The following post is part of a series that will help inform readers of the power that a company’s Net Promoter Score has on its long-term business goals.
It might sound like common sense to say that brands should continuously collect feedback on their products and services so that they can optimize their efforts and maximize their profits, all while ensuring and sustaining product-market fit. But it’s far too common that companies push feedback to the backburner upon encountering challenges.
Without a proper feedback strategy in place, or regular analysis of NPS data, it can be difficult to draw insights and leverage them to drive business decisions. Companies that are missing the mark when it comes to NPS are letting low-hanging opportunities to improve customer relationships, innovate better products, and reduce churn pass them by.
NPS data is gathered by administering a single question to the people that use a business’s product or service: “What is the likelihood that you would recommend [COMPANY OR PRODUCT] to a friend or colleague?”
“[NPS] helps us determine not only whether students like our customer service and user interface,” says Peter Poer of Magoosh, the online test company for standardized tests like the GRE and the SAT. “But also how well our products prepare students for their exams.”
Let’s take a look at why some companies might be hesitant to allocate resources for collecting product feedback using NPS data:
1) These companies might not realize the true value of collecting and managing product feedback.
If a business has never had a product feedback management strategy, the decision makers at that business might be naive to the profound benefits of implementing one. They might have doubts that customers will provide powerful insights, or they might not realize that much of the power held by feedback is unlocked by consistently collecting and analyzing feedback data over time.
2) These companies might have no clue where to start when it comes to collecting and taking action on feedback.
Devising and implementing a feedback strategy can be overwhelming, and it can be tough to know where to start. It’s important to remember that a lot of the power of feedback comes from consistently measuring said feedback, so that benchmarks can be identified, and progress can be measured over time. That being said, simply ceasing to procrastinate, and beginning to collect feedback data immediately is a great place to start. Once the company begins to collect responses, they can begin to analyze the feedback and start solving the issues that are bubbling to the top.
3) These companies might think that if sales are up, customers are happy.
Decision makers are often concerned with, and burdened by, the bottom line. At times they can distance themselves from contingent metrics that are just as important, as they focus all of their attention on sales numbers. By collecting feedback from customers, surprises such as high churn rates can be predicted and avoided.
4) These companies might struggle to get real, honest feedback.
Some companies might find that their customers are not properly incentivized to provide useful feedback on products and services. However, small campaigns that offer tangible incentives such as discounted products or services, or even gift cards for participating customers, can prove to be well worth the ROI.
5) These companies are unable to centralize the data.
Some organizations might have issues with organizing feedback data in one centralized location. After all, what’s the point in even collecting feedback if the data received is such a mess that it’s not able to inform business decisions? By implementing a tool that allows a company to not only collect feedback data, but to organize it and uniquely report on it, the entire feedback process is simplified, streamlined, and made more efficient.
Despite these challenges, feedback allows businesses to identify customer satisfaction trends, and arms them with the information they need to establish action items and processes that contribute to easing their customers’ frustrations.
Consistently measuring NPS can work wonders for a brand, as it allows the organization to identify trends, pain points being experienced by customers, and where to focus their energies respectively.
Click here to learn more about NPS, and to get started with NPS collection immediately, be sure to download our ready to use NPS template!