How to Improve Your Brand’s Net Promoter Score (NPS)

How to Improve Your Brand’s Net Promoter Score (NPS)

A brand’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer service benchmark (metric) that indicates how likely your customers or clients are to recommend it to others. Companies use NPS to measure customer experience and satisfaction.

A high score means that your brand is doing a good job of meeting customer needs and delivering on its promises.

A low score can be an indicator of the fact that your brand is falling short in some areas. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to improve your NPS.

A brand’s NPS can be improved by: improving the quality of its products and services, providing excellent customer service, and creating a strong brand identity.

By taking steps to improve your brand’s NPS, you can create more loyal customers and increase your chances of success in the marketplace.

Take Your Customer Satisfaction to the Next Level: NPS Best Practices

Now, it’s time to understand the impact of NPS on companies. Listed below are NPS best practices to adopt in 2024:

1. Use the relevant NPS software 

It’s always suggested to use relevant NPS software that is suitable for your business. Good and relevant software can ease the process of data collection.

Different companies like Survey Sparrow and Survey Legend, provide a seamless and effortless experience. 

2. Frequency 

Stop sending surveys immediately if someone becomes your customer. Don’t forget to follow the following regarding frequency:

1. NPS provides you with the complete emotion of a customer for your brand. It is just because they have used your product and experienced it for a couple of days. So, they have built strong emotions (it doesn’t matter if they’re bad or good).   
2. The timing and frequency of NPS surveys purely depend on your objectives, the nature of your industry, and the nature of your customers.  
3. Always ensure that your customer is getting an NPS survey question if he has taken a specific action. Timing plays a key role when sending NPS surveys. 

Your goal is to improve the NPS score, so you have to send NPS surveys periodically. 

Why periodically?

Because your customers’ emotions change over time and their experience with your brand.

A customer who gave you a score of 2 on the NPS survey might give you a 9 in the future if you address his issues. 

Companies should have the goal of increasing the number. When you periodically send NPS surveys at the right times and keep enhancing the experience for your audience, your audience will start engaging with your brand. 

However, the problem with sending bulk emails is that customers at various stages of their journey cycle will receive NPS emails. This makes you look impersonal. 

Instead, you should maintain uniformity by sending NPS surveys to audiences who are at a similar phase.

In case, an audience is a detractor, the responsibility of your business is to identify what’s wrong with them at that specific moment, which forces them to give a minimum NPS score. 

3. Are you planning to close the loop?

In case you get unexpected information from your audiences at the time of the NPS survey, where the majority of them took time to add their comments, and you fail to shut the feedback loop, then there is no meaning in using the whole exercise at all.

You would have simply wasted others’ time. 

Closing the feedback loop is important concerning surveys. 

Benefits of closing the feedback loop

One of the major benefits of closing the loop is that you will get an opportunity to improve bad relationships with your audience who are unhappy regarding their experience with you.

You are solving the issue that they had with you when you shut off the feedback loop.

This shows that they will have more positive experiences and might tell their family and friends about you. 

If you quickly respond to the feedback and provide a suitable solution for your audiences, you are likely to turn them into promoters rather than detractors.

4. In-app surveys and NPS transactional emails

Once a customer completes a transaction, send them NPS surveys.

They would still be thinking of your brand, and it’s the right chance for the organization to measure their customer experience with a specific action. 

NPS surveys can be sent within-app after the completion of transactions rather than through emails.

In case you aren’t getting responses from a customer, don’t worry. The next day, you can try sending an NPS survey email.

Email surveys usually have a lower response rate, as customers won’t take them seriously until they find them engaging.

However, with in-app surveys, you are disturbing the flow of customers. So it has a positive impact. 

So in this circumstance, what are the NPS best practices? As soon as the user completes the transaction, send an in-app survey. If you don’t get a response from them, send the email survey the following day. 

5. Share the NPS survey with respondents and the entire team

Before revealing your NPS score to the entire team, you have to explain to them the significance of NPS to your organization.

Your teammates should understand how and why NPS matters and know the significant benchmarking about your score along with that of your competitors too.   

So have NPS reviews with your team regularly. Motivate them using NPS scores.

Don’t forget to compare your competitor’s NPS score with yours and your industry’s. 

What should be the next step after checking the score?

Once you resolve the complaints that are raised by your customers during the NPS survey, the upcoming step is to guarantee them that you have taken their complaints seriously and solved their queries. 

When your customers realize that their problems have been considered seriously and have been solved on a priority basis, they won’t look back to completing another survey.

Why? You are addressing their issues by considering their feedback, and they are giving their valuable time to you. 

6. Interact with your audiences regularly

It doesn’t matter how big your company is; it can make mistakes. The biggest challenge for you is handling such a situation. 

Do you hide this matter from your customers or imagine that they will not identify and solve it?

Or do you offer an apology and guarantee them you will not do it in the future? How you tackle this situation will determine your business’s longevity in the future. 

Interaction is everything; it doesn’t matter what kind of relationship you have with your clients.

