net promoter

What To Do If Your NPS Is Below 0

Survey Tips

So, you sent out a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey, and you got a zero. First, all is not lost. It’s only hopeless if you choose to do nothing about it.

Getting a number that’s at or below zero is a unique situation. It tells you that your customers care enough to complete your survey. At the same time, they’re sending you a very clear message. This message says they want to shop with you, but they’re sending a fair warning that you aren’t doing something right.

Ultimately, they have no reason to shop with you or recommend you to anyone, so it’s time to make some changes.

In this article, we look at what to do if your NPS is below zero and look at how you can recover from it.

The Point of the Score

First, the NPS is not a score to hang on your wall. When it’s low, it tells you that something is amiss, and you have a great opportunity for improvement.

Since the Net Promoter Score is the measurement of your customers’ loyalty to your company, a low score tells you they’re unhappy, and they are not going to recommend you to others.

Once you send out your first NPS survey, you can use this initial score as your baseline. If you get a zero, great, you aren’t in the negative numbers, but you do know you have a long way to go to get to 100. If you get below a zero, that’s negative territory, and the climb is longer.

On the positive side, your zero or negative zero may even be well above the competition. But that doesn’t mean you rest there. It’s time for some strategizing to improve your score over time.

Now let’s look at how to improve your Net Promoter Score if it’s below zero.

Get Your Employees on Board

If your score is low, it’s time for a team meeting. It’s important that everyone at your company understands your NPS score is too low, and you must improve.

Your staff should understand that improving your score means making your currently unhappy customers happy. Anyone who has direct contact with your customers needs to understand this. (tweet this)

Converting unhappy customers into your loyal promoters is going to take everyone, not just your marketing team.

Give Your Customers a Hand

Your social media pages come into play here.

Find your happy customers and ask them to share their good experiences on your social media pages. You might ask for good reviews. Or, you can ask them if they’ll do a video testimonial as this really helps legitimize the review.

Don’t get into paid reviews as this can end up causing you problems in the long run.

To encourage customers, make sure they feel appreciated and do what you can to make leaving a good review easy for them.

Be Responsive

Have you gotten complaints in the past and ignored them? Do you have un-responded-to negative (or positive) Google reviews?

One of the most important things you can do with customers is to respond quickly. Communication is key to a great relationship. When customers are angry, respond with empathy and find them a solution.

Always respond to all feedback in a timely manner. By actively engaging with your customers and cultivating relationships, you’ll make great inroads improving your NPS.

Listening to your customers and making effective changes is key to improving your score.

Offer Training

Oftentimes your NPS score is low because of how your customers were treated when working with your staff.

Be sure to offer comprehensive and ongoing training to your team. You also want to ensure they understand their responsibilities when it comes to providing excellent customer service every time.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to your net promoter score, you want to stay on top of it. Make a plan for improving your score and stick to it.

When six months have passed, send another NPS survey, and see if your score improves. If it does, super. Keep up the good work to keep improving.

If it doesn’t, revisit your plan and implement new strategies to increase your score.

The NPS isn’t a once and done. You want to keep making improvements in your customer experience, so you can increase customer loyalty, your NPS score, and ultimately your profits.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

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What Is A Good Net Promoter Score?

Survey Tips

Your Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures the experience customers have with your business. It also predicts your company’s growth potential.

When measuring the customer experience using the NPS, you want to answer the question, “What is a good Net Promoter Score?”

In this article, we dissect that question and provide you with an answer. First, let’s look at how the score is calculated.

The NPS Calculation

Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts that you can expect to keep purchasing from you and referring others which fuels growth.
Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied, but they are not enthusiastic customers. They are vulnerable to your competition.
Detractors (score 0-6) are your unhappy customers who can damage your brand and hinder growth through their negative word-of-mouth.

You subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters to get your Net Promoter Score. The top score you can get is 100, and that’s only if everyone is a promoter.

What’s a Good Score?

So, you want to know what your Net Promoter Score should be. While this is a simple enough question, the answer is, “It depends.”

It is widely accepted that a score below 0 means you have work to do, a score of 50 is excellent, and a score of 70 and above is top notch.

It’s also worth noting that any positive score means you have more promoters than detractors. (tweet this)

That being said, your score depends on your industry and the region of the country you live in. It also hinges on your customers – their age and income as well as other demographics. Your NPS is based on how long your customers have been associated with your business.

To really understand your score, compare it to the score of others in your industry. If you are consistently scoring higher than your competitors, you’re doing something right and are set for growth.

Use your research as a benchmark. This helps you gauge the success of the customer experience you provide your customers.

Final Thoughts

The bottom line is that your score should reflect your efforts at the overall customer experience.

If you’re working hard to improve your service and relationship with your customers, it stands to reason that your score will be positive.

