Frode Stenstrøm: I am passionate about better customer experiences and good work processes. Over several episodes of this podcast, I have focused on measurement. Both measuring inputs and measuring results, because I believe this insight is fundamental to being able to make improvements. A widely used tool in customer satisfaction surveys is the NPS score. Many people who work with surveys swear by NPS, particularly in the business-to-consumer market. I think the reason for this is that it is easy to use. NPS uses a standardized scale that makes it easy to compare results over time. In addition, it is an indicator of customer loyalty and can therefore also predict future growth or success. I like simple and effective tools, but I would like some more detailed information from someone who knows this topic well. What exactly is NPS? Is it used too much or too little? Can we trust the data we get? And why do so many companies still rely on a one-sided and simplified method like NPS to measure customer satisfaction, despite its limitations and inability to capture complex customer experiences? In today's episode of ProsessPodden, I am joined by Trond Gudbrandsen from Leonberg. As well as Tor Kristoffersen, my colleague at ProsessPilotene, for a short debate on these questions. My name is Frode Stenstrøm, and this is ProsessPodden. So before we get started, I would like to welcome you, Trond, to the studio. Could you just say a little about who you are and what you are passionate about? Trond Gudbrandsen: Thank you. My name is Trond Gudbrandsen, as mentioned. I am the general manager of Leonberg Reklamebyrå in Sarpsborg. I work extensively with strategy and marketing plans, branding, design, websites and SEO, and have extensive experience in the field of marketing. Also customer surveys, I would say, both through my work as marketing director for Ford Motor Norge, as assistant chain director for Coop Norge, and as marketing and category manager for Arkbokhandel, marketing and category director for Synsam Norge, and then CEO of Synsam in Norway for five years. Frode Stenstrøm: Welcome to the studio. Then you certainly have some practical experience. And then, Tor, I know you have extensive experience in roughly the same area? Tor Kristoffersen: Yes, I am not directly or purely in marketing, but it is CRM. I have worked with CRM for 25 years, both with systems and content in CRM systems. Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, and you are now probably the only actual pilot that ProsessPilotene has on staff? Tor Kristoffersen: Yes, you might think I applied for the wrong job, but yes, I do. I have a pilot's license. Frode Stenstrøm: I think we should start right away with the first topic, which is a bit of a clarification of terms: Frode Stenstrøm: What exactly is NPS? And Trond, could you just shed some light on that? Trond Gudbrandsen: Absolutely. NPS is a simple question that you often receive after contacting a company or a business as a customer. And it is a simple question that asks how likely you are to recommend this company and/or product or service to a friend and/or colleague. That's it. Frode Stenstrøm: So it is that simple? Trond Gudbrandsen: You then respond on a scale from 1 to 10, where the company's score is calculated so that if we get a score between 0 and 6, it counts as minus 1. 7 and 8 count as a neutral 0, and then only 9 and 10 count as plus 1 in this system. Frode Stenstrøm: Who uses NPS? I have been subjected to this type of survey quite a few times, and it is often the only question I get, but is it limited to a particular industry, sector, that kind of thing? Trond Gudbrandsen: It is probably used mostly in the B2C market, but I cannot see any reason why it would not be used in B2B. The reason I think it may be used less in B2B is that you may have more control over your customers and can communicate directly more easily; you have closer meeting follow-up, you have sales meetings, you have pitches, you have much closer direct contact with a smaller number of people than you do in B2C. In B2C, there are often very, very many people, and it is difficult to have the same direct contact that you have in the B2B market. Frode Stenstrøm: Could it have been used in employee surveys? Trond Gudbrandsen: I think it probably could, and it is probably also an issue, a question that may be used, at least indirectly, in some form of employee survey. I know of one of the companies where I have worked myself, and there was a similar question that resembled this, about whether we could recommend this workplace to a friend or colleague for recruitment purposes. Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, that was what I was thinking of, a recruitment purpose. Tor Kristoffersen: It is a typical question. It is also a way to measure, for example, an HR department or the contact you have had with HR. Even though it sounds a little strange, every contact you have internally can also be measured in that way, and this has been done in somewhat larger corporations. Right. What other tools are there, that is, how do you compare NPS with other customer satisfaction surveys, for example? Trond Gudbrandsen: If I were to answer that, it would be that NPS has only one real question that is supposed to provide the truth on its own. And that is what I seriously question. And I am very unsure whether it provides an accurate picture, in a way, and it depends somewhat on what you want to