NPS Analysis

Now we’re getting down to the nitty gritty of the NPS guide. Using it to surface extraordinary insights and actions that improve your bottom line.

This comprehensive section gives step-by-step guidance on reacting to incoming NPS data both tactically and strategically. What to do with detractors, passives and advocates as respective groups? It’s all covered…

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How to analyse your NPS score

The main way to analyze NPS results is to track the overall NPS score over time. This is a common KPI both for the organization as a whole, and specific products, services or franchises.

How to break down NPS analysis

At this high level, there are various methods of breaking the data down to present NPS status. For example:

• Breakdown of NPS responses by NPS score (0–10)
  • This identifies the modal NPS score; the most common. This can be tracked over time.
• Breakdown of NPS responses by NPS categorization
  • This separates respondents into their respective camps: promoters, passives and detractors. You would do this anyway in the process of calculating your NPS score.

Data correlation in NPS analysis

The next step would be to correlate NPS scores with segmentation data about each customer. For example:

• Showing NPS scores according to how long respondents have been customers for
  • This will show how new customers’ opinions differ to customers of longer tenure. It will indicate whether customers mature in their appreciation of your company over time, or whether this wanes from an initial high point.
• Showing NPS scores according to purchases/service levels
  • This will show how customer impressions differ based on types or levels of products consumed. The same would apply to correlations against revenue spend. 
• Showing NPS scores according to age, gender and other demographics
  • These insights could be influential in how you target marketing, promotions and communications in general.

Utilize follow up questions for better NPS analysis

The final step would be to correlate NPS scores with the additional insights garnered from follow-up questions. For example:

• Showing the top 3 reasons why NPS scores of 0, 1, 2, etc. are given
• Comparing the principal areas that detractors feel you should improve in against the areas where promoters believe you excel in

Act upon NPS analysis

NPS analysis is only the beginning… acting upon the NPS data is imperative – there is limited value is simply tracking NPS for the sake of it. Before you do, it’s important to remember that NPS is not simply an aggregate trending total. It is first and foremost the view of an individual customer.

Act on Promoters and Detractors first

Beginning at the individual level, the extremes of NPS response should be acted upon immediately. 

• For the very high scorers (promoters)
• For the very low scorers (detractors, particularly the lower half of these)

What to do with Promoters

Imagine a customer who has just given you an NPS rating of 10. You have a standard landing page or email acknowledgement thanking them for their input. And then what? Consider going one stage further with this customer by immediately:

• Encouraging them to post an independent review on a relevant review site
• Requesting a short testimonial, or (if applicable) permission to use the comments they’ve provided to create one
• Asking their willingness to be part of a promotional case study
• Inviting them to participate in a focus group study, product testing, etc. 

Steps such as these maximize the value of having an NPS promoter in your midst. It also validates and extends a tangible relationship between you and the customer. Note that some of the suggestions drive mutual value, not just value to your organization. For example, product testing could be really cool if you are a promoter of Harley Davidson or EA Sports, as well as helping those companies create better products.

What to do with Detractors

Now imagine a customer who’s given an NPS score of 3 or below (the detractor scale begins at 6 and below, so could apply here also). Again, they get a stock response for detractors and that is perfectly appropriate. Going beyond this you should consider personally contacting that individual to understand their situation/story further. This could directly or indirectly achieve the following:

• Make the customer feel valued and more positive toward your brand
• You need to remedy the situation or issue that’s given rise to their low score
• Enable you to learn about a previously unknown glitch in your processes that you can fix so it doesn’t happen again and cause other low NPS scores
• Feed into internal training materials/updates that notify customer-facing staff how to prevent certain issues arising in future

Read more about how to improve your NPS score

Go the extra mile

Making the effort with an individual low-NPS scorer has far greater benefits for the organization than just keeping them as a customer. The objective to retain them might even fail. Even so, you’d have learned a great deal and implemented changes to avoid similar situations in future.

Sometimes, intervening with a low-NPS scorer (detractor) can be surprisingly fruitful. What we often see in such situations is something called the ‘service recovery paradox’. This occurs when there has been a service failure (characterized by a poor NPS reading) followed by a successful recovery. This process of turning a negative experience into a positive one doesn’t just restore the customer back to their natural ‘equilibrium’ – it can actually elevate them to a higher NPS level than if the poor experience never happened!

Whether positive or negative – promoters or detractors – this process of following up individuals is called ‘closing the loop’. The critical aspect of closing the loop is seeing the feedback process through to a conclusion i.e. contacting the customer who responded and completing all necessary follow-up actions.

Of course, NPS respondents are not always treated as individuals. To scale operations, organizations will use the NPS categorizations and apply strategies to each group.

Close the Loop on all NPS responses

You don’t want to leave any feedback open. It is important to follow up with both positive and negative responses. Come up with a strategy for dealing with all kinds of responses. The process is going to be different according to whether they are positive or negative. Negative feedback, you can fix. Positive, you can optimize. We’ve got some great response planning resources for you to draw upon. Check out more NPS resources. 

It’s useless to introduce a professional customer feedback system without knowing what you’ll do before it arrives. Here are some example SLA’s for dealing with NPS responses.

• 0-6 = senior manager calls customer within 4 hours. Gives swift apology and resolution to drive service recovery
• 7 and 8 = comments are captured and shared for training. How could we have driven better satisfaction with these customers?
• 9 and 10 = customer thanked. Customer rep or team are mentioned in team meeting; actions noted and replicated

Turn around Negative responses by closing the loop

Some of the best turnarounds happen when a senior person responds fast. For example, by personally contacting the unhappy customer to gather their feedback. It defuses the situation and the customer thinks “wow, they really care about me”.

Have a timescale in which you will respond. Contact the unhappy customer within an hour for example, or promise to fix their issue within a day. Make sure it’s a commitment you can keep, and organize your people to deliver against it. Then check back after an agreed period to ensure the customer is happy.

Customer Thermometer has a dedicated Closed Loop feature for ensuring that NPS response processes are completed to auditable standards.

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