The Ultimate Net Promoter Score Toolbox for the Modern Merchant
Despite its simplistic nature in a sophisticated digital world, Net Promoter Score (NPS) plays an important role in measuring and improving customer loyalty. At its basic, NPS assigns a value to a company based on the number a customer uses to indicate the likeliness they will recommend a company/product to friends or colleagues. NPS is calculated by taking the percentage of promoters (those that use 10 or 9 as extremely likely to recommend the company) and subtracting the percentage of detractors (those that use 0-6 as not likely to recommend).
And, if 65 percent of new business comes from referrals and shoppers are four times more likely to buy when referred by a friend, Net Promoter Score is as important as ever for ecommerce enterprises of all sizes. Luckily, NPS has never been so manageable and actionable. Many technology solutions exist to help enterprises boost their Net Promoter Score and earn the loyalty, respect and trust of their prospects and customers.
KNOW YOUR SCORE
First, merchants must know where they are starting from in regard to their detractors, passives and promoters.
InTouch Solutions
InTouch Solutions has developed a simple and cost-effective method to capture your NPS using automated messaging. From start to finish, the survey takes less than a minute to execute, and customers are able to answer the NPS question using the touchpad on their phones. Your results are generated on a monthly basis, so you're able to track your progress.
Customerville
Customerville is another feedback system to explore. Brands from Alaska Airlines to Toyota have used Customerville to measure their customer experience, live and in real time. Customerville's Net Promoter and Voice of the Customer surveys are attractive, compelling feedback systems that garner high-quality responses that can be used to make improvements in the customer experience a merchant delivers. Its live dashboard displays the information in a way the entire organization can get on board with, because its visuals, storylines and facts are a blend of technology, art and behavioral science.
For merchants, Customerville is particularly useful, because it works both online and offline. Deckers Outdoor Corporation (the owners of UGG Australia), for example, needed to hear from lots of customers in different divisions (e.g. ecommerce, catalog phone order, wholesale and retail stores) and make that feedback flow throughout the organization, which is why it turned to Customerville.
Corsential
Corsential, a customer experience management solution, also ask the respondents the reason for their score. These responses are collected as coded verbatim and yield valuable insights as to the organizational or operational changes that need to be implemented.
Corsential also combines the powerful NPS process with its own extensive data collection capabilities. This allows Corsential to talk to a million of its clients' customers every year using a technology platform that enables it to provide its clients with Web-based, daily reports.
Now that you know your ecommerce business's NPS (or at least how to find/calculate it), let's start boosting that score.
IMPROVE YOUR SCORE
An NPS article would be incomplete without mentioned Satmetrix, which literally wrote the book on NPS. It should come as no surprise that Satmetrix's NPS Go solution is a fast pass to improving a company's Net Promoter Score and customer experience. With built-in templates and proven best practices, this platform helps businesses and everyone involved in it become more customer focused. Key features of the platform (from $2,000 month) include flexible survey configuration, alerts and action planning to rescue distractors and robust role-based action reporting, as well as the ability to mobilize promoters to generate positive word of mouth and referrals and more.
Aside from its own platform, Satmetrix also offers the only Net Promoter certification, which includes three days of in-person training for $3,500-$4,500.
The NPS arena has several other players - some more obvious than others.
Solve Ecommerce Logistics
Customers don't think in channels (e.g. Web, brick-and-mortar, social, etc.) so a company's ecommerce experience shouldn't be fragmented either. The following solutions help to create a seamless experience that encourages customer referrals.
PFSweb
PFSweb offers ecommerce development services for clients looking to replatform or build their first ecommerce website. Powered by Demandware, PFSweb offers pre-integrations into other PFSweb technology partners for order management, payment processing and marketing services capabilities.
For example, in the past few years, PFSweb, has worked with LEGO to improve its NPS, which helps LEGO measure every consumer touchpoint, including cycle time for product deliver, how quickly products move through the facilities and more. The information that PFSweb provides to LEGO gives a holistic view of different touchpoints (retail, Web, etc.) and measures the consumer experience to provide a more seamless experience.