measure, and there I think NPS may be an oversimplification in many ways, but nevertheless, I would point out that NPS also has a number of positive aspects that should not be undermined either. Frode Stenstrøm: Tor, if you think about the customer service cases we have experienced, they have often ended with how satisfied are you, that is, it is just the scale from thumbs up, thumbs down, or a slightly larger scale, one to five, or one to ten, which NPS quickly becomes—does that really give an accurate picture, do you think? Tor Kristoffersen: No, NPS does not include the context behind what happened in that conversation, or that inquiry, or the interaction with customer service; it provides an answer and a very unnuanced picture. It can be difficult to include more information, because if a customer is dissatisfied but is in the middle of a case with customer service, they may not give an honest answer to that NPS survey. Frode Stenstrøm: But when you say they may not give an honest answer, perhaps it is based on the context you are in, that if you answer yes 100 times because you were satisfied 100 times, then there is one time when you really were not satisfied, so you get a negative score, but that number may be averaged out in the overall picture, so you do not get a real number you can act on. Tor Kristoffersen: I can give an example. If you are in an electronics store and need to have your PC repaired, and it has been repaired many times, and every time you are there they say, yes, this is not the same problem as last time, so they repair it again. An NPS survey cannot know exactly what you are dissatisfied with; it only learns that you are dissatisfied. And how are you supposed to use the score to do something about it? That can be difficult. Frode Stenstrøm: If it is used so much, why do you think companies often use NPS to the extent that they do? Trond Gudbrandsen: I think it is standardized, it is recognized, it is internationally recognized, it is objective, it is managed by a third party. And there are some arguments we may discuss later regarding its positive aspects. But that is the general picture. It is very well known and international, so many probably rely on this being a form of research-based method, or that it has validity based on the fact that it is used by very, very many companies, including large international companies. Frode Stenstrøm: Then I think we should move on to a topic where we can discuss a little why, and why not, to use this type of survey. And you touched on it, Trond, the positive aspects of NPS, besides the fact that it is standardized? Trond Gudbrandsen: First of all, it is simple to choose and very easy to understand, so you do not need to spend much time interpreting the answers; it is this score that is either minus 1, neutral, or plus 1. In addition, there is a form of benchmarking in it, a kind of, if there is an open, more competitive situation, and you have a little more control over what the competitor is also doing. And then it creates a certain level of customer engagement because it is very easy to get a lot of responses, given that it is just this one question where you simply press on the phone, press a key, and then it is more or less done, so you get a fairly high response rate, and that is not so easy to achieve with many surveys. And then it can have a kind of proactive problem-solving aspect, so it says something about possible future revenue, at least in relation to that. And then it may have something to do with business development, customer loyalty, cost-effectiveness, because it is efficient and easy to carry out. And then you can show that the company has a form of customer-focused culture. And I also want to dwell a little on this culture aspect, because I think it is an important topic here. Both because it is... There may be some companies that use this, and then they have some stores, and many of those companies have, among other things, many outlets or stores. And then some stores become incredibly good at precisely this, and they create a culture in the store, but it may also be that they influence customers in a slightly different way before they receive this feedback. Just so you know, right, when you get home now, you will receive an SMS asking you to respond to this; just so you know, the score means that only 9 or 10 proves that you are satisfied, 8 or 7 shows that you are neutral, and six or below is negative feedback to us. By explaining this so explicitly to customers, you also influence your own result in this, of course. And that is a very, very important point, and then you get a culture that has to be built around it, but also a different culture, perhaps in each individual store. And then you also get cultural differences, which may be in relation to Sweden, Denmark, Finland, or other Nordic countries. I am on thin ice here as well, so I will be very careful, but I think that in Norway we find it a little harder to give nine or ten for everything; we are extremely satisfied at eight, perhaps extremely satisfied at seven as well, even. And we struggle a little to go all the way to the top and think that it can always get a little better, so extremely satisfied: 8. And that then gives a score of zero. When I worked across the Nordics, it was at least noticeable that Norway had a lower NPS score than all its Nordic peers. Frode Stenstrøm: Interesting. I think there can also simply be a negative side to that. I myself