Bain & Company teams up with ROI Consultancy to produce customer loyalty benchmark studies
Research and marketing specialist ROI Consultancy has partnered with strategy consultancy Bain & Company to produce customer loyalty benchmark studies in nine retail categories. The benchmarks will be based on Bain’s Net Promoter Score, which predicts customer loyalty (and firm growth) based on how likely customers are to recommend a company to their friends and colleagues.
More firms are getting on board with customer-centric models, conducting their activities in a way that puts positive customer experience at the center of the business, driving repeat sales, customer loyalty, and bigger profits. Amazon is routinely touted as a big customer centric company, striving at every point to make the customer journey as enjoyable and rewarding as possible, creating loyal customers in the process.
But how do firms know if their customer relationships are top-level, and that they are creating loyal repeat customers, and even advocates of their brand? They ask them.
There are numerous customer relationship metrics, with advocates and critics for each measurement. One of the more prominent ones is Bain & Company's Net Promoter Score, developed by Fred Reicheld and a Bain team in 2003. The Net Promoter Score is based on the ‘ultimate question’ which asks ‘What is the likelihood that you would recommend Company X to a friend or colleague?’
Bain says the question is a strong predictor of customer loyalty behavior. ‘Promoters’ who rate 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale are likely to buy more, stay longer, and refer their friends. And firms want to have lots of these ‘promoter’ customers: according to Bain, Net Promoter leaders on average grow twice as fast as competitors.
Now, Bain has announced that it is partnering with ROI Consultancy Services to produce Net Promoter Score benchmarking studies in nine North American retail categories. ROI provides full-service research, marketing & sales, and digital agency services to consultants, investors, and corporate clients. Based in Denver, ROI has additional offices in Austin, Boise, Boston, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, Portland, and Tampa. The firm is an industry leader in survey execution, sample frame sciences, and sourcing and verifying reliable respondent sets – key competencies that will be leveraged in the partnership.
Bain and ROI will jointly NPS benchmarking studies in the retail categories of grocery, women’s clothing, children’s clothing, beauty products, pet food and supplies, sports equipment and athletic clothing, consumer electronics, home products, and home furniture.
“We are excited to partner with ROI to produce high-quality, independent competitive benchmarking studies,” commented Rob Markey, partner at Bain & Company and co-author of The Ultimate Question 2.0. “Understanding your competitive position from the customer’s perspective is a fundamental requirement for successful customer-centric companies, and these studies will be a strong starting point for organizations that want to improve their customers’ experience and loyalty.”
The benchmarks will utilize Bain’s NPS methodology, resulting in accurate and reliable scores. According to Bain, firms that adopt the benchmark will be in a stronger position to drive growth through strong customer experience and increased brand advocacy.
Aside from the benchmarks, ROI has also developed Market Driver Models for the sectors, which correlate NPS metrics with the underlying drivers of consumer behaviour that influence each market.
“We are grateful and honored to be partnering with Bain & Company on this important initiative to develop reliable and standardized benchmarks in as influential a metric as NPS,” remarked ROI CEO David W. McGrath. “We look forward to making these retail categories an annual benchmark and to adding new categories in the coming year.”
In related Bain news, the firm recently partnered with Price f(x) to launch the Bain Pricing Navigator. The tool helps clients adjust their pricing based on company performance data provided through real-time dashboards, proprietary insights, and customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource management (ERP) systems integration.
