June 06 2018

Striking the right attitude could seriously improve your Net Promoter Score

For customers, the attitude of the driver who delivers their items makes a really big difference in how they assess their overall retail experience. This isn’t just an assumption. It’s empirical fact backed up through extensive customer research.

We’ve found that attitude has the biggest impact on Net Promoter Scores, if we get it wrong. But how do we know that? It’s all down to our award-winning Have your Say programme, which was developed to provide us with a real-time view of customer feedback and trends. Since its launch in 2013, Have Your Say has gathered over 5 million customer reviews.

Our bespoke programme gathers live feedback from customers on their delivery experience from start to finish and enables us to measure customer satisfaction with nine specific aspects of the delivery process.  This in turn has led us to uncover the four factors that have the biggest impact on overall satisfaction. We call them the ‘4 Whats’ and they hold the key to driving up NPS.

Summed up simply, the 4 Whats are:

•              Delivering the parcel on time
•              Delivering the parcel in a good condition
•              Delivering the parcel with a good attitude
•              Keeping the customer informed about their delivery

And attitude packs a serious punch when it comes to ensuring a satisfactory experience and increasing likelihood to recommend.

In fact, our research tells us that when customers are satisfied with all of the ‘4 Whats’, the average NPS score is +88.  However, if the customer is dissatisfied with attitude, but satisfied with the other 3, average NPS is -77.

Retailers presenting the wrong attitude could be putting customer loyalty seriously at risk but, the good news is that with a few service enhancements this can be avoided, and Net Promoter Scores can be greatly improved.

By taking a deep dive of our 4 Whats data, we’ve developed an understanding of what retailers and Yodel can do to improve the customer experience and Net Promoter Scores.

Attitude isn’t just about offering a smile on the doorstep. To customers it represents several different things, so here’s what can be done to address them.

What retailers can do to boost customer satisfaction with attitude:

•         Gather special instructions at checkout and pass them onto the carrier; so, ensure the carrier is told if the customer wants their item left with a preferred neighbour or in a safe place, for instance

What Yodel can do to boost customer satisfaction with attitude:

•         Provide polite and friendly drivers
•         Ensure drivers have a smart appearance
•         Follow special instructions; keep upright instructions for instance or directions to leave the item in a safe location
•         Obtain a signature for all proof of delivery (POD) items
•         Where appropriate, follow the correct leave safe process, so don’t leave items on the doorstep or exposed to the elements
•         Ensure accurate scanning and carding, so that customers know exactly where their parcel is

The insight provided by our research has already been put to good use at Yodel and the live-feedback we continue to gather via our Have Your Say dashboards is helping to identify where we can make improvements that will significantly enhance the customer experience. Our service centres also regularly share feedback with our drivers and couriers – recognising and rewarding those who have helped to deliver a good customer experience. Happy drivers mean happy customers.

And now, we’re using research to support retailers as they seek to understand what more they can do to boost Net Promoter Scores, under each of the 4 What influencers. Ultimately, we aim to help ensure the best customer experience possible.