have encountered salespeople who tell me that after this sale, you will receive an evaluation. You have called a customer service center, you have spoken to a car salesperson, perhaps especially a Microsoft salesperson. And then they almost beg for a good result. So then I start to wonder: can you really trust the figures you are measuring? Tor Kristoffersen: There are several sides to it. Wanting good results may also reflect that the company wants to measure itself more than it wants to satisfy the customer. Frode Stenstrøm: So they measure because the company wants to measure, but they are not really interested in the answers. Tor Kristoffersen: Perhaps a little controversial to say, but that is my experience. Both from working with companies, but also from the measurement I have personally been subjected to. Trond Gudbrandsen: I share that view 100%, because I think some companies may do this in order to say that we care about our customers, so we want customer feedback, and they want it so that they can pat themselves on the back by saying that we have the NPS. But it may not be used to the right extent afterward anyway. So in a way it becomes this kind of, well, what do you do with this result? And that is a little of what you touched on earlier; it is like, what do you use this for? It can be a little difficult to figure out, because for us it is a thin basis. It was a little like what you touched on: why does the customer give the score they do, what situation is the customer in at that exact moment, is this the third inquiry to Elkjøp about your PC, or what is the reason they come back, or why you get this score, and what situation they are in, and I think that is an important point here. Frode Stenstrøm: When you talked about the customer service example earlier, Tor, the thing is that if you are going to use that figure, which ideally you should, you need to be able to trust the figure. Tor Kristoffersen: Yes, I think it is the volume of responses that tells you something, but as we touched on, you do not get a management tool telling you exactly what to change. Frode Stenstrøm: You know that you may need to do something, but you do not know what? Tor Kristoffersen: Yes, it could be, take customer service again, that it needs to be faster. That responses should come faster, that is, you should answer the phones faster, you should be able to resolve tasks faster. You can do that based on such a simple score. But you cannot determine that this issue produces the most dissatisfied customers in customer service. This product is what caused this long waiting time, and so on. You cannot get that from an NPS score. Frode Stenstrøm: You can use NPS as an indication to say something about future purchases. We have now talked about customer service scenarios, but if you think about commercial scenarios. Trond Gudbrandsen: I think it may be able to do that, but with great emphasis on may, because this entire journey is very long. So if you then say that I received a feedback form after contacting customer service, for example with my alarm company or my insurance company, which are two that use this and that I have received recently. First of all, it is obvious that you do not change the alarm company for your house very often. And you probably do not change your insurance very often. Or you probably ought to do so more often. It is recommended that you do it differently and conduct a proper review of everything you have. But few people do that, and that is a point. But then it is sort of dependent on me as a customer actually making a recommendation, intention in relation to action, and on a friend or colleague actually both trusting the advice and, not least, actually needing the product and service in the near future, before they forget my recommendation, and ultimately buying from the recommended provider rather than another one, the one I said you should use. And that is quite a long road, and I believe it can stop at many stages before you actually get a future purchase from the person to whom I recommended this. So I think there are so many stopping points here that the entire line has to go all the way through, and if it is then the alarm for my house, and I say that the customer service was excellent, then you must actually need to change the alarm system in your house, and then you have to remember it when you get that far down the funnel: what was it he said again? Was it that company or the other one? Then I remember, yes, I cannot be bothered to call someone and ask about it again once I have received an offer. I do not remember whether it was that one, and then you have to buy, and then you have to actually choose the one that I probably recommended. It is a very long road, in terms of purchase intention among future customers. Tor Kristoffersen: The more complex the service or product is, the further removed you are from the answer with an NPS score. I was very surprised by figures, both from users of NPS, but also... the Customer Barometer and so on, by how high the figures are for these recommendations to friends, those who are brand advocates, those who want to promote the brand to friends. It turns out that it is for products or very simple services that those figures become so high. The more complex it is, as you say with alarm companies and insurance, the much, much longer the road, and the much less you can trust the results from NPS. Frode Stenstrøm: But perhaps that largely