Calculating one’s Net Promoter Score has been a long used tactic to gauge business performance. Through various studies and reports, it’s been dubbed the “ultimate metric for gauging customer loyalty” and has helped companies in multiple verticals gain a competitive edge.
Understanding one’s Net Promoter Score over the years has had its advantages, however with the change in customer dynamics and a revolutionary digital age, an over-reliance on NPS can also have its faults.
In order to better understand more about Net Promoter Scores and how you can utilize it effectively, we’re defining NPS and looking at ways you can leverage this traditional tactic to generate the best results possible in a new business realm that is dictated by customers.
What Is A Net Promoter Score
A Net Promoter Score or “NPS” for short, is a system for gauging how likely your customers are to recommend your service or product to others. In essence, it’s a method to measure customer loyalty which as all businesses know, directly correlates to revenue growth.
Through the use of paper-based or online methods, companies ask a simple question, “How likely are you to refer/recommend our business?”, with the option to rate from 0-10. To gather further insight, it is usually embedded in a questionnaire or survey that poses more questions. When the desired number of customers answer the question, businesses then tally up their score to measure how satisfied their customers are with their service or product. The purpose of the Net Promoter Score is to motivate teams, to improve the customer experience, and identify areas of improvement.
In terms of scoring of the question, the Net Promoter Score can be divided into 3 categories Promoter, Passive, and Detractor.
- Promoter: A customer who rates the establishment either 9-10. This customer will actively refer other customers to the store and is responsible for business growth.
- Passive: A customer who rates the establishment either 7-8. Although satisfied, this customer isn’t jumping at the chance to tell people about the establishment and can be swayed by other brands.
- Detractor: A customer who rates the establishment either 0-6. These customers will most likely not visit your establishment again, in addition, they hinder growth and can tarnish your reputation.
The goal is to obviously generate as many promoters as possible and learn from the passive and detracting customers.
The Trouble With Traditional NPS Surveys
When leveraged correctly, Net Promoter Scores can help a business flourish. However, when used incorrectly, it might not have the same effect and actually put you behind the trend curve and turn-off customers. Here, we outline the most damaging tactics commonly used by businesses.
First and foremost is the practice of sending out lengthy, paper-based questionnaires. Traditional NPS surveys, like paper-based questionnaires, are a dated tactic. With the sudden evolution of technology, paper-based surveys are deemed costly ventures, a daunting task for customers, and a lengthy review process for team members. As a business looking to stay top of mind with the customer and to receive optimal feedback, it’s important that you go digital or incorporate newer tech approaches to the survey.
Another major downside of the traditional NPS survey is their frequency. Usually, these surveys are conducted annually or once a quarter. This can be unhelpful for customers with immediate inquiries or a customer that is having a negative experience. Although NPS surveys are a great way to see overall progress, they lack in providing more granular, real-time information – so it’s best paired with a solution that can provide that.
Lastly, NPS surveys are designed to provide research that management can use to have an overview of their team’s performance, however, it doesn’t address daily frontline behavior directly. From the responses, customer feedback isn’t necessarily shared with team members directly, so they can’t continuously improve their performance. Instead, they only obtain an overarching view of their progress – at the end of the year. This can be unhelpful if a customer has an issue with a specific team member or if there were specific dates where team members were providing sub-par service.
Although traditional methods might be dated in some aspects, and lack certain capabilities when paired with a modern Customer Experience Management (CEM) solution, an NPS survey can be a very effective method to grow your business. Here we outline how you can create a modern NPS survey by leveraging a CEM solution.
How a CEM Solution Can Help
In order to modernize your approach to deploying an NPS survey, it’s time to consider incorporating it with a Customer Experience Management (CEM) solution.
When NPS is used in conjunction with a CEM solution, it becomes a great opportunity to streamline the process of collecting feedback and doing more with the insights you get from your customers. A CEM solution will help your business obtain insight that can give you context and understanding as to why you achieved that specific NPS score. With an ideal CEM, you can collect data on the customer experience from an hourly, shift, and daily basis – and use reporting tools to understand trends and issues. With that information, you can immediately identify what is needed to improve service delivery and operations, so that your business is delivering an exceptional customer experience at all times. What’s more, some CEM solutions house real-time customer and team communication capabilities, so you can easily recover customers in your store before they can do damage on social media, feedback sites or most importantly your online NPS results.
In addition to helping you achieve your desired score, a CEM solution can also help you deploy your NPS survey in a convenient and accessible manner. As stated earlier, a paper-based NPS survey is a tactic of the past – they require heavy lifting from customers and teams, can be limiting when it comes to outreach and lastly are a nuisance for teams to execute. By going digital and deploying surveys through a CEM solution, you can approach customers on the channel of their choice and ask them a range of questions in the format you wish. Rather than having specific team members go through stacks of surveys, the data you receive is then calculated for you and summarized, making it easier for your teams to understand the concerns of customers.
With a modern CEM solution, you can motivate team members by providing them with real-time insights into customer satisfaction. An ideal CEM solution will use back of house scoreboards where customer satisfaction ratings can be shown to team members in real-time. These real-time scores of customer satisfaction can let team members know what areas they are excelling in and what areas need work – in the moment. This ensures team members are striving for impeccable service every shift, and for their entire shift, making your efforts to enhance overall NPS scores consistently optimized.
For a company in a number of verticals, utilizing NPS has helped them gain a competitive advantage and obtain a better understanding of their customer’s overall satisfaction. Knowing this can strengthen marketing strategies and employee performance so establishments can continue to build a promising future. However, it can be truly optimized by incorporating it with your broader customer experience strategy and CEM technical solution.
