CustomerGauge Bavaria Film Case Study

Case Study: Bavaria Film

How one of Europeʼs largest film production companies implemented Net Promoter® Score with CustomerGauge, and is changing the organisation as a result.

One year ago Bavaria Film started to implement Net Promoter Score (NPS) with the help of CustomerGauge.

Bavaria Film is one of the biggest film production companies in Europe. The

head office in the south of Munich is the centre of an international network of subsidiaries and co-operation partners. The first subsidiary that started to work with NPS was FTA (Film- und Theater- Ausstattung GmbH) which is the biggest German retail facility for props and costumes with locations in Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and Leipzig. More than 23 000 square

meters of storage capacity helps serve the worlds of television, movies, events and advertising, providing props and costumes for famous productions like „Das Boot“, „Buddenbrooks“ and the daily soap-opera „Sturm der Liebe“.

Dr Robert Lackner is the Managing Director of FTA and has been focusing on customer orientation for the demanding clients of the organisation.

“Could we work with the Net Promoter Score scale? Initially we were not sure…” says Dr Lackner,

interviewed by journalist Ruth Wenger. “At first we had

concerns using NPS because it is a very demanding scale,

and we were sceptical if the Germans, which usually do not

tend to vote on extremes, would be comfortable with such a

scale. But in the end we were convinced and very

surprised with the scores. FTA for example has a score

above 60. This is great start!”

Starting out with Net Promoter

Bavaria Film had previously conducted basic surveys and

that had helped understand what the customers were

thinking, but it lacked the operational aspects and direct

feedback they were looking for. After some research, the

Net Promoter Score concept looked most promising, and it

became clear that this could be used through the entire

organisation.

Dr Lackner explains how the Net Promoter project started:

“FTA was the first organization within Bavaria Film that

implemented NPS. We started in the Munich office of FTA.

This was a very good approach because we began in a

small environment of one specific department, and luckily

we had a project team here in Munich where the people

were open to this type of concept. I think this was a key

aspect for the success of the project.”

Challenges and learnings from the rollout

One of the challenges facing FTA was working out a list of

customers to survey, which grew over time. Dr Lackner:

“First we planned to limit the survey to customer contacts

that come to FTA and deal with us directly. But after some

discussion we added other influential members of the

buying group, like creative people as well as financial

managers in our clients to the contacts to survey. We

ended up with a survey sample that was double the size of

what we originally planned.”

After the pilot the company made a plan for a rollout for the

other subsidiaries of Bavaria Film. While it was easy to

convince most of the key managers to implement NPS, one

subsidiary manager was critical about using NPS. This

could have been a block for the entire project, and so this

subsidiary was tackled and he implemented the survey

next. “When he saw the positive results he was convinced,”

says Dr Lackner. “Now he is working as a sort of

ambassador in Bavaria Film for the project!”

Relatively quickly, the survey process evolved at Bavaria.

Dr Lackner explains: “We started off with an annual survey

because we wanted to know what our customers thought of

us. But we quickly realized that it is important to have an on

going quality-control-instrument. So we switched to a

Lights, Camera, Feedback!

Bavaria Film Case Study

© CustomerGauge / Directness 2011 7/2011

Dr Lackner

quarterly based survey.” FTA now asks clients for feedback

on every project at the end of each three month period. Dr

Lackner continues: “We ask clients we are doing business

with, how the project went and how we performed in their

eyes. This is extremely helpful because we get a direct

feedback for the projects we are doing with them. It is a

very powerful tool to have continual quality control.”

The impact of NPS

With more than a year of Net Promoter experience

departments are now more confident in asking for customer

involvement. Before relaunching FTAʼs Online Access, the

team started a group discussion with customers which

contributed valuable experiences and information that they

did not have previously.

FTA found that Net Promoter has had a direct impact on

daily work. Dr Lackner gives an example: “At our location in

Hamburg, customers alerted us to service problems in one

department because, frankly, we had decreased the

number of personnel a little too much. We found this out

with the survey on one hand and through a follow up a

long telephone call I had with one customer we questioned,

who gave me direct feedback about this point! To solve

this, we switched from freelancers to permanent employees

and we directly saw the impact on our customersʼ

satisfaction in the next NPS-survey. And we also saw the

impact on the turnover.”

Another example was a customer in Munich, who had given

a favourable comment but a negative score. FTAʼs head of

department took the

opportunity to call the

customer directly,

and found that the

customer had made

a rating mistake, but

was very happy to

correct it, even

putting FTA one grade higher. Dr Lackner says “This is a

very good example how NPS works and its positive impact.

It puts the organization directly in contact with the

customers. They feel involved and that their needs are

being listened to”.

Choosing a partner - CustomerGauge

“As Bavaria Film is the first company in the film business

(in Germany as well as in America) to consider NPS, it was

very important for us to have professional assistance to

help us with implementing the tool” Dr Lackner says. He

explains that they engaged Amsterdam-based

CustomerGauge to help plan and implement the Net

Promoter rollout. “They were professional partners in the

process and did a very good job. CustomerGauge helped

us understand who our customers are. At first we had a

narrow-defined list of customers, and that changed. We

have now a broader view of the customers and the

structures of our customers.”

Initially CustomerGauge did consulting work for FTA to

implement the Net Promoter Score, then assisted with the

switch from an annual survey to a

quarterly survey. Dr Lackner:

“CustomerGauge is helping us a lot

with continual monitoring of our

clients. As we are using NPS now in

a various number of divisions, it was

also extremely important to have

CustomerGauge engaging the

different project managers

throughout the organization.”

Dr Lackner adds: “Working with CustomerGauge was a

very positive and professional experience. They helped us

understand a lot more about our customers. We can

definitely recommend NPS and CustomerGauge.”

Investment and Project costs:

Bavaria Film is now using NPS on a group level, and it is

becoming a standard. They are now able to manage the

entire group on a single platform from CustomerGauge,

with different dashboards for individual subsidiaries. This

sharing of resources has helped keep costs down – a key

requirement of the project. “When I compare the costs for

NPS per year to the cost of numerous traditional

quantitative surveys for all the single divisions,” says Dr

Lackner, “the costs are really very limited and therefore the

tool is very attractive. As we now measure the customersʼ

loyalty on a quarterly base we are doing much of the

administration within the companies, which is a good way

to keep the costs low.”

The Future:

Dr Lackner feels that since starting NPS the company has

had some very positive results and experiences. Regarding

the future he says they are focusing on staff training,

establishing structures to server customers better, and to

rollout NPS to the remaining Bavaria Film subsidiaries.

“There is still a long way to go and we are still learning

about us and our customers… But we will never stop being

a customer-orientated company!”

Acknowledgments: Net Promoter, NPS, and Net Promoter Score are

trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, and Fred

Reichheld.

Special thanks to Dr Robert Lackner, FTA / Bavaria Film, Ruth Wenger