Six rookie mistakes_to_avoid_in_your_net_promoter_program-2

Six Rookie Mistakes to avoid in your

Net Promoter® Program A CEO’s Guide

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Avoiding Rookie Mistakes

So you have decided the Net

Promoter® program is the tool

for you, but as you move into

uncharted territory for you

and your company, you are

afraid of what kind of

headaches this may bring and

how it may fail to deliver the

results you expected.

There are still many “sand-traps”

that companies consistently fall

into, even after running an NPS

program for years. So with 10

years experience in helping

companies get better results

from customer feedback we’d

like to share some actionable

tips to help you prevent these

pitfalls.


#1 Very low response rate

Six Rookie Mistakes to avoid in your Net Promoter® Program - A CEO’S Guide

Problem: You are not getting enough feedback to

give sensible answers (statistical significance!). This

gives NPS naysayers an easy reason to shoot you

down.

Low response rates should not be the case with Net

Promoter, with NPS users typically aiming for response

rates of 25 – 50% of your customers. This is not

unrealistic, even with the use of email (email is definitely

not dead). If you follow the right steps, this is what you

can expect.

Actively survey all your clients at least once a year,

maybe more. Make it part of the way you do business.

However, beware that you are not sending the same

customer too many surveys. Once or twice a year is

enough.


B2C Solution:

In order to gather continual data throughout the

year, survey immediately after a interaction (support

call, purchase, etc.). Don’t wait too long. Customers

are much more likely to engage because you are still

at the forefront of their mind and they still care

about the transaction that just took place. To give

yourself a break, find a way to automate this process

- it will kill you otherwise.

B2B Solution:

Not every one of your clients is the same. Use the

80/20 rule to figure out which big clients you

especially need to focus on (which 20% of clients

bring in 80% of revenue?). These clients are the

heart that keeps the blood pumping through your

business, so make sure you get +80% of them to

respond (at least one response in each of these). You

can get your account managers to recruit key

influencers to take part in the survey.


Don't forget to send out reminder emails. Two

reminders often work very well. Lastly, thank them for

the help, share the results and the actions you will

take based on the feedback. This lets them know their

feedback is valued and will improve response rates in

the future.

Although a low response rate can be seen as an NPS

issue - it is more often than not a “CRM problem”.

Ensure that your customer database is up to date with

the correct email address. You’d be surprised how

outdated customer data is at most companies.

Next, set yourself up for a high response rate by

letting your customers know that you will survey them.

In this invitation email, make it clear why you'd like to

receive feedback and what’s in it for them.

When you actually send the survey, you can also

include an invitation video of your CEO explaining

how much feedback is appreciated. Be creative here.

Plus, if your survey is short (see rookie mistake #2),

your customer will be happy to respond.

Side note: Make your survey mobile compatible - 45%

of your customers will fill out the survey on a mobile

device.



#2 Too many questions in the survey

Problem: “Wow – it’s great to get customer feedback

but I want to know much more! What does the customer

think about X, Y, Z? How much can one extra question

hurt right?”

Well, every question you add to the survey makes it more

complex to understand the answers. Example: You ask

customers to rate “overall service”, “customer service”,

“after sales support” etc. on a scale of 0 to 10. Customers

not only struggle to answer these honestly but you are

also left with the task of having to interpret them. How do

you decide which one needs your priority, the “10” on

question 1 or the “2” on question 3?

Each page you add to a survey makes response drop off

10 – 20%, while many that start will not finish due to the

length. This all ties back as well to Rookie Mistake #1.


Solution:

Just use one question for rating. The Net Promoter scale

“Would you recommend” is a very good proxy for

everything else (Fred Reichheld writes about the science

of this in his book “The Ultimate Question”). Tell everyone

else in the business you need nothing else (and get them

to read the book!)

