Being in the SaaS business, all of us grapple with this question: how do we set annual targets for Net Promoter Score (NPS) improvement. Unfortunately, there is no straight answer to this. It wholly depends on the market and your current stance in the business. Note that NPS now it is ubiquitous. Almost every company measures NPS and plans ways to improve it.
NPS cheerleaders and customer experience experts are monitoring improvements, setting benchmarks, and doing whatever it takes to improve NPS customer service. Read on the following blog to unearth 10 such ways to improve the NPS score in no time. Let’s get started.
- Identify the common issues
- Listen to the Customer’s Voice
- Analyze your data
- Perfect your greetings
- Boost customer recommendations
- Focus on the Passives too
- Engage your employees
- Quick follow-ups
- Ask for Suggestions
- Reduce response time
Identify the common issues
For this, you need to dive deep into customer feedback. List out your top 5 or 10 most common complaints that you are facing. Then group them into different improvement categories. After that, you can prioritize the sequence based on the frequency of the mentions.
Also, ensure reviewing feedback from both detractors as well as the passives. Begin with defining action plans and planning the relevant follow-up steps. Work on the high-complaint areas first, this will take the overall score a notch down.
Listen to the Customer’s Voice
You need to ensure that your policies are geared up to answer the needs of your clients. Simply put, hear the voice of your customers and practice active listening. Additionally, do some analysis of your call records. And ascertain what the main drivers are for the call transfers or escalations.
Analyze your data
To really understand where you are missing out on, you will have to know your data first. For starters, measure operational performance. Know how good, bad, or ugly are you performing. Once you do that, collect employee engagement data.
Figure out the core areas you need to work on. Then, have a strong understanding of the research you just obtained. Discuss with your team on what the highlights are, and how you can set some strategies to improve the NPS customer service.
Perfect your greetings
You must thank your customers for taking the time to participate. Show each participant that you not only care about her or his opinions and feedback, but that you are grateful each took the time to provide meaningful input. Make yours stand out from the rest, unlike the mundane, spam-like thank-you these days.
Boost customer recommendations
Goes without saying, customer recommendations are one of the best ways to promote a service or product. Encourage customers to spread positive reviews on social presence. This is an efficient way to turn the passives into promoters. Not just that, you can offer incentives or discounts to share their stories.
Focus on the Passives too
While it is true that passives don’t necessarily influence your NPS ratings, but it is worth a shot focusing on them. It is possible that you can engage them in a discussion and prove your worth. Show them that you are more than just a service or product and that you care.
Use this chance to change the ball game altogether. This is where the customer experience can tip in your favor. Who knows, you could have just converted a passive to an advocate?
Engage your employees
Ensure all of your employees know your company’s NPS results. They must understand why NPS is so important, what the company’s score is, and what needs to be done to improve going forward.
It all simmers down to raising awareness of the challenge ahead and make each team member feel personally responsible for helping to improve NPS for the organization. They need to know why are we doing this and a sense of belongingness must exist.
Quick follow-ups
Prompt follow-up with customers after they’ve given feedback can help contact centers drive increases in NPS. Further, it demonstrates your commitment to the customer experience and resolves individual problems.
Not just that, it gives more room to delve into the issues that drag down your customer loyalty. How fast you respond, who follows up and even the means of contacting the customer can depend on the type of feedback received, as well as characteristics of the customer or account.
Ask for Suggestions
Customers want to know their opinions matter. When you don’t ask for their suggestions, this makes them feel unappreciated. Asking the king of all questions “From one out of 10, how likely are you to recommend the agent to a friend or colleague?” is important.
However, you should always put up an extra question which looks like: in what ways could your experience has been better? Is there anything else you want from us? How can we do better?
Reduce response time
People are busy and they want service and answers fast. If you can provide it really fast, this tends to exceed their expectations and translates into valuable word-of-mouth advertising for your company.
If tickets stay open longer than average, this is a clear indication that your customer experience is not doing that well. It leaves a bad impression on the agent or even the company. Therefore, what you can do is respond quicker. Because it really helps the customer get his answers faster.
Final Take
Net Promoter Score It is a vital tool that tracks the answer to the ultimate question, which is how happy and satisfied are your customers with your service? Think of it as a starting point, from thereon you can dig in all the requisite data, gather some thoughtful insights, and prove fruitful in customer success and product development too.
Although this could be a time-taking project, it allows you to perfectly assess at which stage your brand is in the growth surge. Because at the end of the day, the customer is the king. And the happiness or unhappiness of the customer decides how you perform in the market.
Kaustubh Sangam is a Customer Success Analyst with 2 years of experience. Committed to delivering exceptional customer experiences and driving business growth. Proficient in leveraging data analysis to optimize customer success strategies.
Published September 24, 2020, Updated June 07, 2023