It tells you how likely customers are to recommend your product or service to others. It reveals how satisfied customers are from working with you. And it measures their loyalty to your organization.
Given its significance, you’re probably wondering how you can better your score. We’ll answer this for you by offering specific tactics that can drive meaningful changes to your NPS.
Whether you’re trying to repair your relationship with customers or turn their experience from good to great, you can learn how to improve your Net Promoter Score by following the guidance on this page!
Get serious about measuring NPS
Learn how to run an end-to-end customer feedback program that measures your NPS.
Net Promoter Score summary
In case you need a reminder, let’s briefly review the Net Promoter Score.
The NPS is based on the question, “How likely would you be to recommend our company to a friend or colleague?”
The respondent is asked to select a rating from 0 (least likely) to 10 (most likely). Respondents are then categorized according to their rating:
- 0 to 6 is a Detractor
- 7 or 8 is a Passive
- 9 or 10 is a Promoter
The NPS is calculated by taking the percentage of respondents who are Promoters and subtracting it by the percentage of respondents who are Detractors—leaving you with a score that can range from -100 to +100.
How to improve your Net Promoter Score
To raise your NPS, create separate plans for managing your Detractors, Passives, and Promoters. If you can improve the ratings across each group, your NPS is sure to grow.
Here’s some tips and tricks that can help:
Be responsive and careful when managing Detractors
Detractors, your least happy customers, are the most sensitive to your response, so handle their feedback with the utmost care. Try the following:
1. Make sure you respond quickly and are available on several different communication channels.
Research suggests that customers expect a response within 5 minutes by phone call, 1 hour via social media, and up to 24 hours for emails. Since these numbers reflect customers’ expectations, strive for even shorter response times.
2. Send the customer a short survey once their issue gets resolved.
The survey results will give you a chance to see if their concerns and questions were effectively answered—while allowing your team to make timely adjustments to the customer support experience.
Pro tip: Automate your survey’s delivery by integrating SurveyMonkey with your customer relationship management (CRM) platform. For instance, if a customer support rep closes a case in your CRM after responding to a Detractor, the CRM can automatically trigger a survey to be sent to the contact at that account.
3. Look for common themes in your Detractors’ feedback.
This can help you prioritize your efforts. For example, if there’s a specific bug in your product that’s making a large portion of your customers upset, it probably deserves more attention than a bug that’s only bothering one customer (though the latter is still important to address!).
To help you quickly pinpoint the top themes, use our word cloud feature. Once you filter your survey results by Detractors, it’ll displays the words that appear most often in a cloud-like visual (where the size of each word reflects the relative frequency its used).
You can also look for themes by reviewing Detractors’ feedback from your other survey questions. Our customizable charts can make it all the more easy to spot them.
Keep Promoters happy and find ways to improve the experience for Passives
The steps for making sure that the other 2 customer groups are as happy and engaged as possible are similar—minus a few subtle differences! Let’s review them:
1. Look at the word clouds for both Passives and Promoters.
What are some of your key differentiators for Promoters? Quality of support? Product reliability? Cost? Once you know what they are, make sure you continue to deliver them to Promoters, and even consider doubling down on them. Also, try to apply them to your Passives and Detractors, as these differentiators deliver the most value for your customers.
Then see if you can find things that Passives and Promoters aren’t happy about. Investing time and resources in the areas you uncover can improve the experiences for each group and can compensate for strengths that begin to diminish over time.
2. Take quotes/stats from your Promoters and use them in your marketing.
When happy customers see the value that other customers experience, it’ll only strengthen their belief in your organization. And when Passives see them? It’ll help convince them to use your product/service in more meaningful ways.
Automate your content-creation efforts
From case studies to testimonials, TechValidate lets you create and share powerful proof points.
3. Fine tune your overall reputation as a brand.
For Promoters, a trustworthy, recognizable brand can be the cherry on top for keeping them loyal to your business; while for Passives, it can be the extra push that turns them into a Promoter.
To build a strong brand, focus on creating informative, actionable content. This alone drives brand loyalty among 62% of Millennials. Also, present company values that will resonate with customers. Nearly two thirds of consumers (64%), for example, cite shared values as a key ingredient to fostering a trusted relationship with a brand.
Understanding how to improve your Net Promoter Score is essential to running a successful organization. So now that you’ve read this, you should feel all the more confident about the future of your organization!