Include a simple follow-up question, like “What is the reason

for giving that score?” and provide a handful of possible

reasons. As such, categorize answers manually if you can (or

use some simple techniques like CustomerGauge L1-L2

boxes to help tag issues “what you most liked/disliked”).

By taking this approach, you look past the averages and

look for the highs and lows. This will help identify the key

drivers to your customer’s (dis)satisfaction and prioritize your

next improvements.

Spread these reasons around the business for the relevant

people to read. Also, provide a single comment box so

customers can answer freely. Read all the comments –

don’t get a machine to analyze them.

Remember, most people respond on a mobile. So

make it simple for them to answer, with thumb-friendly

buttons and selections.

Don’t forget to add an opportunity to follow up: ask

customers if they need more help. Get on the phone

and ask follow up questions, this way you can keep

your surveys extremely short and leave the more

probing questions for the phone. Don’t leave relation-

ship issues to a survey.




#3 Making NPS just one person’s responsibility

Problem: You put one person in charge of NPS. It’s that

person’s project to address the issues, and their metric to

improve!

One person? If the program would be only about the logistics

– making sure surveys go out, response is adequate,

close-loops, and organizing metrics - you could leave it up to

that one person. And we do recommend one person having

the responsibility of doing all this (let’s call him/her the

“Customer Success” or “Customer Retention” officer).

But NPS is a company project. Carrying out the survey and

organizing metrics can be the job of one person, but using

those findings for customer experience improvement has to

be a company wide focus.

Net Promoter only works if both managers and staff buy-in to

it. You need to direct issues to managers that are responsi-

ble to change things. And they can best do it by giving

comments to front-line workers and empowering them to fix

customer issues.


Solution:

The best way to get the whole company behind it, is

engaging more people in the project, do this then by

creating a few NPS champions in each team. Make a

cross-functional team (a great opportunity to recognize

junior team members) and meet regularly

(ideally every 2 weeks) to report what has been learnt.

While getting the whole company involved is critical, a focus

from top-level executives is paramount. At least once a

month, look at NPS from the CXO level. Your Customer

Success officer will be the customer’s advocate in these

meetings.

Since NPS really is about making continual improvements

across the company, without top-level buy-in, not much will

change. Have a look at “Kaizen”, or Six-Sigma to get some

inspiration on how to actually implement the changes.

Spreading the word also helps to engage people. Make sure

you invest in a tool that can send out regular reports, and

use digital displays to show customer comments and scores

throughout the business. Put some posters up. Consider it a

good milestone for the project.

Remember your goal is to make the company customer

focused!




#4 Not following up

Problem: You have a mountain of customer feedback.

You just analyzed it. It’s now a month old, and you have

real customer issues that need to be solved. What to do?

We find this quite often in first-time NPS campaigns:

Companies have not done a survey in while, so to

compensate they survey all their customers in one go.

Expectantly, the response is too much for the salespeople or

other account managers to follow up. By the time they get

around to responding to the feedback, it’s too stale to deal

with. Speed is of the essence here.

When time passes, it usually gets quietly

forgotten by the salespeople and the company - but not by

customers. While added to this is that in many cases, the

company does exactly the same thing again in 12 months.

That’s the cause of some poor customer experience right

there!


Solution:

The first step is easy. Don’t send all the surveys at once.

Stagger them throughout the year. With the right tools you

can send out continually, randomize the sending, or have

it sent out after an interaction such as a purchase or call

center enquiry – that way you can manage the input each

week.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Step number two (see Mistake #3): Make sure you have a

team assigned to deal with responding to customers – do

not create it as a job that will be addressed by a team “when

they have the time.” Also, imagine the implications on com-

pany strategy when VP’s and directors call customers back

and hear about customer’s pain directly from the source.

In the third step you measure the time it takes to respond to

a customer issue (and close it). We call this closing the loop.

While in this technological age it is a must to take

advantage of the wealth of data you possess about your

customers, and have your NPS program integrated in your

CRM system – that will help salespeople or agents refer to

feedback (positive or negative) in future calls.