rules out using NPS in a business-to-business context, Tor, does it not? Tor Kristoffersen: It does not necessarily have to rule it out. In Business to In business, we also have customer journeys, and we have touchpoints and interactions. Yes, they are complicated, but you can try to work your way into each touchpoint and measure it. You don't need to use NPS at every touchpoint; that gets a little tiring for the customer, but you can use NPS for some, other surveys for some, and for the most complicated ones, interviews. Frode Stenstrøm: Exactly. Could NPS be used to measure the effect of, for example, customer loyalty programs, customer clubs, themes, and that kind of thing? Tor Kristoffersen: Yes, it is supposed to be an indicator of loyalty, whether you would recommend it to someone else, the extent to which you would recommend it to someone else. I believe that it is not necessarily about loyalty to a brand. Trond Gudbrandsen: I believe customer satisfaction and customer loyalty are far more complex than just a recommendation from me to a friend or colleague. And what I think is obviously missing from NPS, before we can get into some of the perhaps more negative aspects, is why the customer is satisfied or dissatisfied. You get very little insight into that, and not least, what should the company reinforce or change? After you have received this score, it becomes extremely difficult, based on this, to determine what specific measures to take. Like, okay, we have received a low NPS score; what should we actually change? Where in the purchasing process, or how in our offering, did things go wrong, in one way or another? Is it the price, is it customer service, did it take too long to wait for customer service? I had to sit on the phone for fifteen minutes before someone answered. That can result in a poor score in itself, even if the actual response and customer service were excellent. It is still not good enough that you have to sit in a phone queue for fifteen minutes. So there are so many causes, and what do you address to make this offering better and create greater loyalty? That is extremely unclear in my mind. Frode Stenstrøm: I have to say that I have experienced being caught in that kind of bind when answering surveys like these myself. I may have been in a long phone queue. I received a very good answer from the customer service representative. Professionally sound, polite, clear, and proper. But the answer did not meet my expectations of the product. Because this may have been something I wanted, like when S-Banken removed Apple Pay, for example. Of course, the customer service representative cannot be blamed for that. And you want to rate them poorly because of it, but at the same time, the customer service representatives have actually given you a very good answer, and then I sit there wondering what I am actually being asked, what I am actually supposed to rate. Is it that one interaction, is it the product I am buying, or the service I am buying, or the overall experience of the company? So when I am asked these things, I simply do not know what to say. And if you are honest about that one thing, you are criticizing someone who has actually done a fantastic job, and I do not want to do that either. So I do not think it is that easy to answer the survey either, even though it is what it is. Trond Gudbrandsen: I think you are touching on an important point there. If you have your head screwed on, you know that it is not necessarily the customer service representative's fault that the offering has changed, or that fairly major strategic changes have been made in the company regarding how they run the business, and it is rather difficult to go along with tearing that customer service representative apart as well by giving scores of 2 and 3 and so on, when there are underlying factors behind it. And in this case, where DNB acquired S-Banken, it is obvious that a very large group is taking over a smaller company, and they have completely different rules for how they want to manage it going forward, and the S-Banken customer service representative cannot be blamed for that. It is It is Frode Stenstrøm: That is why we end up in a bind, and then my question is whether NPS may actually be more of a source of misinterpretation, causing people to make the wrong decisions? Tor Kristoffersen: I worked with a company that had a large customer service department, and they were absolutely certain that their low NPS score was due to the long wait time. So they did something about the wait time; that is, they hired more people, and they had better systems and so on to address this and reduce the time. What they noticed was that the score dropped even further. And they did not know, and they were basing things on this NPS score. They did not know what was causing it and eventually had to interview those who were dissatisfied. And it turned out that the customers wanted good customer service, not shorter wait times; the wait time was not what mattered. The less time they spent per customer, the worse the answers became, and that was what caused the score to drop even further. Trond Gudbrandsen: Interesting. Frode Stenstrøm: I saw a report about that, Tor, a few years ago, and in my previous job, I worked with a customer service center. And there, they began training people to ask what we called closed-ended questions, such as where do you live, which city did you live in, to get quick answers. That was to