A business can sink millions of dollars into marketing campaigns with the aim of getting a lot of visibility. But, we’re here to tell you that visibility doesn’t mean much if no one is willing to recommend your business to anyone else. Unsurprisingly, 90% of consumers read online reviews about a business before visiting it. With the internet and social media, ‘word of mouth’ has taken on a whole new meaning. And, speaking of word of mouth, 92% of people trust recommendations from friends or family rather than advertising.
Logically, customers aren’t bound to recommend your business if they aren’t loyal to it. This is where metrics such as the Net Promoter Score (NPS) come into play. With NPS, businesses can do market research and measure how loyal their clients are to their brand. But it’s not as simple as just doing market research; you have to consider some key aspects when building your NPS.
1. The NPS has its own drawbacks
Having a metric to size up your loyalty sounds like a useful tool and in an ideal world, the relationship between the company and the customer could be summed up with a couple of numbers. Yet, the company-customer relationship is complicated, and many factors are not taken into account for the NPS. For example, customers may have great experiences when dealing with one employee and have severely negative ones with another.
Another aspect that NPS isn’t capable of understanding is how a consumer’s culture influences their response surveys. Latin Americans and Middle-eastern individuals are more likely to respond with extremes, either positive or negative, instead of choosing a more neutral level of satisfaction. The Asian culture will oftentimes do the opposite and select mostly neutral answers.
2. It isn’t all about the customer
Creating a loyal client base doesn’t start with the consumer; it starts within the company itself. Your employees are your lifeblood when it comes to building a company-customer relationship. If your employees aren’t happy in the workplace, then that negativity is more likely to spread, whether consciously or unconsciously, to their interactions with clients.
On the other hand, if your employees are happy doing their job, then they are more inclined to build a positive relationship with clients, which results in a 20% sales increase. Thankfully, there are tons of ways to make your business culture a positive one. You can start by creating a fun work environment and showing your employees that they are valued, and then start implementing reward and recognition programs. Those are some of the building blocks to ensuring happy workers.
3. Make sure you’re implementing NPS best practices
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that once you have a standard NPS template, that you are ready to distribute it and then gather your numbers. In fact, there are other best practices that help ensure your NPS is as accurate as possible.
As an example, sending a survey too early could end up in a negative response. You need to give new customers some breathing room and time to try out the product or service before sending out your survey. And, sending the survey just once is a mistake. A customer will have continuous experiences with your business, and those experiences are likely to change. As such, they need to be evaluated over time.
Another important practice is to ensure that your entire team is aware of the result of the NPS. Simply keeping the responses to yourself in confidentiality is counterproductive; employees won’t know how to improve if they aren’t aware of what they’ve done wrong. Use the NPS as one of a set of tools to continue to train workers on how to treat clients.
In the end, there are lots of things to consider when recording the NPS. If used properly, it can serve as an important business tool that provides feedback on your performance and customer loyalty levels. If misused, it will show inaccurate numbers and will not help improve your business practices. Keep these three things in mind in order to build an accurate NPS.