As a business owner, you need to deliver great service to your customers. And, you want them to see the effort you put into creating an excellent experience for them.
There are MANY different facets and technologies used by a typical small business and Typical customer satisfaction surveys can be long and complicated when business owners try to gather too much information at one time.
Many corporate and big employers instead use one single powerful metric known as the Net Promoter Score, or the NPS.
The value of the NPS score
The value of the NPS has been tried and tested. Discovered by Frederick Reichheld in 2003, this one single question is the best assessment of customer satisfaction and loyalty:
“How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague?”
The reason why this question is so powerful is because its responses have been found to link with actual customer behaviour, such as purchasing patterns and referrals, and making it a predictor of company growth.
It’s also a very easy question to answer!
How and when do you ask the question?
You’ve probably filled out an NPS survey before without knowing it – usually after making a purchase with a business.
- Big employers often ask customers for their NPS score at different parts of the journey, like
- after they have made a booking,
- after making payment, or even a week later,
- once customers have had the chance to use the goods or services they bought.
Getting the NPS at several time points means you learn the most about the customer’s experience, how and when it changes, and where you can improve service.
What is a good NPS score?
So you’ve got your customer’s score on the ultimate question. What does it mean? Responses to the survey are divided into three categories:
- Promoters score 9-10: they are your happiest and most loyal customers
- Passives score 7-8: they are happy overall but could be swayed by competitors
- Detractors score 0-6: you could lose their business and get their negative feedback
Corporate leaders like Xero use the NPS
Xero uses the NPS to measure the loyalty of their employees as well. Xero got their score of 68% by subtracting their detractors (8% of their employees who would not recommend working at Xero) from their promoters (76% of their employees who would encourage their friends to work for Xero).
Increase your profits through customer loyalty
The more “promoters” you have as part of your customer base, the more likely you are to succeed.
These are powerful findings from Harvard Business School, emphasizing how important it is that employees treat customers exceptionally well. This includes:
- Understanding customer needs, and finding solutions for every stage of their journey
- Delivering efficient customer support, with a website chat system to respond quickly and when needed
- Engaging with customers in real-time, through video chat and features like sharing screen
- Improve quality and timelines of feedback with email support and analytical software
Become a virtual assistant and offer great customer service
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