The Net Promoter Score (NPS) has quickly become the go-to measure for brands concerning customer satisfaction. Many organizations spend impressive sums of money each year on calculating that magical number, in hopes of it bumping up a decimal point or two.

I’m not exactly sold on the NPS model, as it tends to represent a false target for organizations. In my view, it’s much like saying, “This year, we’ll increase our overall sales by 4%”, yet says nothing about how you’ll achieve such a thing. That's not to say that organizations don't execute specific programs against their NPS targets. But it seems to me that if we focus solely on NPS (and somehow trust that the mechanisms/measures in place to increase the score will fall into place automatically), the point is being sorely missed.

If we’re serious about creating deep, long-lasting relationships with our customers, letting an arbitrary number serve as our guide feels precisely like the wrong way to do it. In doing so, we’re attempting to quantify complexities like emotion, attitudes, and affinity.

What if, instead, the focus was on the foundational elements that contribute to a high NPS? What if we measured and refined the building blocks themselves, as opposed to the result? Intimacy, trust, and loyalty are three words that feel like more appropriate goals for us to strive for.

Intimacy

Intimacy is all about deep, personal – familiar – relationships. It’s something rarely seen online because of the nature of the medium. When we introduce personalization, context, and relevancy, however, we immediately have a closer connection to a customer. Intimacy means speaking to a customer directly, relating to their specific needs or interests, and responding accordingly. Surprise and delight fit into this as well. It’s the little things (and some big ones too) where we take the opportunity to connect explicitly with the customer as an individual. In my view, no ad campaign or broadcast communication can build true intimacy.

Trust

Which brands do you trust? How did they earn it? Amazon comes to mind as a great example. Despite having purchased close to 100 products through the retailer, I’ve never dealt directly with a representative or salesperson. And yet, I trust them more than I trust my bank. I feel they get me, they make it incredibly easy to do business with them, and every touch point I have with the retailer is consistently positive. They’re fair in their pricing. They’re honest about refunds and adjustments. And of course, it doesn’t hurt when I hear countless stories from other customers sharing similar sentiments.

Loyalty

Loyalty could be seen, much like the Net Promoter Score, as an outcome – not a contributing factor – to excellent customer experience. But I feel there’s an essential difference between the two. NPS is ultimately boiled down to a customer’s likeliness to recommend a brand to others. Whereas loyalty, in the way I’m viewing it here, is more about the factors that keep a customer from switching to a competing brand. These are two very different concepts. To simplify, brands create loyalty when they consistently meet or exceed a customers’ needs. This could be the quality/performance of the product itself, the follow-up support, the purchase experience...often all of these and others.

And when we achieve the trinity – intimacy, trust, and loyalty – the benefits to both the customer and the brand are enormous. Suddenly we’ve set the stage for the ultimate relationship with our customer:

• An ongoing source of consumer insight
• Repeat transactions
• More receptive ears to hear our messages
• Resiliency against competitor’s offerings
• Forgiveness when we make a mistake
• and yes...advocacy (there’s your NPS)