Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of customer advocacy or recommendation. However, its real value is as a predictor of customer loyalty. Research shows that NPS has the highest correlation with future profits and growth vs. other customer experience metrics. A well run NPS programme allows you to monitor and track customer loyalty; identify ‘Detractors’, or dissatisfied customers who are at risk of defecting from your business; and determine pain-points in your service offering. When you’ve determined these pain-points, you can then take action to improve the overall customer experience.
My favourite part of this job is providing evidence that quantifies the customer experience. Good quant evidence helps our clients make better-informed business decisions.
Asking better questions
Questionnaires in Voice of Customer (VoC) and NPS programmes are customer touch-points. How you run these programmes can have a positive or negative impact on your brand. EY Seren’s expertise lies asking the right questions, to the right people, at the right time. Through this, we enable businesses to make more customer-centric decisions. Below are our top tips for running a successful VoC/NPS programme.
Top 3 Tips:
1. Avoid researcher bias
All consultants are human, and we all have subtle biases in the way we word questions or interpret results. How you frame questions and report results is always shaped by your experiences and viewpoints. Be mindful of leading questions and try to remove ambiguity.
2. Target the right customer segments
Be careful that the sampling frame you use is a close match to the customer segments you are trying to understand. Even if you sample randomly, it is typical for some subgroups to be more willing to cooperate than others. You need to quota sample and weight data to compensate for this.
3. Structure the survey correctly
Keep it simple: To avoid fatigue bias through the use of over-long questions, write questions that are short and clear. Ask for one piece of information at a time and avoid double barrelled questions. Don’t make participants struggle to work out what you mean.
Keep it personal: You’re likely to see a better response rate if your survey is personalised, based on product use, experience, demographics and/or previous answers.
Keep it logical: Make sure you order your questions logically. Begin with screening questions that allow you to filter in your target population and filter out everyone else. Free text questions are a good next step, they allow participants to respond in their own words, unprompted by you. You can then follow up with general questions, such as “how would you rate this service?”, followed by more specific questions, “you’ve given a low score, what were the problems?” Typically, surveys then end by collecting demographic information and confirming whether the participant is happy to be re-contacted for future research.
3 Ways the EY Seren VoC team can help you:
1. Bespoke solutions
Long term tracking work, deep-dive projects or short stand-alone surveys. We can run programmes to validate and quantify issues uncovered in qualitative research.
2. Simultaneous programmes
Running an employee attitude survey in conjunction with your customer survey, to check internal perceptions of performance against those of your customers.
3. Actionable recommendations
Help your business to prioritise and action the feedback you have collected, to further enhance the customer experience.