ForeSee Introduces the Word-of-Mouth Index (WoMI)

After  18 months testing with nearly 300 companies, ForeSee, a provider of customer experience analytics, today introduced the Word-of-Mouth Index (WoMI), which it says takes Satmetrix's very popular Net Promoter Score (NPS) to the next level. 

The company says WoMI evolves NPS by measuring both likelihood to recommend and likelihood to detract from a specific brand, allowing organizations to take action to foster more positive word-of-mouth and decrease negative word-of-mouth.

 "More than a decade ago, NPS was introduced as a metric that has been used to focus organizations around the customer and help executives track customer loyalty with a single number. Yet, it doesn't accurately represent negative word-of-mouth, and it's not an actionable metric or a predictor of growth," said Larry Freed, CEO of ForeSee, in a statement. "As customer metrics evolved along with social media and methods for spreading word-of-mouth, NPS hasn't kept pace with today's ecosystem that includes customer megaphones such as Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp. WoMI is the evolution of NPS, offering a more precise analytic measure to address the sophistication of customers and provide today's businesses with an accurate number that works within a system of metrics to improve bottom-line results."

 In addition, ForeSee also argues that NPS does not distinguish between passive and active word-of-mouth. "One of my many frustrations with the Net Promoter Score is the assumption that people who aren't likely to recommend must be actively detracting from the brand," said Kevin Ertell, vice president of e-commerce at Sur La Table, in a statement. "I like that WoMI actually asks customers if they're detracting so we can get an accurate read on promoters vs. detractors. For us this metric is still only one part of a more comprehensive voice-of-customer measurement system that truly helps us understand our customers' wants and needs."

"In the past, we used to track and promote our NPS scores pretty heavily internally and loved the simplicity of a single metric to demonstrate whether our dealer customers were likely to be promoters or detractors of Cars.com," said Josh Chapman, vice president of operations at Cars.com, in a statement. "Since implementing the Word of Mouth Index, it's helped us gain a more accurate picture of our Net Promoter Score – which was overstating detractors by more than 120 percent on average – for the customer service experience we provide our dealers. Measuring WoMI as part of a comprehensive system of customer experience analytics is giving us much better insight into the difference between positive and negative word-of-mouth and how both are ultimately influenced by satisfaction."

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