reduce case processing time, as you say. But the report I saw had measured the customer experience during the conversation, and because the questions became so short and abbreviated, leaving no room for dialogue, the customer's experience was worse. I think that, for customer service centers, the way they train their communicators is crucial, at least for the experience at the customer service touchpoint. But then there is one final question on this topic: does NPS overshadow important questions? And I think you have already touched on that a little: yes, it is an indicator, but it does not tell you what. Perhaps you should then have asked a few more questions about what? Trond Gudbrandsen: Yes, I think we can perhaps get into some of the negative aspects here as well, Frode, in terms of what it lacks. And for me, first of all, it is a very one-sided focus. It is one question, and then there is what I have already mentioned, which Tor also mentioned: what is the missing context, what is the reason for giving a score? Why do people give the score they do? And then there is oversimplification. Customer satisfaction is complex; it may involve the distance to the store, customer service, product features, price, quality, and so on. There are many underlying causes, and there may also be bias in the measurement. Who responds? Is it primarily those who give either a 1 or a 10? And if so, it may not be a representative sample either. Is it those who are extremely dissatisfied or those who are extremely satisfied who give the score, while those in the middle cannot be bothered to answer the question? You never know. And then there is a lack of action: what are you going to use this for? Is it merely a checkpoint showing that we conduct surveys in the company, so we can sort of pat ourselves on the back and say, yes, we care about customer service, and we care about customer feedback, and so on, but then it perhaps just gathers dust in a drawer anyway? Yes, and then there is this, which we need to spend time on: cultural differences. Are a score of 8 and a score of 6 the same everywhere? And Norway is a long, narrow country, and there are major cultural differences even within Norway. I am not sure this is exactly the same everywhere. I do not know, but it is at least a very... important point to keep in mind here. We are imposing an international scale on ourselves that may not obviously align with the values and foundations we have in Norway. Tor Kristoffersen: I mentioned using it for simple things, meaning products, and there I think it has its purpose. When it becomes more complex than that, I do not quite understand how you can manage or make changes based on that score. Trond Gudbrandsen: Completely agree. Frode Stenstrøm: Given that NPS is what it is and has its strengths and weaknesses, what would you say to customers seeking more insight into their own customer satisfaction or brand awareness? Tor Kristoffersen: Yes, there are many roads to Rome. If you haven't measured before, then it's very important to start measuring. But if you're going to measure, you have to map out very carefully the journey that the customer or member, or whoever it may be, will go through, and which interaction points they have with the company. Based on that, it's possible to assess whether NPS is right, or whether you should go deeper and conduct more thorough research, at least as a starting point. Because one of the challenges when you start measuring is coming up with the right questions. That is, anyone can come up with questions, but by the right questions I mean questions that can stand the test of time. Because if we come up with questions and get answers to them, new questions emerge. Then it's very tempting to ask new questions, and then you can't measure things over time, and thus you lose the basis you were going to use to predict other things. Trond Gudbrandsen: I agree with that. The most important thing when getting started with customer satisfaction is: what are you actually wondering about? That's the big, big question. What are we actually wondering about? As you mentioned, it's very easy to come up with lots of interesting questions and nice-to-know things and add-ons and so on, but that may not actually be what you need to know. Then it's about methodically setting up some hypotheses. What do we think the customers think? What do we think is important to us? What do we believe about this that we can either confirm or disprove in relation to hypothesis 1, hypothesis 2, and sub-hypotheses, and so on? And then it's about creating a clear action plan based on the insight, one that leads the company to make a real change or strengthen an area that is already performing well. Which ultimately affects both awareness and the company's reputation. And that is the most important part of this perspective, because if you're going to conduct a customer satisfaction survey, it's like, what on earth are we going to use it for? Is it because we think we're heading in the wrong direction, or are we going to predict some form of where the company should be by the end of 2027? Are there other things we need to do? We need to expand a product, develop a product, develop a service in relation to the offering we have today, to ensure that we can remain just as recognized and adaptable to the needs customers will have in the future, not just at present. Frode Stenstrøm: Then we're getting into what this is going to be used