According to the latest research from the company behind Net Promoter Scores, the tech industry leads in driving customer satisfaction, while other sectors like logistics, energy, and water sectors lag far behind.
Merely 10% of brands in the UK have a net promoter score of 40 or more, with logistics, energy, and water remain at a lower level for delivering customer satisfaction.
According to Bain & Company’s UK Consumer Study, Insurer NFU Mutual (70) has the highest NPS in the UK, followed by First Direct (63), Volvo (49), Netflix (49) and Amazon (44).
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Industry-wise, the tech sector stands firm in the overall NPS of 36, followed by the automotive industry at 31 and media at 25. Logistics remain the worst-performing sector with an NPS of -13, followed by energy at -10 and water at -8. The fact that just 10% of the total of 190 brands surveyed appears to be delighting customers is “disappointing.”
The companies in the top 10% measure the success of one customer journey at a time as they deliver great customer experiences consistently. They create a culture that handles complaints well. It’s not the number of complaints; it’s how they handle them that matters.
The study was conducted in collaboration with MaritzCX aimed at analyzing customer experience delivered by over 190 brands across 15 industries in the UK. Bain & Company collected between 50 and 200 customer responses for every brand, with the total number of customer responses being 120,000. This analysis concluded that the leading industries are the ones investing in saving time for customers to simplify the experience. A lack of communication and the inability to manage perceptions are the critical issues for the industries languishing at the lower end of the NPS funnel.
However, even in the poorly performing sectors, few brands are delivering positive experiences. For example, Ovo Energy is the highest-rated energy provider with an NPS of 27. Similarly, Amazon (44) comes top in technology, Netflix in media (49), Volvo (49) in automotive, John Lewis in general retail (39), Skyscanner is the best performing company in the travel booking sector (31), Aldi in grocery (38), Burberry in fashion (26), Premier Inn (29) emerges as the brand with the soaring NPS in the hotel sector, and Three (18) is the best-rated telecoms company. As per the research, banks and airlines tend to have the widest range of NPS scores.
The research also concluded that different sets of indicators drive various industries. In the energy sector, price is the most significant measure of negativity, while service is the prominent source of positive comments. Innovation is also seen as a forerunner for improving NPS. Conversely, if any brand is not focusing on innovation, they would see their NPS erode.
Being data-driven is vital to understand which customers are satisfied today and the relative importance of different gaps to the competition. Firms should be able to pick the critical gaps and differentiate them into an opportunity. CMOs should not limit the brand’s competitors just to the respective industry, because customer expectations are being set everywhere cross-industries.
