Understanding Recommendations

How likely is it that you would recommend a business to a friend or colleague?

On a scale of 0-10, with 0 is not at all and 10 is extremely likely, you'd need to be at 9 or 10 to want to do it. The idea that you could measure with such precision and one metric stuck, even though the concept is surrounded by controversy.

Originated from a book and the work of Fred Reichheld, this measure is called the Net Promoter score (NPS), because detractors are subtracted from promoters, to provide the estimate of the difference between number of promoters and number of detractors for your business.

As a single question, it may be a good start.

However, you will need to dig deeper to find out if your customers would recommend your business. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you can sit back and copy what other companies are doing and remain complacent about finding out if your customers are really happy with you.

Would you recommend this person?

In all likelihood, this is more the question people hear when asked about a business today. Let's face it things have changed quite a bit even in the last couple of years. We have more free agents, we have more sole proprietor businesses, and consultancies.

And, especially with social media, the people we talk with have come to represent the brand and business to us. Are you hiring and retaining employees with this in mind? Are you putting the right people in contact with customers? For solopreneurs, do you have a mechanism to capture recommendations?

Public endorsement is different than recommendation

I've seen a few companies doing this. They clip a tweet by someone who says they loved their transaction with them, and posted that on their site or blog. For example, this here from my friend Kim is a public endorsement. One meant to help connect me with another professional in her network.

A recommendation reads more like a call to action: book Valeria Maltoni as speaker, she rocks the house when it comes to digging into your branding efforts to build community. Or something like that (more topics here). To make this real, if you hear about a new conference where you think I would be a great keynote, you go ahead and tell the organizers. Plus, you make yourself available to speak about your experience.

A recommendation is also unlike a testimonial. Feel free to send me those any time. You can submit them to my LinkedIn profile under Conversation Agent. I have a special red carpet for welcoming you and the statements. Testimonials are a bit easier to give, as they don't get into specifics about why.

Call to action and pain point

The call to action might impress you, however, without an indication of what the pain point or challenges were, you're still left navigating a sea of sameness. Why book Valeria as speaker instead of someone else? What specific issues will she address in the workshop that your business professionals will eat up?

Here we're getting more to the place where you want to be. This is the reason why the NPS is not enough, you need the qualitative information that goes with it. Plus, when you understand better why people recommend you and your business, you can do more of that and build on it, and less of the other stuff. 

With mixed media, understanding recommendations, their role and effectiveness in the customer conversation mix is even more important. What works? What doesn't? Both for your customers and for you.

[image http://www.flickr.com/photos/seeminglee/ / CC BY-SA 2.0]

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What's your take?

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Other resources:

Customer Experience More Important Than Ever

How to Write a Business Recommendation

The Value of Reputation

© 2010 Valeria Maltoni. All rights reserved.

Comments

[Leah Kaiz]

I really like your point about understanding why people recommend you and your business. This kind of self analysis is not only necessarily in business but in life. When you know what's working you can focus your energy verses being all over the place.

[Paul L'Acosta]

Your post reminded me that I need a refresh-session on the Pareto principle. Thanks Valeria!

[Anne Libby]

There's also a cynical fatigue in the world of social media -- or at least I seem to have caught this virus, which causes me to apply a discounting factor to online recommendations.

A new client recently offered to recommend me on Linked In. I've seen some obvious recommendation trades by former associates, detailing skills and accomplishments that I hadn't seen (though I'm not all-seeing!). I had an interesting discussion with the client, thanked her, and said, "no thanks."

Not sure how to crack that one, though I do believe in -- and depend on -- the power of personal (offline) recommendations.

[Josh Can Help]

I've never really though about the different levels of recorded, public endorsement, be it recommendation, testimonial, etc. It really has me wondering which ones can help me the most and which clients are apt to do which type.

Where do reviews fit into all of this? People privately recommend me on a regular basis but I'm always seeking to add to my review bucket (mostly Google). I guess a review has less of a positive connotation than a recommend or an endosement...

[LargeFormatPrinting]

Wow I had never thought about the difference between testimonials, recommendations and endorsements. You've really gotten me thinking about the type of expression I want my customers to express, and potential customers to hear.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Leah - being grounded in or starting with what works allows you then to build upon it, instead of chasing people around. And there is also a time for every purpose; you may need to have different kinds of referrals and testimonials for different requests/uses.

@Paul - glad to be of service.

@Anne - there's some scratching each other's back going on, that is human nature though, not just online ;) Deliberate and thoughtful is hard to do. There's also those who've had the chance to see you at work, yet because they get asked by so many, pull back and recommend no one. I've recommended people who never even thanked me; and I don't recommend lightly. That's why I'm more and more cautious online and offline.

@Josh - ask them. Ask them to point you to exactly what they'd look at to hire someone. I'm used to thinking about reviews more in terms of books or products... good question.

@LargeFormatPrinting - wow, it would really be nice to be talking with a person/name vs. a company moniker. After all, social is about being human and not playing to search key terms.