for, aren't we? It's not just measuring for the sake of measuring, but perhaps more about establishing a culture in the company of listening to its customers and using that at every stage, from product development to delivery, sales, marketing, and communication? Trond Gudbrandsen: Definitely! I mean, if the company has a stated value that it truly places a high value on customer feedback, then you can't rely on such extreme simplification of a very complex picture. So then you have to obtain real customer insight, and before you launch a survey, you also have to define and be clear about what you're actually going to use this for: why are we doing this, why should we bother our customers by asking for feedback? And to be perfectly clear, asking customers for feedback is just a hassle for them; they get nothing in return. You're using up their time in one way or another, taking up their time, and asking them to answer a question without getting anything in return; they're just giving information to you, and then you should at least do it properly, I think. And then, I suppose, the prediction going forward, in terms of a brand tracker, is that it's difficult to achieve major changes over time. In many of the companies I've worked for, we've almost exclusively run some form of brand tracking, brand monitoring focused on reputation and visibility for the next purchase—where will you buy your product next time—and lots of different predictions about that. It's quite difficult to achieve major changes in that area; the level is often fairly steady. You may see a slight positive trend, but it's rare to see any major jumps over time if you do this over one or two years. Frode Stenstrøm: Or if you sell one bank to another bank? Trond Gudbrandsen: Yes, exactly? And then you may see some effects, but the point is also that it becomes a bit of a hygiene factor, right? You do it because you think it's important to keep your finger on the pulse from time to time to see how the company is doing. But it doesn't bring about major change. So what I find most interesting about customer feedback is that it's more about strengthening your position in relation to the future you envision. In other words, you conduct scenario analyses: what happens if, how can we improve our offering, how can we pursue product development and service development based on the feedback we receive, so that we ensure we're just as attractive to customers three years from now as we are today. Frode Stenstrøm: Couldn't you just as easily conduct interviews and talk to some key customers to gain a deeper understanding of where things stand, instead of systematically sending out surveys? Tor Kristoffersen: Yes, you could if you had the time, but as a company you don't always have the time. Customers aren't particularly keen on sitting through interviews every time they've bought something from you, so that limits it. At the same time, it's easier to influence the answers when you're interviewing someone. Customers—different customers, of course—but they tend to give the answer the other party wants, or what they think the other party wants, to a greater extent when it's an interview or there is a personal relationship, or a personal interaction between two people. And the same applies to the answers you give when you know they'll be stored on your customer record or under your name; then you also tend to answer a little differently, giving more of what you think the company wants to hear from you. Trond Gudbrandsen: Just to add a brief comment to what Tor is saying, because I think it's important to get straight to the point. What are you actually wondering about, and how should you address this? And I think that's important. No, you can't bother your customers all the time, but if you start with a qualitative study and then conduct a focus group with some customers. Then you'll probably get some hypotheses that you can test in a quantitative group much later, and then it's easier to ask short questions that you answer yes or no, plus or minus, or 1–7, or whatever. But you have to get straight to the point about what you're actually wondering about and what you're actually going to use this for, instead of doing it as a kind of hygiene factor because it's expected that we do this in our company. I think that's an important point as well. Frode Stenstrøm: Tor, many of the projects we've delivered to customers in our company share the common feature that they want to create greater awareness of their brand in their channel, so they'll be top of mind when something is going to be purchased. Is there an affordable way to document that awareness? Because if they spend a lot of money on marketing, for example, they'll want to know they're getting something in return, even if they don't get a number of leads, which may be the most reliable indicator. Tor Kristoffersen: Yes, both business to consumer and business to business companies have a lot of data themselves. If you manage to structure, collect, and analyze that data, you can quite quickly develop hypotheses to test. And there you can use simple methods, that is, survey methods, survey methods. NPS and so on, to test the hypotheses you've arrived at using the data you have—repeat purchases, churn, and so on. Frode Stenstrøm: If you were to do brand tracking at your company, what approach would you use? Trond Gudbrandsen: I think it comes back again to: what are we actually going to use this brand