Page 79 - The Apple Experience
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customers would hardly be able to contain their excitement and would spread
the word. Apple customers would be its best sales force. Johnson embraced
NPS to measure how successful Apple was creating customer advocates.
According to Reichheld, Apple Store employees know where they rank
among their peers in terms of NPS and where their store ranks relative to
other stores in the region. Promoters are celebrated.
Apple Store managers recognize employees who create
promoters of their customers; some stores even put photos of
these employees next to the promoter’s comment text, and then
scroll them across a large-screen TV monitor in the employee
break room. Meanwhile, Apple’s central NPS team analyzes
customer feedback from all the stores to understand the
systemic reasons for promoters’ enthusiasm. Though you might
expect that the primary source of enthusiasm was Apple’s
amazing products or its cool store design, by far the most
common reason promoters give for their happiness is the way
store employees treated them.
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The higher the NPS, the closer Apple employees are to reaching their
goal of enriching lives.
Apple began measuring NPS in 2007 when there were 163
stores. The NPS score was 58. Today, with well over 350
stores, Apple’s NPS score tops 70 percent and some of the best
stores rank above 90 percent, a remarkable achievement.
“Where a typical electronics store might record $1,200 per
square foot in sales, mature Apple stores exceed an estimated
$6,000 per square foot. This is by far the highest productivity
in retailing of any kind.”
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Johnson realized that only passionate employees who were promoters
themselves could ever transform customers into promoters, and that’s why