Surveys, the ultimate question, and the net promoter score

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The above poll is an example of an ultimate question that can be used to calculate a net promoter score.

If you’re a Subscription customer and you’ve logged some support cases, you may have received a survey invitation. You may have even filled the survey out 😉

These customer satisfaction surveys are based on the Net Promoter methodology, which uses a “would you recommend” question to divide customers into three categories: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors.

The “would you recommend” question is known as the ultimate question, and uses a 0-to-10 point rating scale:

  • Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others, fueling growth.
  • Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offerings.
  • Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth.

Based on the survey results, a Net Promoter Score is calculated:

The general idea is that if you know your NPS, you can focus in on what you need to change to increase promoters and decrease detractors. This requires a dialog with your customers; currently support managers are responsible for following up with detractors to find out what went wrong during the support case.

So far, in practice, what I observe is that we don’t get enough surveys returned, so every single detractor has a huge impact on our NPS. Looking at my own NPS scores, I think I would have to focus not on detractors (unless I really messed up) but rather on the passives. Because if you had only one detractor, but everybody else was a passive, you’d end up with a negative NPS. Hardly something to brag about, and certainly not something that will look good to management.

Overriding local mental ray settings for a pass

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I was recently asked how an xsibatch script could override local mental ray settings for a pass (the user was using xsibatch -script to force certain settings before kicking off a render).

You just have to get Pass.Properties(“mental ray”).
That will give you either the shared renderer property, or the local one if the pass has a local copy.


p = Application.ActiveProject.ActiveScene.ActivePass
mr_prop = p.Properties("mental ray")

# a local mentalray property has one Owner
# a shared mentalray property is owned by the PassContainer (Passes)
# and the passes that don't have a local copy
if mr_prop.Owners.Count == 1:
	Application.LogMessage( "Local" )

# or you could check LocalProperties
if p.LocalProperties("mental ray") != None :
	Application.LogMessage( "Local" )

Software Retirement Notice for XSI 7.01 and earlier

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From http://autodesk.com/softimagemanualactivation

Software Retirement Notice
In order to maintain a high level of support for our Autodesk® Softimage® software customers moving forward, please be advised that historical versions of Softimage products (versions prior to Autodesk Softimage 7.5) will be retired effective August 1, 2011. If you intend to move a historical version of Softimage from one workstation to another, please do so prior to the retirement date to make sure that you will be able to re-activate your license.

To learn more about getting current with Softimage, please visit: http://www.autodesk.com/softimage.

Exporting FBX to Maya

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My understanding is that Crosswalk FBX exports the frame rate and time slider information from Softimage, but that the FBX import plugins don’t currently support that.

  • In Maya 2012, you’ll have to change the frame rate before you import the FBX file. You can set the Maya frame rate in Window > Settings/Preferences >Preferences >Settings >Working Units-Time.
    Note that the frame rate is reset when you restart Maya or start a new scene.
  • In the Maya Import dialog box, when you click a .FBX file, look at Options > File Type Specific Options > Statistics.
    You’ll see something like this (note that File frame rate is not correctly parsed by the importer):

    System frame rate: 24 ***Warning: Frame rates do not match***
File frame rate: 30
  • Note also there is Fill timeline option under File Type Specific Options > Extra Options. This will update the Maya timeline range to match the range of animation in the FBX file.