Leveraging Net Promoter ScoreSM in Your Business
Section 5 & 6: Why NPS® is Helpful, How to Use NPS in Your Business
Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash
Section 5: Why NPS is Helpful
NPS is helpful for your customers
In the realm of customer surveys and feedback collection, NPS is quick, easy to collect, and it is not a big time commitment on your customer's part. If they are going to give feedback, this is a low impact way to do it. Also, your customers benefit from the improved products and services that come from you improving your business!
NPS is helpful for your staff
It creates a common language for your business and helps staff to get on the same page. We will talk in the next section about the critical role staff plays in customer experience success and how to set customer experience expectations.
NPS is helpful for you
NPS helps you predict your customers' actions because it is a "leading" indicator of loyalty and future customer behavior. This means that it anticipates customer behavior, whereas CSAT and most other CX metrics are "lagging" indicators of past customer behavior. Anticipating your customers' actions is helpful in guiding your strategies and actions.
Section 6: How to Use NPS in Your Business
Four Steps to Success
We have now covered why you should be tracking NPS and how to track it – but what do you do with it once you have it? Ultimately, your goal is to move customers up in their score from detractors to passives to promoters. To do this, there are four steps to success:
Prepare
The first step to success in using NPS for your business is to prepare and educate your staff. They should know your company-wide customer experience goals and expectations and not feel blindsided when you implement changes.
Your staff are front line employees that your customers interact with, so setting up consistent expectations for your employees will create a more stable customer xperience.
Improvements you plan to make will impact your employee's day-to-day work, so inviting them into your plans early on will create a culture where everyone is pulling the same direction.
Listen
This is when you take in the feedback you are receiving. Try to not feel closed-minded or avoid listening because you are afraid of what you'll hear. Be open to hearing all feedback – the good, the bad, and the ugly.
It's easy to just focus on the positive feedback and celebrate how many Promoters you have; but being willing to listen to your Passives and Detractors will be where the most growth will happen.
Remember, a negative comment is a positive for you – because it's better to know about an issue than be left in the dark! In addition, negative feedback, which is likely what you'll hear from Detractors but could also be included in comments from Passive and even Promoters, include the clues that point you toward opportunities to make continuous improvements in your business.
Learn
Embracing NPS is also embracing the mindset that your business isn't perfect and there is room for improvement. Your customers know what it's like to be your customer – you don't!
There may be holes in your process you aren't aware of, and issues (big and small) that you had no idea existed. The more you listen, the more you will learn about your own business, your customers, and where you can make the biggest impact in your customer experience.
Act
We have said this before and we'll say it again – your goal is making incremental improvements in your NPS, not a perfect score.
To achieve this, you engage with each of your three categories of customers – Promoters, Passives, and Detractors. Of course, you will engage with each group differently, depending on their score and the outcome you are looking for.
How to Act (Engage) with each NPS Group:
Promoters
These are your super fans, having scored a 9 or 10 (traditional 11-point scale) or "Very Likely" (5-phrase scale). They already love what you do and are generally pretty loyalty to your business.
For Promoters, you want to capture their positive feedback to use in your marketing to gain new customers! Use their comments and reviews as testimonials on your website, social media, print marketing materials, posters in your store, really anywhere!
This will vary from business to business. If you know where most of your new customers typically come from, you can use this information to target potential customers with this positive feedback to show the great work your company does. Remember to celebrate the positive comments with your team, so they know all the good work they're already doing to create great customer experiences.
Passives
These are your somewhat neutral customers. Having scored a 7 or 8 (traditional 11-point scale) or only "Likely" (5-phrase scale), they are not your biggest fans (yet), but generally don't have negative feelings about your business.
Maybe some small hiccup happened throughout their customer journey, or the product didn't exactly meet their expectations.
It's important to understand what is happening with this group so that you can remedy whatever negative experience they are having. By fixing these issues – no matter how small – you can hopefully convert these Passives into Promoters.
Detractors
Yes, Detractors are your most challenging group, but they also have the most opportunity for improvement.
Having listened and learned about the issues Detractors are having, you can define specific areas for action. These will of course vary widely depending on your industry and business, but your Detractors will identify the biggest areas for improvement.
Make sure their feedback and concerns are heard and validated, then actually make the changes. Letting them know that you have listened, learned, and are taking action will hopefully give you another chance to earn their business and next time upgrade them to Passive or even a Promoter!
Just like how you'll celebrate the positives, ensure your teams analyze the negatives to build actions plans around the feedback.