The majority of businesses don’t have a proper communication strategy, and that makes a huge difference. 

Are you an organization that interacts with clients regularly or only when you expect them to complete an NPS survey or if you expect something from them? 

The answer is here: You should interact with your clients regarding how you’re addressing their issues according to NPS or feedback surveys, but you need to have a proper strategy for internal interactions. 

Like this, you demonstrate to employees that you are paying more attention to your clients. 

7. NPS benchmarks

You already know that NPS scores are not the same for all industries.

A pharmaceutical company would have a horrible score in comparison to a company in the gaming industry. 

For example, Allstate has an NPS score of 40, while JetBlue has a score of 71. You might assume that JetBlue has a good score in comparison to Allstate because of their excellent service. 

Wrong. 

Allstate’s NPS score is the highest in the life insurance industry, while JetBlue’s score is the highest in the airline category. 

This is what you need to do:

• Find out what should be your good NPS score
• Compare your NPS score with those of companies in the same industry
• Compare your NPS score to yourself; this can help you track your progress

You should have the goal of keeping your clients happy by increasing your NPS score. 

8. Use your promoters

Your promoters have already started to spread the word regarding how wonderful your service or product is.

The best word-of-mouth marketing generates $6 trillion of yearly consumer spending and is predicted to be responsible for 13% of customer sales.

Just imagine if these promoters had an incentive to spread the word about you. Can you imagine the positive impact you could have on your brand?

Affiliate programmes can help with that. With this program, affiliates actively promote your services or goods, and they get rewards when someone they refer purchases from you. 

9. Personalize your NPS surveys

Personalize your NPS surveys with numerous subject lines, i.e., A/B testing, and use the best-performed ones.

Make sure that the subject used by you is making customers read your email and answer the questions. It is known as segmentation.   

10. Minimize response time

In case you’re responding well to NPS surveys well, but not seeing any improvement in your NPS score, you might need to reply quickly. 

For instance, if you’re getting emails from your customers, they expect to hear back from you ASAP.

Wait for one business day. In case you receive a call from them, they don’t wish to enter the never-ending world of automated messaging systems.

What are the three components of NPS? Why They Matter

The Net Promoter Score system is purely open-source, so its fundamental blocks can be used by anyone to build a good organization.

However, Mr. Reichheld and Markey define the three elements of the Net Promoter System and elaborate on its connection to business growth.  

a) Strong, prolonged leadership commitment

The majority of CEOs talk about boosting user experience.

Instead of focusing on profits and revenue, executive and leadership teams must communicate to employees that audience loyalty and engagement are most critical. 

This is how it might appear in various departments: 

Customer Support (CS)

The traditional approach: An eCommerce business assesses its CS executives on the number of calls they handle per hour. 

The problem? Executives rush via their calls, which annoys audiences and might leave their queries unanswered.

The NPS way: When collecting reviews after the completion of a CS call, follow the NPS query by asking audiences the stage to which their recent CS experience influenced their review.

Ask them to elaborate further if the support call had a negative or positive impact on their score.

This inspires CS executives to solve queries rather than rush via calls and indicate regions for improvement. 

Product development

The traditional approach: A Software as a Service (SaaS) business is worried about retention rates, so pressure is applied to multiple departments to resolve the problem. 

The problem? A non-customer-focused product team might try to retain clients by hiding the “Cancel” link under a mountain of data.

The rate of cancellations was reduced, but dissatisfied customers damaged the business. 

The NPS approach: Use NPS to measure customer engagement at critical stages of the client journey, including following their conversion, then constantly report the outcomes to the product team.

This motivates product development to look at and enhance the user experience completely, and a better, more suitable user experience builds pure loyalty. 

Sales

The traditional approach: A business software provider rewards sales executives according to their revenue. 

The problem? Salespeople may be forced to participate in shady practices for temporary benefit when they understand their job is on the line. 

The NPS approach: When measuring sales performance, look at the Net Promoter Score system. In the long term, happier consumers mean higher earnings. 

b) NPS is a reliable metric to use

Successful businesses across the globe use NPS to evaluate customer engagement and loyalty. 

If you use the Net Promoter Score as a trustworthy metric, you can:

• Assess where you stand in the market
• Give your colleagues and managers a direct case for data-enabled changes
• Monitor the effects of the adjustments you make over time

c) Develop a system for enhancement according to what you discover

Finding out your NPS is only useful if it results in positive changes.

The Net Promoter System helps you solve problems, train employees, and revise policies and products wherever possible. 

Net Promoter Score companies frequently cycle via three steps that Reichheld explains: the inner loop, the outer loop, and the huddle. 

Inner loop: After collecting feedback, you need to use this data to train all employees and serve your customers.

Managers need to contact unhappy clients to allow them to examine their experience and make things perfect. 

Outer loop: This stage includes careful analysis along with structural problem-solving.

Here, management executes structural enhancements (such as messaging, policies, and changes to products).

