We all look at the reviews. Booking a hotel, choosing a restaurant, buying from a company we haven’t used before. The score matters because it tells us what other people experienced, not what the organisation says about itself.
Service consumers want more than an organisation telling them it provides a good service. They want evidence from the people who have actually experienced it.
That feels particularly relevant now. From 1st October, the Regulator of Social Housing’s new requirements put an even greater focus on transparency, accountability and the quality of services tenants receive. Housing providers are increasingly expected not just to deliver good services, but to evidence performance and make that information visible.
It makes the question behind service measures even more important: what does good actually look like?
At Neemar, our client NPS is +96 and our candidate NPS is +88, compared with an average of +43 across the recruitment sector. We’re incredibly proud of those numbers. But the score is only part of the value. The feedback behind it tells us why someone would recommend us, what they value about the experience and what we need to keep doing well.
As a marketer, naturally I’m interested in the numbers. But I’m probably more interested in why numbers like these have become so powerful.
Most organisations will tell you they provide a good service. “Excellent customer service” has been written on so many websites, proposals and company value statements but, on its own, it tells us very little. A score is different because, in theory at least, the organisation isn’t marking its own homework. That is why ratings, reviews and satisfaction measures can carry so much weight. They provide evidence of an experience rather than simply a claim about one.
Whether it’s a five-star review, an NPS response or a tenant satisfaction measure, the principle is similar: Don’t just tell me your service is good. Show me what the people experiencing it think.
The score tells you how you’re doing. The feedback tells you why, and this is where I think the real value of measurement sits. A strong score tells you that something is working. The feedback tells you what that something is. Why did somebody give you a 10, what did they value, what made the experience stand out, what would make them choose you again, what made them willing to recommend you?
Those answers are useful for marketing, but they’re arguably even more useful for the business. They tell you what customers notice, what they value and what you need to protect as you grow. The same applies to the feedback that isn’t a 10. It gives you another view of the experience and, importantly, something you can act and improve on.
At Neemar, the headline NPS gives us an external measure of our service. The comments behind it help us understand what clients and candidates actually value about working with us. The number gives us something credible to talk about externally, but the feedback gives us something useful to work with internally.
There’s a clear parallel for social housing. Tenant Satisfaction Measures give housing providers a consistent way to understand and evidence how tenants experience their services, but the opportunity is bigger than reporting the score.
What are the highest-scoring services doing differently, what are residents responding positively to, where has a change in service resulted in a change in satisfaction, what can one team learn from another? Those are the questions that turn measurement into insight.
A satisfaction score doesn’t just tell you whether people are happy. Over time, and alongside the feedback behind it, it can help an organisation understand why. It can show where service improvements are being felt, where expectations are changing and where there are experiences worth learning from and repeating. That feels particularly important in a sector where the experience of the person receiving the service is increasingly visible.
Good service deserves to be measured
There can sometimes be a slight discomfort around organisations promoting strong scores, and there shouldn't be. If you ask people for their opinion, measure it consistently and they overwhelmingly tell you they’ve had a positive experience, that’s worth talking about. For the business, it creates accountability and insight, for customers, it creates confidence and, for marketers, it gives us something particularly valuable: proof.
That’s why we’re proud of our NPS. Not simply because they’re great numbers to put on an image, but because every score represents someone who has actually experienced working with us, and their collective feedback can say something our own marketing never could.
Good service shouldn’t just be something an organisation says it provides. It should be something the people receiving it can recognise, measure and vouch for.
Can you turn your claim about good service into evidence of it?
