OPINION


WORDS SCOTT DAVIES


H


OW DOES YOUR COMPANY DEFINE SUCCESS? Most organisations use a combination of people engagement, customer


feedback and a range of financial measures, such as profitability, cost efficiency and shareholder value to determine progress.


ITM is the UK representative of the GBTA and is the not-for- profit membership association for the UK business travel community. This means we are effectively owned by our members and our mission is to educate, inform, connect and inspire them.


The team and I work to ensure we are commercially efficient and anecdotal feedback on our events and resources is good. However, when you only exist to create value to a community, what should your lead Key Performance Indicator be?


INSURANCE,


UTILITIES AND, YES, TRAVEL COMPANIES HAVE SIGNIFICANTLY NEGATIVE NPS SCORES


Value in this sense can be subjective and highly personal to the individual, but the team and I need to know how we are doing and where we can raise the bar further for our members. We have, therefore, adopted the measurement Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure the value we create. NPS is now used by many businesses and marketeers to capture rolled up consumer feedback because it is felt to be the most reliable and insightful method. The methodology asks a consumer (or member in our case), based on their past experience of your product, how likely they would be to recommend you to a colleague or associate. Sounds


150 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018


simple, and it is, but someone who is prepared to recommend an organisation or company to another is placing their own reputation on the line in doing so, and this makes a positive response all the more valuable.


HOW TO CALCULATE NPS The NPS score itself is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors (those who would not recommend you based on their most recent experience or a given event) from your promoters (those


ITM calculated its Net Promoter Score and the result is encouraging


MEASURING VALUE


who would) to create a number. The theoretical maximum is therefore 100 and the minimum -100.


Large and publicly owned companies make their scores available to all and the results are fascinating reading. You may be surprised to see the insurance, utilities and, yes, travel companies that have significantly negative NPS scores. More positive examples are Premier Inn, which scores +27, the world’s most financially successful business, Apple, scores a creditable +28, premium airlines tend to score in the +20-30s and John Lewis achieves an impressive +42. When you put your heart and soul into your product, you await your NPS score like an expectant parent. So how are we doing at ITM ? We’re very proud to report we obtained a weighted NPS score of +53 for 2018 to date. The purpose of explaining this is certainly not to gloat. In fact, because it’s our first year of measurement, we now have an almighty and quite daunting task to maintain and develop further to live up to our members’ expectations of us. But when you’re deciding whether to work with a business partner, it may be worth checking their NPS score and its direction of travel. It signals how much value they are giving their customers and is a pretty good measure of what kind of partner you’re working with.


Scott Davies is the chief executive of the Institute of Travel Management (itm.org.uk) buyingbusinesstravel.com


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