If you find you have a negative score, then it’s time to create a customer service strategy.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Images: Timothy Muza

8 NPS Survey Best Practices

Survey Tips

Net Promoter Score surveys are one of the best ways to gauge customer loyalty and NPS is a straightforward and important metric that can help you propel your business while also learning what you can do to improve your long-term growth. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey helps you understand how much your customer values your business because it answers the question, “Are you going to recommend our company to others? And why?”

Sending an NPS survey provides you with the feedback you need to understand where you stand with your customers and how you can improve. As with any KPI you measure, NPS comes with its own set of best practices. In this article, we look at eight of our suggested NPS survey best practices so you can use your score to move your business forward.

#1: Don’t Batch and Blast

You want to plan your NPS survey sends. Sending in one big batch isn’t the best idea because it doesn’t account for your customer’s stage in their relationship with your company.

Consider your NPS surveys like your automated email workflow. Send them at particular stages and according to specific triggers. For example, you might send one after a purchase, two purchases, etc. You’ll experience better insights by sending surveys based on specific triggers and at unique times in your customers’ lifecycle.

#2: Send at the Right Time

You also don’t want to send your surveys too early in your customers’ lifecycle. They need a chance to experience your products or services before they can offer an opinion on your business. If they haven’t spent much time with you, they may not be able to verbalize if and why they might recommend you.

#3: Measure Regularly

To be effective, you want to measure your Net Promoter Score on a regular basis. You might find that the first time you survey your customers isn’t as effective as the second time. Their opinions may have more time to form, and they might even have a chance to change their minds.

We suggest you measure NPS regularly so you can engage customers at different times during their lifecycle with your business.

#4: Use the Feedback

We hope this one is an obvious Net Promoter Score best practice because why measure something if you don’t plan to use the results? The worst thing you can do is measure your Net Promoter Score without sharing and using the feedback. Make sure you take action on the feedback, and that your first step is sharing it with your employees. You want to get buy-in from your employees because they are the front line and providers of the customer service.

Discuss your NPS regularly at team meetings and strategize ways to increase retention and overall company growth. You also want to look at ways to reduce your customer churn rate (the rate at which customers leave your business).

#5: Send Follow-Up Emails

First, you sent your NPS survey to your customers through email. If you followed step one, then you also sent it at the right time—perhaps after a purchase. Once your customers have completed your survey, you want to send them a follow-up email based on their score.

This is a great way to follow-up with your customers and let them know you value their opinions and will use their feedback to improve your business.

By following up, you let them know you appreciate their involvement. It also lets them know you are actively paying attention.

Your follow-up email after the NPS survey can include the following:

Thank-you note
Acknowledgment of their score
If they left a positive score, ask them to leave you a Google review
Offer them something free—a discount, whitepaper, video or other downloads

Remember that negative comments aren’t something to ignore. Your customers who complain really might be the ones who care because they are looking for something more. If you provide it to them, you might find that their next NPS is higher.

#6: Ditch your Pride

It can be difficult to look at negative NPS comments and know you have to change. Your gut instinct may be to ignore negative comments or disregard them, but that isn’t going to help you better your customer service and relationships. You want to concentrate on how you can improve, not on how you can change your customer’s mind.

#7: Use the NPS as a Tool

Another first instinct is to think of your NPS as market research. It’s not that at all. It’s a tool to use to change the way you do business. It’s something you can use to change your way of operating. Your Net Promoter Score helps you understand and improve your businesses’ operations. It helps you improve the entire customer experience.

Again, you want to involve your entire staff and make sure everyone is on board with improving the customer experience. Help your staff see the importance of your “promoters.” Help them understand what they need to do to keep these customers so they can help your business grow. You also want to help your employees understand your “detractors” and how they can help move them from the negative side to the positive promoter side. Finally, you want your employees to be aware of the NPS survey best practices so that they can help you stay on track.

#8: Improve Employee Engagement

How do you get your employees to buy into improving your Net Promoter Score? The best thing you can do is make sure your employees are engaged and fulfilled in their job. If your employees aren’t engaged, they can’t—and won’t want to—satisfy the needs of your customers.

Consider asking your employees the Net Promoter Score questions. If they are detractors and not promoters, do what you can to improve their experience so they can improve that of your customers.

Final Thoughts on NPS Survey Best Practices

Knowing your Net Promoter Score is important, but what you do with it is what sets your business apart from the competition. The most important NPS best practice is to make sure you act on feedback quickly.

Your business is about more than selling a product or service. It’s about creating happy, long-term customers who are loyal brand ambassadors and who are excited to share your product with their peers. To increase your growth and propel your business, you want to focus on your customers and doing what you can to improve their experiences. If you do this, your NPS will rise naturally.

Ready to get started with your free SurveyTown trial and try your hand at testing these Net Promoter Score best practices? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Images: Tim Gauw

3 Net Promoter Score Questions To Ask

Survey Tips

When you use Net Promoter Score questions in your survey, you start the process of identifying loyal customers.

