Innovating Analytics: How the Next Generation of Net Promoter Can Increase Sales and Drive Business Results

Introduction

In 2006, Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman of the New York Times wrote an international best seller titled The World Is Flat in which he analyzed the accelerating pace of globalization. The title encapsulated the idea that the world had increasingly become a level playing field in terms of commerce: new companies could rise to prominence in the blink of an eye and could fail as quickly. The title also described the shift required by countries, companies, and individuals to remain competitive in a global market where historic advantages were becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Friedman outlined 10 flatteners of the world, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the development of Netscape, and the rise of search engines like Google. The tenth flattener was the most potent of them all: the “steroids,” which involved digital, virtual, mobile, and personal. Friedman showed that all analog content and processes (from entertainment, to photography, to word processing) were being digitized and therefore they could be shaped, manipulated, and transmitted. The virtual could be performed at high speed with total ease, the mobile could be executed anywhere and anytime, and the personal could be performed by anyone—ergo more and more flatteners, such as the iPhone and iPad, Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, and on and on.

These steroids have greatly influenced the field that I study, the customer experience. To adjust Friedman's metaphor to this area, I would describe it as The World ...