7 strategies to improve your Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Every company wants to score big when it comes to customer loyalty, satisfaction and enthusiasm for their brand – that’s why your Net Promoter Score (NPS) is such a huge deal.  

Your NPS is a simple measure of how likely someone is to recommend your product, service or company to other people, so this is something you really want to be smashing out of the park.  

In this blog, we’ll take a look at why improving your Net Promoter Score is worth your time and effort and talk you through seven of the best strategies for giving your NPS a big old boost. 

If you need an introduction or a refresher on the NPS – and why it matters, check out our NPS playbook. One quick read, and you’ll be fully up to speed on all you need to know about this crucial CX metric. 

Why improve your Net Promoter Score (NPS)?  

Your Net Promoter Score is a great little metric for gauging just how well your brand is doing in terms of customer experience (CX). It also gives you a handle on customer sentiment towards your brand – which is hugely important for understanding how you’re perceived in the marketplace, and how you stack up against your competitors.  

Used as part of your CX program, your aggregate NPS scores can arm you with the insight your business needs to enhance the customer experience, improve your customer support, and progress your service all-round – resulting in happier customers are who are more likely to remain loyal to your brand; even in the face of heightened competition.  

But it’s not just about collecting customer feedback and sitting on a score: you actually need to act on that feedback; otherwise, what’s the point in gathering it in the first place? 

When combined with other valuable data metrics, an understanding of your Net Promoter Score can show you how you’re currently faring in the marketplace, give you an idea of where you might be in the future, and help you to see where improvements might need to be made. Get a handle on all of that, and you’ll be on the right track to improve the customer experience, increase customer retention, and maximise customer lifetime value. 

Read on to understand how. 

How to improve your NPS: 7 essential strategies 

1. Obtain company-wide buy-in Improving your Net Promoter Score (and maintaining a high level once you get there) calls for a company-wide effort. Your primary focus at the start of this journey then should be obtaining endorsement from senior leadership, and cascading this commitment down through every department. Every last team in your business needs to understand the end goal, along with their personal role in helping to achieve it – so explain how NPS is tracked, and offer incentives for individual and team efforts to improve it.  
2. Always close the loopYour NPS is all about how satisfied your customers are, and communication is a huge part of this; that’s why it’s so important to close the customer loop. But what do we mean by that? Well, closing the loop is about following up on feedback. Whether you use direct interviews or follow-up emails or phone calls, digging a little deeper into the reasons behind someone’s Net Promoter Score shows you’re taking their feedback seriously – and intend to act on it. You’re also likely to come away with even more insight, and more than a few ideas of how to improve your NPS in the future. 
3. Capitalise on your promoters When someone gives you a great Net Promoter Score, it’s tempting to move on with a spring in your step and a pat on your back for a job well done. Tempting, but not altogether savvy. What you should actually be doing is leveraging your promoters to encourage new business, and to improve your NPS even further. As well as closing the loop on negative feedback, you should delve a little deeper into your high scores: seek specific feedback on what you’re doing well and how you could do even better. Retaining satisfied customers is just as important as winning over disgruntled ones. 
4. Train your people with NPS in mind As well as clueing you in on customer sentiment, the open-ended feedback you can get from your Net Promoter Score can be used to pinpoint where business-wide improvements need to be made. You can use the insights gained here to train your employees on tightening and enhancing the customer experience – being careful to frame it as an opportunity for growth, to keep everyone on board. 
5. Make your NPS a regular focus Instead of only bringing your Net Promoter Score to your employees’ attention when there’s a problem that needs addressing, it’s a good idea to hold regular focus meetings. Making sure that everyone is on the same page and working towards a shared goal is crucial for creating a culture that supports top-notch customer experience, and these huddles are invaluable for keeping everyone on track. They’re also a great opportunity for ideas-generating.  
6. Carry out root cause analysisJust knowing your NPS isn’t enough: you need to understand what’s driving it. When conducting NPS analysis, look out for any patterns or trends in the data. If one particular team or department consistently receives high scores, while another scores low, you’ll need to get to the bottom of the root cause. Is one team being given more training than another? Are they covering different product lines? Delve deep and decide on what action needs to be taken.  
7. Embrace trial and error We might be dealing with data here, but data doesn’t always mean we’re trading with certainties. Sometimes, it comes down to a little trial and error. Once you’ve conducted your data analysis, experiment with some structural changes and monitor the effect on your NPS. Of course, if your scores are high, you don’t really need to change a thing (unless you want to), but if there’s cause for concern, try rolling out a change to your product, service, or messaging – and see what works. 

Tips for maintaining a high NPS score  

Once you’ve got your NPS score to a level you’re happy with, it’s important to understand how to keep it there. After all, there’s no point in scoring big for a short time, only to see your levels drop when you lose focus. 

Follow these top tips for maintaining a high Net Promoter Score: 

• Obtain buy-in from senior leadership for any improvement plan, as endorsement and promotion from the top down can help to keep momentum going longer term. 

• Get to grips with common customer pain points, specific to your company, brand, product or service; that way, you can track relevant metrics across all areas of your business and collect actionable insights along the way. 
• Once you’ve identified customer pain points, you need a clear system in place to address and fix them without delay; communication is key here, as customers need to know that you’re listening, and that you care. 
• To make sure everyone in your company is on the same page, it’s crucial to create a culture of culpability – not for purposes of blame, but in order to promote and celebrate personal responsibility for the customer experience, and to empower your people to take decisive action when needed. 
• Never rest on your laurels when the customer experience is at stake; people’s wants, needs and expectations are constantly evolving, so keep checking in, listening to your customers, and adapting to any changes. 

How can Forsta help?  

Forsta’s customer experience survey software can help you to improve your Net Promoter Score by giving you the tools to map your market and pinpoint opportunities for improvement. 

Taking a walk in your customers’ shoes is the best way to understand the customer experience, and tailor your offering to suit.  

With that in mind, our software can help you to plan (together, we can work out what you want to investigate, and plan a market insight project to match), investigate (we’ll use a bespoke mix of monitoring tools to gather key info), analyse (we can dig into the data to pick out gems of insight from all that feedback), and act (we’ll work out what this means for your business, and turn insight into action). 

Ready to unmask your market? Request a free demo of our customer experience software. 

Your NPS is only ever temporary 

If your Net Promoter Score isn’t anything to shout about just yet, don’t panic. By following the seven strategies laid out above, you can turn things around in a flash – but remember, that works both ways. To keep your NPS at a level you can be proud of, you need to put the work in. 

Get to know your market, understand their pain points, and never stop adapting your service to suit.