 web-hosting company Homestead Technologies and the expansion of the ad budget for its QuickBooks Online service last year.
Mr. Bennett, who left Intuit at the end of 2007, later went on to serve as CEO of antivirus software maker Symantec, where he asked employees to stop using NPS, according to people familiar with his tenure. In response to the Journal, Mr. Bennett said he came to learn that the score is less meaningful than the open-ended question that can follow the rating.
The results are easy to manipulate, whether intentionally or unintentionally. On Reddit posts, Best Buy employees share tips and tricks to improve NPS, which the company derives from a random sample of customers. They said they can get better results when they explain to customers how the scoring works, or tell them their compensation is connected to the result. Some said they remind only the happiest customers to take the survey.
“When horrible NPS comments would come in, the management would rail at the employees,” said Alan Sabido, a former Best Buy employee who worked at a Las Vegas store for three years until he quit last year. Mr. Sabido recalled an instance when his store team received a bad score because a customer had a poor experience at a different Best Buy location.
NPS took on a greater role after Hubert Joly joined as Best Buy’s chief executive in 2012. The company said it was administering the NPS survey question to customers who bought products as well as those who didn’t. Best Buy also made the metric one of the criteria used to determine bonuses.
Since then, Best Buy has mentioned NPS or net promoter more than 50 times on earnings calls. The company has created a team of employees at its Richfield, Minn., headquarters called “Enterprise NPS” and some of its store workers are also tasked with “driving positive NPS results,” according to job postings.
When Mr. Joly announced he was stepping aside as CEO in April, Best Buy listed among his accomplishments that NPS grew by three points in the past fiscal year.
In securities filings, Delta Air Lines Inc. has said it measures “customer service performance” as the percentage point improvement in its average NPS. The methodology, the company said, was approved by a board committee and its progress is reported periodically to the board. NPS is also listed as a criterion for executive bonuses.
Carol Campbell, Delta’s managing director of customer experience, said most of her work entails using NPS to find opportunities to make investments. The airline added fresh-baked cookies on trans-Atlantic flights, chose to put nine seats in each Boeing 777 row instead of the standard 10 and made enhancements to its app because of NPS.
Delta executives describe NPS as the “true North Star,” she said, though the airline uses other customer metrics as well. “We have been able to statistically correlate our NPS performance with our revenue premium,” she said, referring to how much more Delta is able to charge than a competitor because of its brand.
“UnitedHealth Group uses NPS as an important measure to understand and continually improve upon the quality of the experience for those we serve,” a spokesman for the company said.
It’s hard for investors to interpret the score because companies don’t typically share response rates, margin of error, or whether results are adjusted for cultural and other biases. Research shows NPS tends to be higher when response rates are lower, and Americans tend to give higher scores than consumers in some countries such as Japan and Korea.
Since so many NPS surveys are sent to customers through emails, web pop-ups and phone calls, it has become harder to elicit a response these days, survey firms said. Email response rates are usually less than 5%, according to an estimate by Qualaroo, a software startup that helps companies conduct user research.
To find the number of mentions of the terms “net promoter” or “NPS,” The Wall Street Journal used transcripts of company conference calls discussing quarterly earnings, retrieved from Factiva, a business research tool owned by WSJ publisher Dow Jones & Co.
The analysis started with more than 40,000 transcripts for calls held from 2003 through 2018, for 688 existing companies that were members of the S&P 500 index at any point during that period, as indicated by S&P Dow Jones Indices.
The Journal analyzed transcripts from companies that are still publicly traded. It excludes 209 companies that were acquired during the period but includes 188 that left the index yet remain public.
Nearly 400 transcripts contained at least one of the terms. A paragraph was counted as a single mention if it contained one or more uses of the terms. Portions of the transcripts consisting of questions from analysts were ignored.
[Q]: "Article 172 of the Penal Code also provided that any organization whose activities were linked to incitement to discrimination was prohibited." --> French?
[A]: En particulier, l'article 4 de la Convention est mis en œuvre par l'article 172 du Code pénal et l'article 41 de la loi sur les publications de 1979, qui incriminent l'incitation à la haine ou au mépris contre une catégorie de personnes.

[Q]: "Formal Hospitality Expenses For the reporting period December 2, 2004, to March 1, 2005 Date Event Description Cost 21 December 2004 Commanding Officer hosted Christmas Luncheon comprising of RCMP Officers, Chaplains and Halifax Regional Police Officers $1,277.27 18 February 2005 Commanding Officer purchased 10 dinner tickets for Nova Scotia Special Olympics Annual Charity Fundraiser $1,250.00" --> French?
[A]: Activités officielles d'accueil Pour la période du rapport 2 décembre 2004 au 1 mars 2005 Date Description de l'événement Coût 21 décembre 2004 Le commandant divisionnaire est l'hôte d'un dîner de Noël pour les policiers et les aumôniers de la GRC et les policiers du Service de police régional de Halifax 1 277,27 $ 18 février 2005 Le commandant divisionnaire a acheté dix billets pour un dîner de bienfaisance pour les Jeux olympiques spéciaux de la Nouvelle-Écosse 1 250,00 $

[Q]: "The Human Rights Committee, established under article 28 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," --> French?
[A]:
Le Comité des droits de l'homme, institué en vertu de l'article 28 du Pacte international relatif aux droits civils et politiques,Talking York Sport with Charlotte Winter
The battle for York Sport President in this year’s YUSU election could be considered the closest race across the entire field. Hoping to secure enough votes to take the job is Charlotte Winter, and here’s what happened when The Yorker caught up with her at URY Candidate Interview Night.
Standing outside the green room at Candidate Interview Night is not a particularly fun place to be when everyone is rushing around preparing for interviews, so it was a breath of fresh air to sit down and interview Charlotte Winter, who must be one of the most personable candidates in the field. I wanted to ask her about her campaign, experiences and plans for York Sport should she become YUSU Sports President.
The Yorker: What kind of experiences would you bring to the role?
Charlotte Winter: I’m the current College Sport Officer on the York Sport committee which means that I have good knowledge of sport on all levels at York and that I know how York Sport works. I play both Netball and Lacrosse and currently captain the University Netball Barbarians team. Sport has made my time at university, and I want to see improvements on what we already have here at York.
TY: So talking about improvements, what are your plans?
CW: I want to see a unified York Sport. It’s no good having lots of separate parts to what should be one organisation. We could make Wednesday afternoons massive at York, there is no reason why that shouldn’t happen and I want to see it become a reality.
TY: Obviously you have had lots of dealings with college sport, so where does that fit into everything?
CW: I feel so passionately about college sport, it’s been my baby for the last year! I really do feel that York is so lucky to be a collegiate university and it is something that we should be making more use of in my opinion. Sport can be at the heart of that, but to make it happen we need to massively increase participation in college sport and make it more accessible for everyone. The introduction of college 3rds leagues next year will help with that, but we need to make further extensions. I also think that creating more college barbarian teams could really benefit college sport. If you look at Durham, their college sport participation rate is up at around 85%. I want to make it so that York can compete with that kind of figure.
TY: One thing that keeps cropping up with regards to York Sport is the issue of discipline. How do you think York Sport should deal with ill-discipline and to what extent should clubs take responsibility for the actions of individuals?
CW: Well obviously there has to be individual responsibility but I do feel that if an individual is representing a club and behaves irresponsibly then the club has to answer to that. If necessary I will take a hard line approach towards people who don’t act responsibly but communication is key. I want to make sure that York Sport is accessible and approachable, so if people feel that there are problems with discipline then they can come to