As brands grow larger, it is easy to box them into categories (or personas, if you would like a fancier term). Yet, when you look at the brands that successfully managed to turn their customers into their brand ambassadors, you will find an obsessive focus on their customer. These brands have the highest net promoter scores in the categories and actively work to convert detractors into promoters.
Here are 5 key principles that can help brands improve their net promoter score.
1. Treat a customer as an individual. Personalize, Personalize, Personalize:
Netflix pioneered the use of recommender engines that could help an individual discover content that cater to their personal choice. Netflix has an NPS of 68, well above all of their competitors (NPS can range from -100 to 100 and a score greater than 0 is considered good)
Sure, most brands would struggle to build that level of personalization. It does not need to be. Something as small as a text greeting can (and should) be personalized. Keeping tab of your customer’s birthdays and anniversary and offering them a personal deal can lead to customer delight. A human touch is the most underrated skill that brands can provide their consumers. This could be on phone calls, on chat boxes or in-person service assistance. This is an investment that will keep your client base with you.
2. Provide answers and not a promise of one:
Amazon’s threshold of First Contact Resolution Rate is 80% i.e. they expect 80% of all customer grievance to be resolved in the first communication. Amazon has an NPS of 62.
Nobody likes to be kept waiting for days or hanging on the phone lines waiting for the calls to be transferred from hierarchy to the next. Solving a customer’s problem requires you to empower your customer service team with competence and a will to hunt down the solutions.
3. Obsessively attend to a distressed customer:
Apple actively calls their detractors (those who scored them less than 6 on NPS surveys) and work with them for a resolution. In fact, Apple found that the detractors they called, bought more than promoters in the future collecting an additional $25 million in revenue. Apple has an NPS of 82.
A distressed customer is like an upset child- you drop everything and attend to them. They probably will rant about it on social media or among their friend circle. Creating a positive outcome from the negative event is a skill in itself. This requires good listening skills, ability to comprehend the problem and quick decision-making skills. If these are hard (and it can be for very technical categories), you need a standard operating procedure.
4. Engage your visitors efficiently:
AirBnB has customer feedback data from 600,000 guests. They are proactively listening to their customers. This data is collected from various touch points, pre and post booking. AirBnB has an NPS of 74.
You will surely come across customers who browse and leave. Not striking a conversation is like leaving potential revenue out of the door. While nobody likes to be subjected to a hard sales target, everyone likes to be heard. A little personalization and a human touch will go a long way.
5. Make the customers feel valued:
Chick-fil-a reviews some 20,000 points of customer feedback each day through surveys, social media and via customer service calls. Chick-fil-a has an NPS of 67.
Brands love to send elaborate surveys to their customers. These are often long, tedious, and boring to fill in. They make the brand seem distant. It is not like the customers don’t want to talk to brands- just not through a survey form. They would rather have a conversation. Using a popular messaging apps to run conversational surveys will help brands get faster, better response. When organizations adapt to new technology, the customer base and the organizations can reach out to each other effectively.
Brands today operate in an increasingly competitive space. They can cut through the noise with simple strategies to keep their customer happy that will never go out of fashion.
Do you want to hear from your customers better, faster? Try out 14 day free trial platform! We make it easy for brands to run conversational surveys that customers love to respond to.
