Want to improve your NPS? Here are 6 proven action plans to increase your net promoter score and gain more loyal customers in 2022.
We live in a customer-centric business world, where customer experience is regarded as the “king”. It is the most important indicator of your company’s success, after all a satisfied and happy customer is the one who is likely to become a loyal customer, and in turn boosts revenue. That is why more than two thirds of companies say they mostly compete on improving experiences, instead of outdoing each other with new product features or constantly engaging in price race.
But, then how to accurately gauge customer experience and their loyalty to your company?
The answer is simple: Net Promoter Score, in short NPS.
NPS is a metric that companies use to measure customer experience, satisfaction and loyalty. Besides, it allows you to benchmark yourself against your competitors and observe how effective your consumer-oriented decisions are. Having, a high NPs simple means that customers are happy with your brand, and would like to continue with your products or services and will recommend the same to others. Consider this an average NPS increase of 7% correlates on average with a 1% growth in revenue (Source: London School of Economics).
Look at companies such as Nike, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, etc. who have been able to maintain consistently high NPS, and have been able to build up their brand into the market leaders they are today.
Given its significance, improving NPS has indeed become a necessity for the businesses?
How to calculate NPS?
But, before going further, let’s quickly understand as to how to calculate NPS and what is considered as a good NPS.
Typically, NPS comes in the form of a customer survey typically sent to the customers at least twice a year. To calculate NPS, survey customers and see how likely they are to recommend your business on a scale of 0-10.
- Start with the standard one question which is “on a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this business to a friend or a colleague?”
- Categorize the responding customers according to their scores: Detractors (0-6), Passives (7-8), and Promoters (9-10).
- Subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters to determine your overall NPS.
Generally speaking, a NPS that is below 0 indicates that a business has a lot of customer satisfaction issues to address. A score between 0 and 30 is better, however, you can still improve, while a NPS higher than 30 indicates that the company has quite a good number of happy and satisfied customers.
How to get a better NPS score?
Now that we have understood the fundamentals of NPS, let us review the action plans for increasing your NPS to improve and grow your business
We have come up with the four major action plan that will help you to improve your NPS score:
- Focus on better customer experience (CX)
Customer experience (CX) is incredibly valuable for all the businesses, and over the time it has moved from being a competitive differentiator to a key business imperative. Companies that lead in customer experience are now outperforming their competitors by nearly 80%.
“71 percent of people recommend a product or service because they received a “great experience”. – PWC Report
Without being customer-focused, it is difficult for businesses to stand out of the competition. So, it is essential to know your customers’ needs and expectations and aligning your solutions closely as this will encourage customers to be loyal towards your brand and increase the satisfaction rate.
Besides, being customer-focused means businesses should put the effort into understanding the customer journey to identify their needs and expectations. Though, understandably, your customers are likely to have different journeys in accordance to their touchpoints and engagement level, so you need to undertake an all-inclusive customer journey mapping to know your customers’ persona, understanding their needs and desires, framing out their touchpoints, and more importantly identifying their pain points. Subsequently, recognize the journey that is pushing the net promoters and detractors. Once you are aware of your customer journey, you can definitely improvise on the touchpoints that are driving your net promoters and detractors, while delivering an excellent customer experience.
- Segment your customers to create tailor-made strategies addressing each segment
Customer segmentation is important for understanding your customers. You can segment audiences based on revenue, products, service plans or customer personas. NPS naturally segments customers into three categories – the Detractors (customers scoring between 0 and 6), Passives (customers scoring between 0 and 8), and Promoters (customers those who respond with 9 or 10). By diving them into these three segments, you can gain valuable insights into your customers and leverage your NPS data better. Subsequently, you can create tailor-made strategies to address each segment by focusing better on their needs & pain points, your value proposition, and customer service experiences, and thereby improving them further.
- Swiftly Follow up with Detractors
For those companies who ignore detractors, it simply means that they have lost that customer forever. However, if you follow up on negative feedback quickly not only can you help negate the impact of that review, there’s a good chance you might also retain (repeat) that customer or even, turn them into a promoter gradually by showing your attention & efficiency. For this, it is essential that you get in touch with your detractors quickly and directly. Let them know that you value them and you are following up their issues, and try to understand their perspective.
- Incentivize Your Promoters
Though efforts should be made to make every customer feel special, but it is important not to forget to nurture you promoters as they are the largest revenue generator of any company. Remember that you cannot afford to neglect and just focus on detractors or take this segment for granted as this could in turn drive away your loyal customers. They could perceive your actions as rewarding those who complain while they themselves are getting nothing for their loyalty.
One of the best ways you can opt for is giving them incentives such as discounts, free giveaways, VIP events, free upgrades and special buying opportunities to them as these can certainly help in both acquiring and raising your net promoter score, while also encouraging customers to give you reviews for your NPS metrics. Besides, to improve your NPS, you can create a loyalty program or revamp your existing customer loyalty program to regular customers to demonstrate that you value their relationship.
- Measure customer feedback regularly to improve NPS
Keeping a regular check on the scores is an important way on how to improve NPS. No matter if your scores are consistently good, still you need to monitor and measure it regularly. By making improvements continuously based on the score results, you can witness further improvement, and failing to do so will impact your loyalty. The key area of NPS rests in the customer insights gained through regular implementation of surveys, based on which you can develop strategies to improve customer loyalty.
Know and improve your NPS!
Finding your NPS is a great place to start, but finding out what is behind it and constant monitoring NPS takes your business to the next level. It not only helps you gauge customer satisfaction and loyalty but also helps you identify ways to improve, prioritize reaching out to the detractors, and boost referral marketing. And, as you know referred customers have a 16% higher lifetime value and ROI than others!
So, are you ready to discover your Net Promote Score (NPS) and what is driving it? Comment below.