You start to recognize and distinguish your brand ambassadors. These are the people who will help lead new customers straight to your door.

With Net Promoter Score (NPS), you can quantitatively measure and then encourage customer loyalty.

To help you, we look at three Net Promoter Score questions to ask in your next survey.

#1: The Standard Net Promoter Score Question

In your initial Net Promoter Score survey, you don’t want to ask numerous questions. Keep it very short and to the point with the formulaic question customers are growing used to seeing.

The standard Net Promoter Score question looks like this:

Based on your experience, how likely is it that you would recommend our (product, brand or service) to your friends, family or colleagues?

Your scale should range from 0=not at all likely to 10=extremely likely.

With this NPS question, you’ll be able to do your Net Promoter Score calculation.

#2: The Reason Why Question

Your next question is really a follow up to the Net Promoter Score question. In addition to the main NPS question, you should invite respondents to let you know why they feel the way they do.

Provide a text area where your customers can actually write out their comments. You’ll find that you may receive glowing reviews or some negative comments here.

The “reason why” question should look like this:

Why did you provide this rating? or What is the reason behind your rating?

#3: The Follow Up Question

With this last question in your Net Promoter Score survey, you want to know what you can do better.

This is where you find out what your customers really think and how they perceive your shortcomings. The responses to this question in your NPS survey will help you determine which areas of your products and services need improvement and which ones are meeting or exceeding expectations.

For this question, craft something like this:

What is one thing we could do differently to increase the value of our (product or services) to you?

With this question, you leave it wide open for your respondents to offer their suggestions and hopefully, constructive criticism and comments. As we mentioned earlier, keep your survey to no more than three questions to encourage more responses.

You might even find you can eliminate either question #2 or question #3 or re-word them to encourage the kind of comments you are looking for, especially if your dropout rates are too high.

Final Thoughts

Now that you know the right questions to ask to get your NPS and additional feedback, you’re well on your way to using the Net Promoter Score to gauge customer loyalty.

You can use your Net Promoter Score to:

Segment your customers by their loyalty to you
Identify those customers who are unhappy and unwilling to refer you
Discover what drives your customer loyalty and how you can improve upon it
Benchmark your results against those in your industry

Finally, remember that according to NPS best practices, the power of the Net Promoter Score comes in what you do after the survey and after you have your score. Don’t miss this critical part. How you respond to your customers after you receive their feedback is integral to the entire process.

Your follow up may mean the difference between increased customer loyalty or an at-risk customer that walks away. Follow up is key to your success, and it’s what helps you encourage and gain long-term loyalty.

You earn your customers’ loyalty by creating relationships with them. Using the Net Promoter Score survey, you can start creating valuable and genuine relationships with your customers by showing them that you value their feedback and that you are willing to take action on it.

Your Net Promoter Score survey allows you to start a new conversation with your customers—one where they feel valued and important to your business.

Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial and try your hand at Net Promoter Score surveys? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

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How To Use Surveys To Gauge Customer Loyalty

Survey Tips

Have you heard about the Net Promotor Score (NPS)?

In this article, we look at the NPS and how to use surveys to gauge customer loyalty.

Defining the NPS

This is a tool you can use to gauge the loyalty of your customer relationships. The score is based on the responses to one question: “How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?”

The scores are created like this:

Promoters have a score of 9 to 10 (on a 0-10 scale) and are likely to buy more and recommend you to others.
Those with a score of 0 to 6 are called Detractors and aren’t considered value-creating customers.
People who respond with a 7 or 8 are called Passives, and they fall in the middle.

You calculate the net promoter score by subtracting the Detractors from the Promotors. (Passives count only towards your total of respondents which decreases the percentage of Detractors and Promotors.)

Using a Survey

A customer survey is a great way to measure customer loyalty and your NPS.

When you use a survey, you can quickly tell exactly how your customers view you.

You can then use your results to enhance your business and increase customer loyalty.

Follow these four steps when using surveys to gauge customer loyalty:

Create a survey that asks customers how likely they’d be to recommend your company on a scale of 0-10.
Analyze your data using the NPS scale mentioned above.
Reach back out to the customers who expressed the most loyalty towards you. Continue to nurture them through your marketing channels to increase the likelihood they’ll be your brand advocates.
Follow up with customers who are the least likely to recommend you (or not at all) to find out what you can do differently.

Final Thoughts

Are you currently using the NPS to determine your company’s rate of customer satisfaction? Have you thought about sending a survey to gauge customer loyalty?

Because your relationship with your customers is so important to your growth and retention rates, it’s a good idea to check in and see just what they’re thinking. (tweet this)

Customer loyalty is key to your business growth. Loyal customers shop with you again and again. They are your brand ambassadors.

Measure your company’s customer loyalty through a survey to learn how well you’re doing or where you can improve. This is a key indicator of potential growth.

Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

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