In the business world, there’s one sure-fire way to keep customers coming back through your doors and stand out from your competitors. You’ve got to use customer feedback to your advantage.
The best way to get this feedback is by conducting surveys. Each one you send out helps you rake up a net promoter score. You’ll be able to use the data to see where your company stands with your target audience and make improvements to your company.
The question is, what is a good net promoter score? We can help you get a better understanding of what all the numbers mean. Keep reading to learn more about how to calculate your score and find out how you can improve.
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What Is NPS?
Before you can start calculating your score, it’s important to know what it is. It starts with something known as a net promoter survey.
The business owner asks their customers one simple question. It can be worded any way someone chooses, but it usually reads something like, “on a scale of 1-10, how was your experience with our goods and services.”
From there, the survey will push the customer to elaborate on their answer so the company owner can get valuable feedback that they can use to improve their net promoter scores.
The general rule of thumb when conducting these surveys is to be short, sweet, and to the point. You don’t want to ask too many questions, or you’ll lose the customer’s interest. This article from Checkmarket.com will give you a good idea of what you should ask.
Understanding Your Responders
You’re going to be using your responders to calculate your overall score. Before you can do the math, you’ll have to know who your responders are and learn about their impact.
Promoters
The first type of responder is your promoters. Think of these people as your regulars. They had a great experience at your business and will always be open to coming back.
They greet your staff with a happy hello, and most of the time, they’ll give you 9s and 10s on your NPS benchmarks. The impact the growth of your business by referring their family and friends to you.
Passives
Next up are the passives. They don’t feel too strongly about your business. They liked you, but not good enough to give you an outstanding score.
They may or may not tell their family and friends about your business, but they can help in other ways. Feedback is feedback, after all.
Detractors
The detractors are the opposite of the promoters. They hated their experience at your place of business. As a result, they gave you a score of 0-6.
They make negative comments about you and drive people away from your business.
What Is a Good Net Promoter Score?
To figure out your score, you’ll take the percentage of your promoters and subtract it from the percentage of your detractors. For example, if 70% of your customers are promoters and 10% are your detractors, you have a score of 60.
If this is the case, you’re working with a pretty good score at the moment. Most of the people who walk into your business come out happy.
This is going to sound strange, but a positive score is anything 0 and above. If you dip into the negatives, you’ll need to come up with a game plan to improve.
How You Can Improve
If your net promoter score ranges in the negatives, it’s not the end of the world. There are ways that you can improve. That is the entire purpose of conducting the survey in the first place.
Do a Follow-Up
At the end of your net promoter survey, ask the customer if they would be willing to answer a few follow-up questions. This will give the customer the chance to talk about their experience in greater detail.
It gives you more feedback that you can use to make improvements. You can conduct this follow-up by sending an email or calling the customer on the phone.
Talk to Your Company Leaders
Once the data starts coming in, it’s time to sit down with your company leaders to discuss the results. Talk about your goals and come up with a plan of attack that you can use as a roadmap to turn those negative scores into positive ones.
Make sure to hold regular meetings where you get together to talk about how things are going.
Train Your Staff Members
Your company leaders aren’t the only ones that need to know how you track net promoter scores. You need to rally your entire staff behind the cause.
Talk to your various departments and give them a list of ways that they can improve. Don’t forget to also tell them what they are doing right and train them on how to make every customer’s experience a good one.
Do a Root Cause Analysis
As you start combing through the data, you’ll begin to notice a pattern. One of your departments may have a few more detractors than your other ones. The reason for this may not be as cut and dry as you think.
You’ll need to conduct a root cause analysis to get behind things. It might be a simple matter of flaws in that department’s product. Make improvements to that, and you’ll be good to go.
Use Your Score to Improve Your Business
If you’re going to drive customers to your business, you’re going to need to start paying attention to your net promoter score. Doing so will tell you what your company is doing wrong and give you ideas on how to improve.
The first step in using the feedback is learning the answer to what is a good net promoter score. From there, it’s all a matter of turning those negative numbers into positive ones.
For more ways to make your company better and keep your doors open, check out the Business section of our blog.