You’ve most likely experienced the negative consequences of measuring individuals on NPS, or indeed any customer experience metric. One high-profile area where the phenomenon is generalized is automobile sales. Car companies often provide individual bonuses based on the NPS numbers of sales people, even where the sales people work for franchisees. The result is that car buyers are handed or emailed a survey accompanied by a clear message, “Please phone me before filling in the survey if you can’t give me a 10.” Manipulations like this result in executives ignoring the very scores they purport to be using to drive excellence.

The cheating can be harder to detect in some cases. Measuring individual contact center agents on customer satisfaction scores, for example, can result in agents manipulating scores.

While incentive systems that provide rewards on an individual basis result in cheating, this is not the case for collective incentives. At the highest level, we believe large company leadership teams can and should be measured on double-blind NPS benchmark trends relative to their main competitors. Cascading that sort of metric also helps position the enemy correctly: the enemy is your top competitor, not some poor individual customer filling out a survey.

If you can’t get competitive comparisons, we suggest a different approach. Use your brand-level NPS research to determine which operational factors have the highest impact on NPS. Provide team incentives to improve the top three to five operational metrics.

A strong governance and accountability approach can help carry to your program from its beginning to more advanced operations and impact. Be sure your governance team understands that its remit includes continuing engagement with an evolving program over the long haul. Leverage your team to help navigate the challenges of building the data assets you’ll need to practically align your CX efforts to company strategy and outcomes. To get there, download our guide, take our comprehensive training course, or read about the future of NPS.