Net Promoter Scores, alongside CSAT and CES, have been an effective business measurement tool in order to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty.
For decades businesses have leveraged NPS to gauge how likely customers are to refer their business, vying for new ways to improve their score and surpass industry benchmarks.
In this article, in order to aid your NPS efforts, we’re looking at how your business can consistently improve Net Promoter Scores to maximize customer satisfaction and drive revenue.
What is a Net Promoter Score (NPS)?
As defined in the Benbria CX Dictionary, NPS is a tool to measure how likely customers are to recommend a service or product to friends, family, or colleagues. It provides insight into customer loyalty and can help businesses determine how to maximize revenue.
To calculate a Net Promoter Score, businesses must understand the NPS scale. Ranked from 1-10, the score of 9-10 constitutes a customer who is an active Promoter, 7-8 equates to a Passive customer, and 0-6 is defined as a business Detractor. For businesses, the ideal median score should be between 9-10, with the majority of customers being brand advocates, promoting their experience, and encouraging others to join.
How To Improve The Net Promoter Score Benchmark In Your Industry
When it comes to improving business operations and customer satisfaction, understanding NPS is critical. However, what is also critical, is how your NPS score correlates with other businesses in your respective industry – because how your business stands out from competitors determines how successful you are. Take a moment to think about the following questions: How is your business standing out from competitors? How well are you performing against them? In what ways can you improve the overall experience?
In this next section, we share our top considerations for improving and surpassing the NPS benchmark within your industry.
Determine Clear Goals
Determining goals ultimately drives your NPS in the direction you want it to go. It is the end result you’re hoping to achieve with the execution of your NPS. When devising your goals, make sure you are creating concise, realistic, and achievable goals that are based on data. Assess your current stance, take a look at how competitors in your industry are performing and make a data-driven decision based on what you’d like to see emerge from your Net Promoter Score.
Send Your Net Promoter Score In Real-Time
When it comes to engaging customers and ensuring that you’re receiving timely and relevant feedback, sending your NPS survey in real-time is essential. Not only does it increase the likelihood of your survey being received and read, but it also ensures that information is accurate and detailed with the experience being top of mind for the customer. In addition, sending NPS in real-time can reduce at-risk customers from sharing their negative sentiments with friends or on forums without you having the opportunity to resolve the issue.
Using a customer experience management system, you can simplify sending surveys in real-time. Create a pre-populated message that you can tap and send right when a customer leaves. Or automate the process and schedule messages to go out at key moments of truth. Whatever the case, sending a message in real-time is a great way to garner more data that can help you improve your score in the future.
Measure Net Promoter Score Over Time and Adjust
Surpassing your benchmark starts with understanding where you stand and strategizing how you can consistently do better. Customer preferences will continue to evolve as time goes on, and while you may reach a favourable NPS score today, that doesn’t mean it will be as favourable in a few months. With that, it’s important to consistently monitor your NPS score, the trends associated with it, and adjust in real-time.
With a customer experience platform, your business can obtain insight from a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or from a customized date range to help you understand how you’re performing. What’s more, businesses can understand based on one specific location or a range of locations for a more holistic view. In addition, a CEM solution like Loop can go one step further by providing heat maps, trending topics, and more, so you’re always on top of customer preferences. This helps you better understand your customer while encouraging friendly competition among establishments.
Leverage Sophisticated Technology
Today, customer engagement begins by leveraging a sophisticated piece of experience technology. Not only does it provide a robust set of tools to help gain a truly competitive advantage but it also makes operations much more streamlined.
With a customer experience platform like Loop, you can automate sending your Net Promoter Score at critical touchpoints along the customer journey. Reach out immediately after a customer’s experience, or reach out during the experience, regardless, with a customer experience platform you can reach out at key moments to optimize response rates.
In addition, sophisticated software can also ensure you’re reaching the customer on the channel of their choice. For instance, the Loop Experience Platform offers a number of customer-preferred channels such as Facebook Messenger, Twitter DM, email, SMS, and more. By leveraging a specific channel already in use by the customer, you encourage greater response rates and show the customer that you understand their preferences and are willing to tailor the experience.
Lastly, as previously mentioned, a CEM solution can provide you with the data you need to improve your score and wow customers. Identify trends or understand the customers preferred channel, with a CEM you can use NPS to propel your business and better understand who you’re selling to.
Ask For More Feedback
Gain a more holistic view of customer sentiment by asking the customer for additional feedback in the same survey. Ask long-form questions to understand specific moments of exceptional service or ask customers to elaborate on why they provided the score that they did. Having a more detailed account of the experience can help you pinpoint direct issues while also giving you a more granular view of customer expectations. If a customer goes as far as providing insight on employee names, location details, time of day, etc. you can use that information to better your operations and ensure that your experience is unparalleled.
Looking to start measuring your Net Promoter Score? Discover Loop Feedback and how you can build a robust survey unique to your business’s needs.
