy. There is a reason they are one of the fastest growing retailers in North America (projected to do over $1 billion in 2008)

A great quote out of the conference was said by David Norton (Senior Vice President, Relationship Marketing at Harrah’s Entertainment).

“The number one driver of dissatisfaction is a lack of respect for your customer’s time”.