NetSuite
Customers may never know NetSuite's name, but its single platform for running ecommerce businesses, provides enterprises with seamless order management to give merchants greater speed, efficiency and accuracy in order processing, among other areas that impact the customer experience and likelihood they'll refer a business.
Build a Better Customer Community
Get Satisfaction
This social CRM offers a completely new way to interact with customers, because the platform empowers customers to interact with each other, be heard and find resolution in multiple ways. Get Satisfaction is a new layer in engaging and helping customers, which can be a valuable way to increase NPS.
PunchTab
NPS measures a company's loyalty, but PunchTab helps build it. Referrals are built in to this on-demand engagement platform. PunchTab enables companies to easily offer rewards and incentives when users "show up," share and shop. Additionally, PunchTab reports that loyalty members generate 11 times more page views and 16 times more visits, making this platform a great way to identify these high-value customers and encourage their behavior as "promoters".
Distribute Consistent Marketing
Customers can't actively refer your product or service if they cannot identify it across channels.
HubSpot
The folks over at HubSpot are NPS advocates. Not only does the inbound marketing software company track the NPS of its customers, employees, people who contact its support team and even its INBOUND conference attendees, but it also recently interviewed Fred Reichheld, the creator of the Net Promoter system. Reichheld basically affirmed HubSpot's whole product, as he confirmed that "poor or annoying marketing" can lower a company's NPS, as it will diminish the firm's ability to create and sustain promoters. HubSpot's integrated software is an all-in-one toolset that provides consistent marketing material across email, landing pages and website pages, as well as a unified look at Web and email analytics to improve the customer experience (and NPS in the process).
Master Live Chat
Businesses use a variety of methods to provide customer support, but one has stood the digital test of time and that's live chat (see 5 ‘Net Tactics to Master Live Chat).
LivePerson
Increasing conversions and improving the consumer experience is what LivePerson is all about. Its meaningful, real-time customer connections helps customers interact with a business the way they prefer, which results in a boost in customer satisfaction and first-contact resolution rates - all which improves the chances of users recommending your product or service.
Kayako
Kayako helps merchants deliver person experiences to customers that they'll remember. Its ratings and customer survey tools, as well as reporting engine let you measure performance and identify areas for improvement, which can work to improve NPS.
Listen to Promoters and Detractors
Businesses must learn to monitor and measure the buzz around their brands. One solution is leading the way.
Salesforce Radian6
With Salesforce Radian6, merchants can gain insights about every conversation happening online about their brand, products, competitors and industry trends, and respond in real time. Companies can also route important insights to sales, customer service, PR and community managers for outreach and engagement.
Segment Responses
Here is where NPS gets sophisticated. By segmenting and analyzing customer intelligence, companies can make more informed decisions to cater to customers.
Kamplye
With Kamplye, promoters, passives and detractors can be segmented with any and all available information. For example, Kampyle enables you to identify root causes for customer satisfaction (or the lack thereof) for each customer segment. With a powerful yet easy-to-use reporting system, you can view and analyze within each or all NPS customer segments:
• Which demographic groups or geographic regions provided specific feedback
• The volume of feedback issues in predefined categories
• Feedback generated from high-value or frequent customers
• Frequently recurring topics or themes
• Any customizable breakdown of feedback data to suit your unique business goals
Kamplye offers a free 30-day trial.
Look at Sales
Why aren't customers willing to promote your products/business on your behalf? Maybe they shouldn't have been in the sales pipeline in the first place.
Salesgenie
This online prospecting and marketing solution helps merchants profile their best customers by identifying common characteristics in customers and finding leads just like them. By only marketing your company or products to appropriate groups, you increase the likelihood of building more promoters within your consumer base, because the brand/products are relevant and meaningful.
Clearly there is a lot that can be done to improve a company's Net Promoter Score, and even more advanced solutions available to help, but at the end of the digital day, a person's willingness to refer a product or brand comes down to a business's offerings and support.
