Businesses with loyal customers thrive and grow. In fact, loyal customers are the holy grail for companies today.
If your customers aren’t happy, and if your products and services aren’t what they need, you end up struggling.
This is where the Net Promoter Score (NPS) comes in. When you know this score, you are truly able to scale your business.
Most savvy business owners know it’s easier to keep an existing customer than it is to get a new one. Even savvier business owners know that not only is keeping current customers happy vital, but those happy customers are likely to recommend your business to others.
That’s at the forefront of the NPS score. This score tells you how likely your customers are to recommend your business to others.
In this article, we look at growing your business with your NPS score and watching your numbers rise.
Use NPS for Word of Mouth Marketing
One way to grow your business is to leverage the power of your NPS score and your most important group – your promoters. These are the folks who are most likely to recommend your business to others.
You can harness your promoters to help turn this group into active promoters. How? Through the power of social media.
While you can’t control what your promoters tell friends and family directly, you can give them a nudge in the right direction digitally.
For example, if your customers give you a nine or 10, landing them as a promoter, send them a thank you email. Be sure to acknowledge their score and their feelings for your business.
Next, in the email, provide them with a link to Facebook or Twitter so they can leave you either a review or a post/tweet on their own page. You can even pre-write some content for them so they can just copy and paste.
This helps call your promoters to action. After all, they told you in your survey that they were highly likely to recommend your business to others. All they need is a slight nudge in the right direction.
Use NPS for Relationship-Building
Your NPS survey is a great starting point for growing relationships with your customers. Whether they left you a good rating, a bad rating, or a middle of the road rating, it pays to stay in contact with your customers.
Consider reaching out to your passives and your detractors. Thank them for taking the time to complete your survey. Then, take it one step further and contact them to find out what you can do to improve.
The same concept applies here – it’s easier and cheaper to keep a current customer than get a new one. In the case of passives and detractors, it’s just going to take a little effort on your part.
By emailing or calling these folks, you can dive into what part of your products or services was unsatisfactory. Let them know what you’re going to do to improve it. And, once you have improved, let them know.
You just might be surprised the next time you send out a NPS survey.
Use NPS to Enhance the Customer Journey
The NPS survey can help you uncover your biggest strengths and your biggest weaknesses. It can show you where you fall short and if you follow up, how you can improve.
This is important when considering the overall customer journey with your company.
A high churn rate may give you cause for concern, but a NPS survey may shine some light on where the customer journey breaks down.
This works if you send NPS surveys on a regular, scheduled basis during the customer journey. For example, you may find that customers are happy until they have to deal with your customer service department.
By improving the customer journey, you’ll ultimately grow your business.
Use NPS to Reduce Churn
Another way to grow your business with your NPS score is to concentrate on your passive customers. These folks answered your NPS survey with a seven or eight.
They are in the middle and not moving one way or the other. You have a real opportunity to move these respondents into the promoter category. It just depends how you respond to them.
This segment is on the fence. Move one way, and you turn them into detractors who move on to your competitors. Move another way, and you may end up with active promoters.
After your NPS survey, you want to go above and beyond with your passives. This is your chance to show them just how incredible your customer service is. You want to overall the customer experience and offer them something they can’t refuse.
Consider sending all of your passives a discount for a future purchase. Or invite them to a special, invitation only event. Or you can send them some swag.
The goal here is to offer them something they value. You don’t just want to mail them a bumper sticker. Offer them a free upgrade, a free product, a coupon, or something that you think they’d appreciate.
In addition, reach out to them by email or by phone. Ask them what you can do to make their experience better. Show them you care and value their opinion.
You want to offer them something that separates your company from the competition. You have to go so beyond the call of duty, that the next time the get your NPS survey, they’ll give you a nine or a 10.
To Conclude
It’s worth noting that a high Net Promoter Score doesn’t necessarily equate to growth, but it does signal it. It’s often what you do after the survey that drives business.
While a high score is certainly the goal, it only measures your relationships with your current customers. It also suggests how future customers may feel after purchasing or interacting with your business.
The most important driver of growth is how you deal with your promoters, passives, and detractors after the survey. It’s the work you put in to create active promoters and move passives and detractors to the promoter column. (tweet this)
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Image: Nikola Jovanovic on Unsplash