Written by Steve Schiera, IMEC Regional Manager
Net Promoter Score (NPS) can be a valuable tool for measuring customer satisfaction, increasing customer lifetime value and reducing customer turnover. The happier your customers are the more referrals you will get and the more successful and profitable your business will be.
Because loyalty is so important to profitable growth, measuring and managing it makes good sense. The saying “What gets measured gets done” is extremely relevant with customer satisfaction. Many organizations have no method to obtain this critical information and many existing customer survey approaches have not proven to be very effective. Their complexity makes it difficult to get responses from your customers and they often generate flawed results.
By substituting a single question for the complex black box of the typical customer satisfaction survey, companies can actually put results to use and focus on the task of stimulating growth.
Net Promoter Score does just that. In a single question survey participants provide an insightful view into their trust and loyalty towards your product, service or brand. The question typically gets to the core of the customers trust in you. Rating their response on a 1 to 10 scale provides insight as to how likely a customer is to continue to buy from you.
As you see in the graphic, a detractor is anyone who records scores 6 and under. Generally they are not pleased with the service and they likely won’t be a return customer and could possibly have negative or damaging comments about the company.
On the surface, a score of an 8 looks like a decent score. In the net promoter arena, that score is actually considered passive. It means that the client is somewhat satisfied, but does not have the sense of loyalty to keep returning time after time. They won’t detract from your business, but they also won’t promote it either.
The promotors, the ones that we strive for, would answer a 9 or 10 and love the service they received. These are the repeat businesses and often called evangelists who will recommend the service to anyone who will listen.
Remember this isn’t a grading scale; there are only two scores that equal a passing grade, a 9 or 10.
Do you use Net Promoter Score (NPS) in your customer metrics? IMEC utilizes NPS in our annual impact survey to understand the benefits received and perceived by our manufacturing clients across Illinois.
“Based on the benefits that resulted from the services provided, how likely would you be to recommend IMEC to other companies, assuming they are not direct competitors?”
By using this metric we are able to routinely uncover areas for improvement and make sure we are providing the best services to Illinois manufacturing companies.
