Virgin Media – NPS Driving the Candidate Experience

The Challenge

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is one of the most important Key Performance Indicators and measures of candidate satisfaction for Virgin Media. Every candidate who attends either a telephone assessment or face-to-face assessment is sent an NPS survey by email in which they are asked to rate from 1 to 10:

• How likely [they] are you to recommend Virgin Media to [their] family and friends?
• How responsive were the Recruitment Team?
• How helpful were the Recruitment Team?

Candidates who give a rating of six or below are Detractors; those giving a seven or eight are Passives; and those giving a nine or 10 are Promoters. Subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters gives the overall NPS score.

Virgin Media historically receive many applications for each role and, with an application to hire ratio of 25:1, the majority of applications result in a rejection. For a long period of time, the average score rated for overall experience was -29 points. Virgin Media challenged us to improve this score to 0 – so that the Promoters cancelled out the Detractors.

The Solution

We categorised and analysed the most common reasons for a Detractor score and then brainstormed our findings with Virgin Media. We then agreed a series of interventions and assigned a TMP project manager to implement each solution. The main themes identified were our speed of response to candidate queries and the provision of timely feedback.

Our improvements included:

• Calling candidates within two working days of completing their online application where previously they’d received an automated email.
• Actively offering candidates a telephone interview date within two days of application where previously they were left to self-schedule within a week.
• Including a reminder telephone call and email two days before the final assessment as additional checkpoints.
• Introducing live webchat so that candidates could contact us online 8am to 8pm Monday to Friday as well as by telephone and email.
• Rather than waiting a week for an update, ensuring every candidate receives a courtesy call within 24 hours of attending a final assessment, even if the hiring manager hasn’t decided on the outcome.
• Giving all rejected candidates the opportunity to receive feedback after their telephone and face-to-face interview, rather than only after their face-to-face interview.

Benefits and Results

The results have been amazing! Virgin Media’s score moved from an overall NPS of -29 to +12! The team responsiveness rating has risen to +22 and the team helpfulness rating to +25. Beyond the NPS, we’ve also seen time from application to telephone interview reduced to three days; time from application to face-to-face interview reduced to eight days; and overall time to hire reduced to nine days.

Feedback from candidates has been very encouraging:

• “The recruitment team was very informative and welcoming. It made the whole experience very comfortable and friendly. A heartfelt service right from the start.”
• “Very quick and easy process. I was kept up to date on all steps.”
• “The overall setup that is used to introduce people to working for [Virgin Media]…has been very informative and I am very happy with the process as a whole.”