You already apply the Net Promoter Score℠ (NPS®) methodology to monitor your customers' relationship with your product, but what do you do with this indicator next?
Asking for customer feedback and finding out how willing they are to recommend your company is the first step, and congratulations on implementing this methodology.
Now it's time to define how you will use the collected data to improve your service – or even your product!
Here you'll learn how to use the NPS index in a practical way. This article is straight to the point and will cover:
- Review of the initial NPS® (with a link to free, more in-depth material if you are interested in understanding this method better);
- Practical tips for inner loop closure ; and
- Practical tips for closing the loop with the customer .
If this is what you were looking for, you've come to the right place! Without further ado, let's get started!
NPS®: what is it really for?
As you well know, NPS® is the most commonly used method to measure and track your customer's recommendation levels for the product or service you offer them.
The reason it's so common is that it's a fairly simple method to apply and can be used as a success indicator for the entire company. It's based on the simple question:
On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this solution to a friend or colleague?
Because it's quick to answer, this short question receives a high response rate from customers. Another great thing is that you can quickly determine how many of your customers are detractors (score 0-6), neutral (score 7-8), or promoters (score 9-10) of your brand.
Great, right? Yes, it is, but of course, what ultimately matters most is not the sample size or the research results.
What really matters is what you and your team do with that result. This act of using the result for both internal and external purposes is called 'closing the loop.'
How do you currently use the NPS® indicator?
Before you start thinking about a new part of your NPS® closing loop process, I invite you and your team to ask yourself: what does the current process look like?
If you already do some kind of loop closing, even without an established process, it's time to put it on paper.
Or perhaps in a spreadsheet. Here are some questions that can guide you and your team in this analysis:
- What action is taken based on each piece of feedback received by your NPS®?
- Is any particular action taken when we identify detractors?
- How do you and your team turn neutrals into promoters?
Based on this, you can create a small table and record the actions currently performed. This table is simply to help you better visualize the situation.
Now that you have an overview of the current situation, it's time to actually start defining internal and external processes that will transform each detractor or neutral status into a promoter status!
NPS®: How to perform external loop closure
Closing the outer loop is what you need to do with the customer. As you might imagine, closing the loop means tying up the loose ends. In other words, it's time to finalize the NPS® cycle.
I've decided to separate loop closure suggestions according to each of the three statuses. After all, each requires different attitudes! Let's get started!
Closing the loop with promoter customers: show gratitude
The goal of closing the loop with promoters is to make them feel valued for their feedback. According to them, there's no necessarily need for improvements to your solution, but that doesn't mean their opinion is worth less than that of another customer.
satisfaction with your company is the most valuable thing to you, right? That's why when you receive positive feedback, you should value it, of course!
There are some very simple and effective ways to show your gratitude to them, here are just a few suggestions:
Gift
How about showing gratitude through a reward? If you already have some merchandise or even a gift voucher, this is a good time to use it.
Maybe a little treat is enough to completely surprise your customer and end up in a prominent place on some social network!
Ask for directions
Your client is satisfied with your service and is probably grateful for the day you delivered exactly the solution she needed!
This is a great time to remind her that she may have friends with a similar problem to the one she had before meeting you. In other words, she might recommend your work to help a friend with a similar need.
Tip: To further encourage this referral, you can give them and their friend a bonus.
Suggest a custom upgrade
If your customer already likes your solution the way it is, then they'll like it even more with an upgrade, right?
And you don't even have to give it away for free. Since your promoter already knows the value of your business, they're a perfect candidate for an upsell. But of course, you can't suggest just any upsell.
Since you also know and value your promoter customer, it's important that you demonstrate this by suggesting an upgrade that makes 100% sense for them at this time.
So take a good look at how this customer has been using your solution and suggest an upsell that will be useful and generate value!
Closing the Loop with Neutral Customers: Demonstrate Value
Your neutral customer is in a make-or-break situation. And probably leaning more toward make-or-break. The fact that this customer doesn't love your product means they may be open to trying any competitor.
In fact, this type of customer's indifferent attitude makes them difficult to identify, as they're the type least likely to respond to surveys. Now, the question is:
What can you do about it?
Show them you care and try to help them make the most of your solution. The biggest factor that leads to customer indifference is that they don't see enough value in your product to consider it indispensable!
This means your job is to work to generate that value. It's likely, for example, that these customers don't know how to use your solution properly or simply haven't taken the time to explore it.
Here are two actions you can take to fix this:
- Give a guide about your product as a gift;
- Offer a guided tour of your solution to answer questions.
Closing the loop with detractors: make them love you!
Red alert. Your detractor probably already wanted to churn you and hasn't. So, get ready to work hard!
Closing the loop with them means understanding why they're unhappy with your product or service and finding a solution. It's time to regain the trust they placed in you when they became your customer: use all your creativity!
But where to start?
This customer is probably experiencing a specific issue, so the first step is to understand it. My suggestion is to take this opportunity to personally contact this customer. Or, send a thoughtful email that includes:
- Thanks for the feedback;
- An apology for the inconvenience;
- A clear demonstration that you will make an effort to resolve the issue; and
- One or two questions to help you identify what the problem might be.
At the end of the email, remember to thank them for the opportunity to resolve this situation and make yourself available for a phone conversation, if you wish.
With the customer's response in hand, you can plan your next steps to regain that customer's trust.
The challenges that may have led your customer to become dissatisfied with your company can be numerous. So, too, are the ways to solve them. If the problem is a lack of information or difficulty using a specific part of your product or service, for example, you can send guides or even teach them what to do in a video conference.
Use your creativity and remember to learn from the situation and report these difficulties to your team – and thus close the loop internally as well.
If you can't solve the problem, you can be helpful and suggest a simple solution to the customer—even if it's unrelated to your company. As contradictory as it may seem, this transparent approach to the situation will likely make the customer feel valued and regain their trust in you.
NPS®: How to do inner loop closure
You've already talked to your client about the feedback you received and updated them on the actions taken – now it's time to share this with your team.
the internal loop is a way to transform the experience with that customer into a learning experience for the entire company. And, as we've discussed in other materials, the goal of closing the internal loop is simple: to optimize and improve the quality of the service provided.
Before you begin building an inner-loop closure process, it's also important to analyze your current process. To do this, you can answer a few questions:
- What lessons have we learned based on customer feedback?
- How were these learnings implemented?
- How does the team communicate improvements made based on customer feedback to the internal team?
Now that you have a clear understanding of how your NPS® data is used today, it's time to consider how you can put this information to even better use. Some ways companies around the world use this data include:
- Recording ideas from customers to take into account when planning the product roadmap;
- Create internal churn prevention processes based on data analysis from NPS®;
- Create internal upsell processes based on data crossing between NPS® and product usage; and
- Create new customer referral campaigns based on NPS® data.
Each of these ways to close the NPS® cycle represents a huge opportunity for your company to grow consistently and become increasingly data-driven . After all, with data-driven decisions, you and your team can refine your internal processes with precision.
Conclusion
If you're not yet actively using your NPS survey results, it's time to take action! Start now—and feel free to share this article with your team so everyone is aware of the importance of this post-data processing step.
NPS is a registered trademark, and Net Promoter Score℠ and Net Promoter System℠ are service marks, of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc. and Fred Reichheld.