Why You Should Use Net Promoter Score Surveys

A Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a simple way to gain valuable customer insights. If your business isn’t currently using an NPS survey to gauge customer satisfaction, here are a few reasons why you should consider it.

How NPS Works

Whether you want to increase brand loyalty or increase RMR, it all boils down to the satisfaction of your customers. Thankfully, NPS surveys make it easy for customers to provide feedback and for businesses to interpret the data.

NPS surveys ask one question: “On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [company] to a friend?” Customers who give scores of 0-6 are labeled “detractors” (not good), 7-8 are “passive” and scores of 9-10 are called “promoters” (very good). To get a net promoter score, you simply  subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters and leave out the passives. The final number will range anywhere from -100 to 100, and that’s your NPS. For example, if 40% of your customers say they’d be happy to recommend you (promoters), but 10% would absolutely not (detractors), your NPS is 40-10=30. The higher your NPS the better. The national average for companies according to Survey Monkey is 32%.

What NPS Can Do For Your Business

While an NPS score provides different insights regarding overall customer satisfaction, it can also serve as a tool for your team to work towards a common goal.

Team goals such as record more calls or get more MQLs are great goals, but have the potential to pit team members against one another. Not saying that a little competition is a bad thing, but an NPS score can unify a team towards a single common goal.

If the singular goal for the team is to raise the NPS, then all efforts go towards accomplishing that goal, and not individual accolades. Instead of, “how many calls did each team member make?” the question becomes, “did your efforts make a customer want to refer our business to a friend?” Such a goal is team oriented and unifying. And as the NPS score goes up, you can see that your team is making positive strides together to grow the company.

Increase Customer Satisfaction

The NPS is ultimately about customer satisfaction. Your first NPS survey provides a baseline for how satisfied your customers are. From there, you can use that baseline score to work towards increasing the satisfaction of your customers. You can take the comments from promoters to see where your business is excelling and ask detractors how you can improve. Then you can begin to take the necessary steps to improve upon that score. Some experts recommend doing an NPS survey every 90 days.

Reduce Customer Churn

 Increasing customer satisfaction and reducing customer turnover go hand-in-hand. As you learn what is driving detractors to feel unsatisfied, you can start to invest more time and effort into those customers and turn their experience around. If you are successful, you can use each turnaround as a success story about your company. Showing hardships with customers and making things right humanizes your company, shows humility and a willingess to listen to your customers. People will take notice and not only will you be reducing churn, but  promoting growth.

Create Raving Fans

One question is all it takes to learn so much about your customer base. If you aren’t using NPS surveys to gauge your customer satisfaction, you should consider it. It may just help turn your customers into raving fans for your business.