How to Learn from Bad Net Promoter Scores

This guest post was written by Martin Ceisel, the lead Content Strategist at MindTouch. His hobbies include writing, writing, and writing some more. MindTouch is a self-service platform that helps companies improve support agent productivity, increase ticket deflection, and fuel self-service support.

A quick look at some Net Promoter Score benchmarks will quickly reveal a painful truth: bad NPS scores happen. It’s inevitable.NPS Calculation

The worst response to your company’s detractors, though, is no response at all. So, how to best learn from bad Net Promoter Scores and use them to improve the customer experience?

Here are a few strategies to consider:

Do your research

Look at all of the support tickets your detractor customer has put in and read all the notes that your agents have written about these interactions. Review the goals they had when they initially became a customer. Check which help articles they may have read. This will give you important context when you close the loop with the customer.

Respond promptly and personally

Though the customers behind bad Net Promoter Scores might still be feeling the sting of their negative experience, receiving a prompt response to their NPS survey might help turn the tide. If nothing else, a personal response is an opportunity to take the NPS survey beyond a transactional call and response to an ongoing (and honest!) conversation. You’ll be surprised how much constructive feedback a simple “What can we do to improve your experience?” might unlock.

Segment response types

What customer group or business segment is driving the bulk of your bad Net Promoter Scores? One way to find out is to segment NPS scores to identify hotspots. You might find that a particular point in the customer journey, such as onboarding or renewal, is creating an inordinate number of detractors. Or maybe your NPS from product A is higher or lower than product B. Ask yourself why one group of customers is more successful than others. By categorizing responses, you can drill down and identify actionable takeaways. One way to see themes is to create reason codes, a method of categorizing responses so they can be organized and analyzed.

Don’t get tunnel vision

Remember that NPS is just one measure of customer sentiment. Don’t forget key metrics like customer effort (CES) and customer satisfaction score (CSAT). These, too, are important metrics that can lead you to the root cause of negative customer experiences. Regarding NPS specifically, consider trends in your industry. What are the NPS benchmarks you should be aiming for? This will help you decide how urgent an action to take—which bad Net Promoter Scores to prioritize first.

Because it’s about the whole customer experience

Tunnel vision makes for a good segue to my close: remember the reason we pay such close attention to customer sentiment. Perusing, parsing, and responding to bad Net Promoter Scores is about more than improving your company’s own internal metrics. It’s about improving the customer experience. If we can’t deliver low-effort customer experiences throughout the customer journey—if we don’t demonstrate a commitment to reading and responding to what our customers are telling us—we risk losing those customers entirely.

Make follow up on Net Promoter Score feedback convenient with InMoment’s many integrations.

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