Founded in 2019, NPS Prism is Bain’s cloud-based customer experience benchmarking service that provides actionable insights and analysis to guide the creation of game-changing customer experiences. Leading brands all over the world use it to know what customer moments matter, allocate resources and increase loyalty. 

NPS Prism for grocers helps identify who is leading in each sub-segment of market. It is refreshed with new insights and rankings quarterly, including: 

• Relationship NPS - a grocer’s score at the brand level vs. competitors 
• Episode NPS - which customer experiences create promoters vs. detractors 
• Channel NPS - how a grocer and competitors perform in-person vs. online and across other channels 
• Last trip NPS – a grocer’s score based on the shopper’s most recent experiences  
• Share of wallet - where else a grocer’s customers do business, and why 
• Operational key performance indicators - how a grocer and competitors perform on customer reported metrics (e.g., checkout wait times) 

Regional grocer H-E-B is the overall loyalty leader with relationship NPS (rNPS) of 65, while Costco leads the Warehouse club category with rNPS of 55. When it comes to discounters, Aldi ranks highest with rNPS of 55 while Amazon leads in the online only category with rNPS of 46. 

As leaders in these categories, the grocers have established deeper relationships with their customer bases, earning them a higher share of wallet, more frequent visits and increased positive referrals from their consumers. According to Bain’s analysis, H-E-B has two to three times the share of wallet among its customers than its low-NPS competitors.  

Today’s release also includes unbiased, direct customer feedback from shoppers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Bain’s data shows that grocers are facing a double whammy—staffing shortages and high customer expectations around the in-store experience. According to the data, customers want staff who are friendly and knowledgeable. In fact, customers are more likely to penalize grocers if they interact with someone who is unfriendly—resulting in an NPS penalty of -110 pts—than if they cannot find someone in a timely matter, an NPS loss of 45 pts. 

“Grocery has been one of the sectors most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Jason Barro, a Bain & Company partner and founder of NPS Prism. “Consumer habits shifted rapidly, accelerating some existing trends and redefining customer expectations. Loyalty in this industry is crucial: deeper relationships mean customers that spend more in stores and refer others to the chain in a favorable way. NPS Prism is an essential benchmarking service for grocers to understand how they stack up versus competitors in the specific situations that matter the most to their clients.” 

Among the questions that NPS Prism answers:  

• Where are we ahead/behind our competitors? 
• How much is it worth for us to close those gaps?  
• Where else do our customers do business, and why? 
• What do I tell our teams on the ground to actually go do? 
• What are the key moments that turn customers into promoters or detractors? 
• What products, channels and experiences should we invest resources in? 

NPS Prism for Grocery joins the growing suite of NPS Prism services tailored to specific industries including banking, insurance, utilities, telecom, auto and airlines. The service leverages Bain’s ground-breaking work in understanding the key drivers of customer loyalty using the Net Promoter Score.