NPS survey

5 Smart Ways to Improve Your NPS Score

Survey Tips

Are you ready to supercharge your Net Promoter Score (NPS)?

As the game-changing survey, you’ll find that the NPS is the single best way to gauge your customers’ loyalty and find out how willing they are to talk positively about you to family and friends.

In this article, we look at five smart ways to improve your NPS score so you can make your customers happier and increase retention.

#1: Concentrate on Service

In this day and age, your customers expect incredible customer service. Make sure their experience is seamless and easy. Don’t waste their time and make sure your employees keep the customer at the forefront.

In addition, resolve any conflicts quickly.

#2: Engage Your Staff

Happy employees mean happy customers.

Treat your employees great, and you can be sure they’ll pass on the good service. An employee who is content at a job is more likely to share those good feelings and culture with your customers. (tweet this)

#3: Listen to Phone Calls

You can improve your NPS by listening to customer calls or watching employee/customer interactions at your place of business.

If an employee falls short, it’s time for some extra training.

#4: Provide Ongoing Training

Customer service training should go on all year long and not just once a year or at new hire on-boarding.

Create a culture of service by working on it on a daily basis.

#5: Say Thank You

You should, of course, say thank you in your NPS survey, but you also want to consider saying thank you after the results come in.

There are several options for thanking your customers for completing a survey. One way is to send a thank you email, but if you really want to impress, and you know your customer’s name, send them a hand-written note through the mail.

Final Thoughts

Surveys have their place for any business, especially when you want to know how your customers feel about your products and your service.

NPS surveys are important, too, as they give you a clear picture of how your customers feel about you. It helps you learn if you’re excelling or falling short. It also lets you know very specifically if you can count on your customers to be brand advocates, which is important to your overall marketing and growth 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.

Image: Andy Beales on Unsplash

NPS Score vs. Ratings: Measuring Customer Satisfaction

NPS Score: Measuring Customer Satisfaction

Survey Tips

For businesses today, the single most affirming action a customer can make is to come back to your business again. This is one of the true measures of customer satisfaction.

Your goal as a business owner is to ensure your customer’s happiness so they’ll return for a visit.

Right along with this and just as important is knowing your happy customers will tell others about you, and this is where the NPS (Net Promoter Score) comes in. An effective way to measure this is by actively asking for feedback through the net promoter survey.

In this article, we look at the NPS survey and how it relates to the customer satisfaction survey.

NPS and Customer Satisfaction Surveys

The Net Promoter Score is often calculated separately from the customer satisfaction survey, but it can also be part of it.

Remember that the Net Promoter Score survey is the way you learn your customer’s willingness to recommend your business to others.

It includes one question, “How likely is it that you would recommend x business to a friend or colleague?” The NPS survey uses a 0-to-10-point rating scale and people are categorized as either promoters, passives or detractors.

On the other hand, the customer satisfaction survey gauges how your customers feel about your services (both positively and negatively).

The customer satisfaction survey normally has five-10 questions, uses a rating scale of 1-10, and queries the customer on their experience, satisfaction and service delivery. It aims to find out how happy your customers are.

The customer satisfaction survey needs to ask more questions to come up with an overall rating, while the NPS only needs to ask one question.

Final Thoughts

The NPS survey and the customer satisfaction survey aren’t really interchangeable, but they can be used in unison when measuring customer satisfaction. (tweet this)

So, which is better? It could be that the two surveys complement one another. You might embed the NPS question in the customer satisfaction survey to give your team on the overall view of the customer’s satisfaction as well as their likelihood to recommend you.

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.

Image: Mira Bozhko on Unsplash

NPS Score: Why It’s Good To Use

Survey Tips

The Net Promoter (NPS) Score is the single best question to ask respondents because it not only helps you gauge customer loyalty, but it helps you learn whether your customers appreciate you so much they’d tell other people about you.

The NPS question is this: “How likely is it that you would recommend our business to someone else.”

Let’s look at the NPS score and why it’s good to use.

It Measures Repeat Business

With one simple question, you can determine if your customers will shop with you again.

It’s a great tool for forecasting your business growth potential.

The NPS score measures the likelihood of repeat business while at the same time measuring the probability of new business. (tweet this) For example, if a customer responds high on the positivity scale, you know they’ll be back, and they’ll recommend you to others.

It’s Easy to Implement

What could be easier for respondents than a one question survey?

The NPS Score is simple, straightforward and lightning quick for your survey takers. All you want to know is how likely they are to recommend your business to a friend.

It Helps You Track Change

Let’s say that your first NPS Score didn’t reveal great results.

You go back to the drawing board and fine tune your customer service policies. You train your staff and provide ongoing refreshers. Finally, you begin instilling the thank you culture into your business model.

It’s six months later, and you send out another survey, and the results are much improved.

By using your NPS Score, you can survey customers twice a year to see if your improvements are working. If they aren’t, you can again make changes.

Final Thoughts

Start the process in your business today and use the Net Promoter Score as part of your overall marketing strategy and business growth plan.

You’ll gain valuable insights about the customer experience and learn where you need to improve.

Use the NPS Score to improve your customer service and your processes for the absolute best customer relationships and to ultimately grow your business.

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.

Image: Mpho Mojapelo on Unsplash

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