Huddle: These short and communicative meetings enable teams to come up with creative ideas, address audience issues, and validate their mutual commitment to audience centricity. 

NPS vs. CSAT: Knowing the Important Differences

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) evaluates customer advocacy and loyalty.

The Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) evaluates the satisfaction of customers with their latest interaction or purchase.

Each survey has a different objective

CSAT surveys convey total audience satisfaction with a specific region of your feature, product, or even the onboarding process and support team.

CSAT data can be used by product teams to identify problems associated with the product. 

The objective of NPS surveys is to discover passionate detractors and advocates and recognize what motivates customer sentiment. 

Each survey offers various levels of metrics

CSAT surveys enable you to inspect experiences or communications at a micro level, whereas NPS offers you macro-level insights.

Can You Combine NPS and CSAT Surveys?

The answer to this question is Yes. CSAT and NPS scores are not exchangeable. So, it’s good to use both to draw an image of how your product or brand is performing. 

NPS will indicate the total sentiment around your service, product, etc., and CSAT offers actionable information regarding particular communication.

Why is CSAT better than NPS?

It solely depends on your objectives. So, NPS surveys concentrate on future buying intent and client loyalty, making them perfect for companies that want to measure customer satisfaction over time. 

Whereas CSAT surveys offer detailed insights into client perception, they normally involve questions regarding particular experiences or features evaluated on the fly. 

CSAT is used by SaaS companies to make instant enhancements to their products, for example, to a freshly implemented feature.

Methodology to Boost Net Promoter Score (NPS)

It is a metric that calculates the percentage of customers who are likely to recommend your brand to other clients.

A high score means a high rate of satisfaction.

Customers are likely to spread positive word-of-mouth about it. Improving your brand’s NPS can be a challenge.

There are a few things you can do to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

First, obviously, make sure you are providing a good product or service that also meets customer needs.

Second, focus on delivering exceptional customer service, and making it up to the mark.

Finally, stay up-to-date with customer feedback and use it to improve your brand. By following these tips, you can improve your brand’s NPS and build long-term customer loyalty.

12 Ways to Improve Your Net Promoter Score (NPS)

There are many ways to improve your brand’s Net Promoter Score, including:

1. Increasing customer satisfaction: Ensure that your products/services match customer expectations. Resolve any issues/problems that may arise.
2. Encouraging feedback by customers: Make it easy for customers to give feedback and initiate action on it.
3. Improving customer service: Provide fast, efficient, and helpful service.
4. Increasing transparency: Make your customer policies and procedures clear to customers. Also, make the information available on your website.
5. Enhancing communication: Keep customers informed about what’s happening with your brand and how they can participate.
6. Improving product quality: Ensure that your products are of high quality and meet customer expectations.
7. Addressing customer concerns: If customers have any concerns, initiate action to address them.
8. Rewarding promoters: Make it easy for customers to recommend your brand to others and offer incentives for doing so.
9. Reducing marketing costs: Ensure that your marketing efforts are effective and affordable.
10. Evaluating and adjusting your strategy: Continuously evaluate your brand’s NPS and make necessary adjustments to improve it.
11. Concentrating on the satisfaction of customers: Make sure that your focus is on satisfying your customers, not just meeting their needs.
12. Continuing to improve your brand: Make sure that you are continuously innovating and improving your products and services.

How to Improve Your Brand’s NPS with Customer Service

A high NPS indicates that customers are satisfied with your brand and are likely to continue doing business with you.

Although improving it can be quite an uphill task, maintaining good customer relations is one way to start.

By providing responsive and even predictive customer service, you can increase customer satisfaction and, as a result, improve your NPS.

Also, you can use this data to identify areas where your customer service can be improved. You can ensure that your customers are happy and loyal.

How to Better the Score By Asking the Right Questions

NPS is a major metric for measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty. To improve it, your business needs to ask the right questions.

First, you need to identify your brand’s promoters, critics, and passives. Promoters are customers who are highly satisfied with your brand and are likely to recommend it to others.

Detractors are buyers who are unhappy with your brand. They are likely to spread negative word-of-mouth. Those customers who are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied are called passive.

Next, you need to recognize your brand’s primary customer focus. Primary customer focus refers to the main reasons why buyers buy your product or service.

Third, you need to ask questions about how satisfied buyers are with your service.

This refers to the level of satisfaction that buyers feel with the level of customer service they receive.

Finally, you need to ask questions about how likely buyers are to renew their contract or recommend your brand to others.

How to Improve Net Promoter Score through Social Media

One of the routes to improve your brand’s Net Promoter Score is through social media.

By engaging with customers or prospects on networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, you can build relationships and loyalty.

What’s more, social networks can be a great way to get feedback from customers and learn about areas where your brand can improve.

By paying attention to your NPS (Net Promoter Score) and using social media to improve it, you can create a more positive brand image and customer experience.

In conclusion: A Net Promoter Score is a crucial measurement to understand what your customers think of your brand. There exists many ways to improve this score when it is down.