Editor’s note: Terry Vavra and Doug Pruden are partners at research firm Customer Experience Partners. Vavra is based in Allendale, N.J. Pruden is based in Darien, Conn.
Some people are fans of Net Promoter Score (NPS) and some aren’t. But no matter which camp you’re personally in, there is no denying that Net Promoter Scores do provide compelling relative comparisons of owner advocacy within a given product/service category. (Since whatever flaws there are in the NPS methodology are present across all compared brands.)
A recent research study from BIGinsight, Worthington, Ohio, which polled 9,317 consumers, used NPS to compare all auto brands sold in the U.S. The results rank the manufacturers by owners’ willingness to advocate each auto brand. Considering all the domestic and imported brands and the various levels of prestige and price points, the top five might surprise you. For the January 2012 study they were, in order: Subaru, Toyota, Honda, Lexus and Volkswagen.
What? No BMW? No Mercedes-Benz? No Cadillac? (And even though Lexus remained in the top five, it has fallen from the No. 1 position it held for the past two years.) But the Subaru score is no fluke. Subaru not only had the top rating for 2012 but it is the only company among the top five that has seen its NPS rising consistently over the past three years.
Why? NPS isn’t actually about “recommendation behavior” but rather about a theoretical “willingness to recommend.” Our guess is that owners are able to envision themselves recommending Subaru to friends, neighbors and co-workers not solely because of the product quality or sales or service experience provided but more importantly because they also have an emotional connection with the brand.
You see, what most corporations have yet to grasp is that, at heart, we are all storytellers. When we hear and read complaints about brands we’re actually listening to stories. A negative experience provides a rich fabric of details about an unpleasant interaction with a brand; a story to tell. But when our expectations are met by a brand (as positive as that should be) our satisfaction rarely provides much of a compelling story.
More than most other autos, Subaru is a lifestyle brand. People buy its vehicles with a purpose in mind. And, the brand creatively reinforces the lifestyle image with very targeted events: camping, biking, extreme sports, skiing, to name just a few. Consequently the Subaru vehicle becomes woven into customers’ lives with ample stories to be told.
Not every category lends itself to stimulating customers to be more active advocates but a lot more could do so. They only require some planning to follow the example of Subaru.