Net Promoter Score - January 2021

As part of our commitment to "Radical Transparency" in our business, we will be publishing the results of our client Net Promoter Score survey each month, starting today with January 2021's performance!

If you aren't familiar with Net Promoter Score (NPS), it is tracked using the following calculation based on the question, "Using a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend Craft&Crew to a friend or colleague?"

The respondents are then grouped as follows:

• Promoters (score 9-10)
• Passives (score 7-8)
• Detractors (score 0-6)

"Subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters yields the Net Promoter Score, which can range from a low of -100 (if every customer is a Detractor) to a high of 100 (if every customer is a Promoter)." - netpromoter.com

Reviewing our score results, including the contextual responses provided by our clients, we've identified four areas of improvement in our business:

1. Further improve our new client on-boarding experience

Our lowest score, a seven, came from a new client whose projects kicked off in early January. The comment they provided with their score was something to the effect of "I rated you a seven, but this is mainly due to the fact that we just started working together and it is early in the process." This is a fair comment and the "passive score" could be looked at exactly that way...passively. But we think there is an opportunity to examine our client on-boarding process and find ways to improve the experience in hopes that even a new client would be willing to promote us based on nothing more than the success of our first few days together.

2. Improving response time [for quotes and SOWs]

One of our long-term clients provided this feedback alongside a promoter score of 9, so why draw attention to it? Because this is a known issue as we have been stress testing our account management and delivery teams since returning from the holiday break. Simply put, we're understaffed in this area and our roots are starting to show a bit. In December and January, our pipeline hit a new record (3x higher than an average month in our previous fiscal year) and we struggled to get quotes and SOWs out the door in a timely manner (or at least within the timeframe our clients have come to expect from us - fairly quickly). "Thankfully" our pipeline has returned to a more manageable level as we moved into February but we will be keeping a close eye out for signs of spikes happening again and need to have a better plan to stay nimble.

3. Improving communication in meetings

Some version of this feedback came from more than one client and was usually accompanied by a statement like "due to the pandemic..." or "due to the virtual nature of our meetings right now...". Again, we could easily chalk this feedback up to these kinds of excuses but the hard truth is that less than 30% of our clients are based in Ottawa (where we have been able to meet regularly in person in the Pre-COVID Era); the rest of our partnerships are generally managed virtually day-to-day with larger quarterly or annual planning meetings taking place in person, on occasion. Reducing the amount we talk over each other. Ensuring there is a clear quarterback for the meeting. Better leveraging the chat on Hangouts or Zoom. Using breakouts more frequently with sub-groups on calls. These are all some examples of ways we think we could improve our communication practices.

4. Share more ideas with us!

We heard this message from several clients, most of whom were Promoters. The sentiment was meant to be positive but, like point #3, the issue here is related to capacity management. When the team is too busy delivering on current projects, quoting new ones, and then on-boarding them we have much less time to focus on client development; reviewing KPIs, annual and quarterly business plans, current product and marketing roadmaps, and proposing new solutions. Again, now that our pipeline has calmed down a bit, we need to make sure we get back to business as usual on this front.

In the coming weeks and months, you can expect to see more examples of us opening up about our HR processes, delivery frameworks, case studies, business challenges, and growing pains. We believe that through Radical Transparency, we can help other entrepreneurs and executives learn from our mistakes and take advantage of some of our tried and tested operating principles.

Thanks for boarding, we hope you enjoy the ride!