#5 Forgetting what you learned last time

Problem: You can’t find the results of last years survey – it

was on an Excel spreadsheet that you can’t find – and

which version was it anyway? So now you can’t tell what

the respondents said, who answered, or what the score

was.

Unless you have a robust system to measure

continuously, it’s easy to lose track. But the best improve-

ments are made by continually tracking metrics and feed-

back – each month and quarter. Tracking the score of the

customer over time and checking if feedback holds you

accountable to actually improve on what was suggested.


Solution:

Invest in a system that keeps track of responses, and

can show you trends – your NPS score and time to

solve. Make sure you understand what the drivers of

pain are – do they change over time?

Use what you have learnt to decide which part of the

business has seen improved scores and how this can be

turned into best practice. We have clients that have 5

years of data, and they use this to understand the ROI

impact of changes. Also, whatever you do, value your

historical data - if you change systems, make sure you

can import data from one to another.

Last but not least: be consistent. Don’t change the

structure of the survey too much, keep it simple, and

again this is a great reason to use a very slim Net

Promoter survey.

201520132012




#6 Not remembering your manners

Problem: After diligently surveying customers, chasing

them and reminding them, from the customer point of

view: crickets chirping in the night - nothing happens.

Customers await a response on what you learned but you

have no plan or resources to do this.

99% of the time companies neglect customers after a survey.

Even when customers spend 20 minutes filling in a form, it’s

very rare for a “thank you” to be sent. But if you value your

customers’ time, think about this as $50 worth of

consultancy given from them to you, for free. So a thank you

is the least you can do!


Solution:

After collecting responses (say once a month) sit with your

NPS team and agree what the key points are that you

learned from customers in this period. Take this

information and summarize what you will do with it. Once

that is done, you communicate back to the customers who

responded (find a tool to do that in an easy way).

First thank them for their input and explain how useful it is.

Especially thank your “top promoters” – and see what you

can do to get them to promote you or to continue to buy

(and to buy more from you). Think of incentives that actually

would make them want to refer your company or product to

other people. Nobody likes to feel pressured into doing

something.

Secondly, give some detail about what you learned to actu-

ally show and share what changes you have made. This

shows you really value their feedback and are

working hard to serve the customer better. Pick about three

bullet points: usually something you have already

implemented as a result of feedback, something you will do,

and something to consider.



Finally, say that you are looking forward to hearing

from them again. Here is an example:

Hi {Customer Name},

Thank you for sharing your feedback with us.

Your feedback really helps us to structure our business

around serving you better.

What did we learn from all the feedback we received?

We found that some packages arrived damaged (as you

mentioned too). So starting next month, we are replacing

the material currently used with a stronger material.

We are looking forward to receiving more feedback from

you in the future!

Kind regards,

{Your name}

CEO of {Company Name}

The result is that you’ll improve your response rate the

next time you send out your survey (see mistake #1).

But more importantly, you make your customers feel

that their time was valued and could potentially turn

some of those detractors into promoters over time.

So please, don’t forget your manners!



Summary

- Low response rates, fix this with just a few short tweaks.

- Short surveys are the key to boosting response-rates.

- Share the load of NPS, putting the weight of NPS on just one person’s shoulders will bring about disaster.

- Not responding quickly – show you care by doing just the opposite through a well managed feedback system.

- Not remembering what you learnt means you have nothing to launch off from next time.

- Don’t forget to show your customers you appreciate them by sending them your thanks.


Net Promoter, NPS, and Net Promoter Score are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, and Fred Reichheld.

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CustomerGauge helps clients improve customer

experiences. The system automatically collects,

measures and analyses customer feedback and has

close-loop tools to retain customers better and

reduce churn. All based on the industry standard

metric Net Promoter System.

Want to learn more?

Connect with us and visit CustomerGauge.com for

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