Let’s make your Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey more actionable by building trust

NPS or Net Promoter Score, is a measure of customer loyalty, typically used by businesses. It poses a question asking customers the likelihood of referring the business to their professional or personal network. The question can be responded to by choosing an answer option between 0 and 10. If a customer selects 9 or 10, then they are classified as Promoters; options 7 and 8 mean they’re Passives, and scores 6 and below mean they are Detractors.

Learn more about how NPS scores are calculated here.

The main criticism of NPS

While the Net Promoter Score system is very good at understanding where you stand with your customers, it falls short in understanding why. It’s important to note that there is more than one single touch point in a customer lifecycle to influence an NPS score. Moreover, the question directly assesses the referracibility of your product or service.

Thus, there is a small distinction between how this loyalty translates to more business in a B2B scenario and a B2C scenario.

In the latter, customer loyalty or a high NPS score correlates to a repeat purchase decision or a renewed subscription. However, in a B2B scenario, the answer is that it depends. This is owing to the fact that there are more stakeholders involved.

In a B2B scenario, while the system user who uses the product or service may love the product, their influence on upgrading the system or renewing the subscription is less when compared to a decision maker (head of the department) or an executive sponsor (who funds the product). Let’s also not forget that certain influencers may or may not directly work with the product but can also affect decision-making.

An additional aspect of loyalty to take into account is that customer loyalty could also take on the form of customers actively talking about your product in their circles. The likelihood of your customer bringing up your product in the conversation may be higher if, say, you offer pest control services as opposed to an AI chatbot 🙂.

What is the way forward?

For starters, it’s important to understand who you’re surveying and what your goal is with the survey. In a B2B scenario, you’d ideally segment your audience depending on their role and be aware of what may or may not be influenced by them.

Let’s take the example of a chat-based help desk service. While the agents interacting with the customers may be promoters as they feel your product scores high on ease of use, the executive sponsor may not be too happy because of your pricing. The decision maker could make the case for your product; hence, each stakeholder’s role differs, and the information you gather from your surveys needs to be presented so that you can win those who hold a greater influence over your product.

Learn more about conducting surveys that help you win here.

Can trust influence loyalty? The short answer is yes.

In fact, researchers Ashley Reichheld and Amelia Dunlop have boiled trust down to four factors: humanity, transparency, capability, and reliability.

Reichheld and Dunlop believe trust is a mutually beneficial relationship between an organization and its stakeholders. Having conducted thousands of hours of research, they suggest that scoring high on these factors is indicative of high levels of trust with your stakeholders, which in turn boosts loyalty.

What are these factors measure

Reichheld and Dunlop’s survey suggests that businesses ask customers the following questions and ask customers to rate them on a 7-point scale.

• The company/brand demonstrates empathy and kindness toward me and treats everyone fairly.
• The company/brand openly shares information, motives, and choices in straightforward and plain language.
• The company/brand creates quality products, services, and/or experiences.
• The company/brand consistently and dependably delivers on its promises.

These questions gauge the company on humanity, transparency, capability, and reliability, respectively. If an organization is able to increase a customer’s humanity score from neutral to high, that customer is likely to be twice as inclined to endorse the brand on social media and defend it against criticism. They’re also almost three times more likely to choose it over other competitors. 

Customers who rate a brand’s transparency highly are over twice as inclined to promote it on social media. Similarly, customers who rate a brand’s capability highly are three times more likely to choose it over competitors, and those who rate its reliability highly are also three times more likely to spend more on the brand compared to similar products or services.

Conducting these surveys could not only indicate where you stand with your customer but, according to Reichheld and Dunlop, reduces the need for a large sample size, allowing you to reduce survey fatigue and elicit more effective responses.

Learn more about how to avoid survey fatigue here.

Should you get rid of tracking NPS?

No. NPS is a widely understood and powerful tool to measure business effectiveness. Instead of choosing one over the other, follow up the NPS question with the four trust-gauging questions. Ensure you assess the score against the different persona your product is catering to. Use the results to create actionable steps to boost your trust and loyalty.

It’s also important to communicate your follow up action with your customers and give them an idea of the kind of changes they can expect to see.

Finally, continue to monitor your NPS and aim at moving the needle as opposed to chasing a benchmark. While the absolute score does hold some value, the change in your score over time is much more valuable.