tracker for? I mean, why are we measuring this? Well, we can provide a picture of how well-known, or what reputation we have compared with our competitors. And then you might do it more like this... First a qualitative focus group, then you can develop some hypotheses based on that, and then you can test it on a larger scale to see whether it is true or not. And then it is more of a checkpoint: what has happened after a year or six months, because not very much happens month by month with these kinds of things at all. Then it has a certain value, so it can say something about them, and awareness and knowledge of your company. Which in and of itself has quite considerable value, because companies that are better known—and this is something I may have touched on a little as well—but the bigger you are, the better known you are, the more positively people view your company too, regardless. And it is like, you can do many things wrong. Let us take an example as well: why do so many Norwegians choose Norway's largest bank? It is a mystery to me, because they obviously do not have the best offering. They are quick to stop raising rates when there are interest rate hikes, they are quick to stop doing many things that are not particularly positive for my customers, while there are smaller banks that may be more agile and customer-friendly. But even so, there is a sense of security, and they are the largest, and they spend a lot of money on marketing, and they are visible everywhere, support lots of sports, and are a huge sponsor of many, many things. And that means people also choose security or size in some form, and you create some kind of positive effect around you, and even if you obviously may not have the best customer offering, perhaps you do not need to have the best customer offering. And I think we see that in many industries, such as telecoms and insurance; people choose them. We Norwegians are a little boring, so we always choose the slowest, the solid and dependable ones, and then there are the rebels who might choose the challengers, and then others follow them. But it also has something to do with Norwegian culture: when you are in an ordinary Norwegian meeting, ending the meeting by evaluating the meeting, for example, is not really part of our national character in business here, but if you go abroad, it can actually be quite common to do exactly that. Frode Stenstrøm: A company that wants to establish a culture both for measuring customer satisfaction and for using it in its own operations. How should they get started? Trond Gudbrandsen: I think, at least, it is about having a clear objective for what you are actually going to use it for, because, as I said, it takes time and you use a lot of resources, and it is costly too, both to conduct qualitative and quantitative surveys, so it has to be because you have... You have taken that broad strategic helicopter view that the company should be better within a category or a service, or occupy a different position from the one it has today, or strengthen a position that you believe will become more important heading into, for example, 2027 or 2030. And then... You have to find out where the company stands today, so that you know whether there is a very long way or a very short way to go to reach this goal. Then you have to create a good roadmap for achieving these objectives, a concrete action plan based on the answers you receive from customers. But it is incredibly important to have a clear objective: why are we doing this? Frode Stenstrøm: And if they have any questions, they can just contact us, can't they? Trond Gudbrandsen: Absolutely. Frode Stenstrøm: I usually wrap up these episodes with a final tip and question for both of you. Tor, your final piece of advice to customers in this context, at least. Tor Kristoffersen: I have borrowed a quote that says—and it relates somewhat to being conscious of what you are going to use it for. And the quote is as follows: satisfied customers often become loyal, but loyal customers are not necessarily satisfied. Trond Gudbrandsen: Very good. I would argue that, unfortunately, there are no shortcuts to highly complex issues, and it would have been fantastic if there were. But consumers are highly irrational and choose with both their hearts and their minds in a complex and random order. So, in my view, it becomes far too simplistic to check the box saying that we place a high priority on customer feedback, and then rely solely on NPS. Frode Stenstrøm: Excellent! And with those words, I would like to thank Trond Andreas Gudbransen, managing partner and director at Leonberg, for his contribution to this episode, and also thank you, Tor Kristoffersen, for your contribution. This episode can be found everywhere you listen to podcasts and on the website https://radio.prosesspilotene.no The podcast is produced by ProsessPilotene, which increases the value of your customers through the use of Microsoft technology and works primarily with the business processes of marketing, sales, service and project management. ProsessPilotenes analysis team can help you with artificial intelligence, insights and analysis, and the collaboration team can help you create websites, customer portals and customer clubs. I, Frode Stenstrøm, have been responsible for this episode; the project manager is Oddbjørg Berge. I am happy to receive questions and feedback on LinkedIn. Wishing everyone better business processes—until next time.