Detractors are angry customers who may not be satisfied with their experience and could potentially harm your business by sharing negative feedback. However, unhappy customers have the potential to be brand ambassadors with careful intervention and customized communication. There are ways to solve friction points and get customer success. In this blog, we will discuss how to convert detractors to promoters for a better retention.
Who are Detractors?
Detractors are customers who rate 0-6 on the net promoter score (NPS score) survey. Detractors are also another word for upset customers who may have had a bad experience. Unhappy customers may hamper online reputation or brand image by sharing negative reviews on online portals and social media. There may have been a pain point that was left unaddressed. There are also other ways to detect unhappy customers. We can identify them via online reviews, in-app surveys, customer satisfaction metrics to name a few.
Not All Unhappy Customers Fit in the Same Category
Understanding the different types of dissatisfied customers is crucial to converting them into promoters. Your business may encounter vocal detractors, who share their negative experiences with others. Passive detractors are unlikely to recommend your brand, while hidden detractors appear satisfied on the surface but harbour underlying issues. Addressing each type’s specific concerns requires a different approach. Hence identifying which category your unhappy customers fall into is critical. Doing so can help turn them into happy customers which in turn them into loyal promoters.
Detractors bring your sales & profits down
Losing customers due to detractors can significantly harm your business’s sales and profits. Detractor types vary from poor customer service experiences to defective products or issues with website navigation. Consider mapping their journey through various touchpoints and detect their pain points. The main goal is to create a seamless experience for them be it via website or communications via customer service.
Detractors harm your brand’s image
It’s essential to proactively address detractors’ concerns and offer personalized solutions as they can severely harm your brand’s image in the business world. Identifying different types of detractors based on their specific concerns is crucial to address them effectively. Offering incentives such as discounts or free merchandise can help convert detractors into your most valuable promoters. Additionally, creating a feedback loop via email, phone call or social media will help keep your existing customers happy while reducing customer churn rate.
Detractors help your competition
Unhappy customers, or detractors, can damage your brand reputation and lead to lost sales and profits. Identifying the different types of detractors and addressing their concerns in a timely manner is crucial. Ignoring detractors may result in losing potential customers to your competition. To convert detractors into promoters, offer incentives such as discounts or free merchandise, personalized solutions, and proactively reach out to them via email, phone call, or social media. Use feedback from NPS surveys or customer satisfaction surveys to improve your products/services and prevent future negative experiences.
How to Convert Detractors to Promoters?
To convert detractors to promoters, listen to their feedback, address their concerns, and provide a feasible solution during the entire customer journey. Follow up with dissatisfied customers and once the issue has been resolved, offer incentives like discounts or loyalty points to encourage them to become a promoter. The first goal is to listen to their complaints actively and curate solutions for each roadblock. Here are some of the most common ways how organisations can convert detractors to promoters in the long run.
Actively track the metrics- NPS, CSAT, CES
While seeking customer feedback, track every CX metric of CSAT scores, NPS scores (via dynamic emails or messenger based surveys) and customer effort scores. The customer support can detect unhappy customers , understand the flaws with communication and comprehend the open-ended answers shared during feedback. Tracking metrics can help to identify early negative word of mouth and low scores for feedback such that the marketers can attend to detractors early in the customer journey.
Good CX includes personalization
There can be a point in the customer journey where a new customer might meet with a poor service, false promises or negative experience. One of the most recommended ways to cater to unsatisfied customers is to understand their grievances and close the feedback loop at the earliest. Personalization involves understanding their key issues, offering customized solutions to close combat the active problems and follow up post resolution. When marketers are actively involved in closing the feedback loop, people understand that the organisation cares about their experiences and make an effort to offer feasible solutions. This increases customer loyalty.
Encourage multi channel feedback
Promote multi channel feedback via Google reviews, testimonials, Facebook messenger and Whatsapp surveys. This also includes dynamic AMP emails and website chatbots that have the ability to collect a large mass of data. Multi channel feedback can collect survey feedback from respondents without the need to move to a tedious browser based platform. This encourages open communication from people who can freely share their survey responses at a tap of a button. Using messenger based facilities, marketers can also share customer satisfaction score and net promoter score scales and collect standardized feedback.
Follow-up after resolution
Detractors can also become brand ambassadors if organisations actively follow up post resolution. While customer surveys can capture distinct NPS results, marketers can close the feedback loop and take follow ups. This denotes that the companies cater to the customer base and care about every experience to prevent negative word-of-mouth.
Offer incentives and loyalty programs
Offering incentive and loyalty points is a great way to encourage people to have a long term association with the brand. This includes loyalty points for being a long term customer, rewards and membership discounts, survey incentives for responding to customer surveys and cashback options. However, the incentive has to be appropriate as per the target audience. This also encourages frequent communication during the customer journey and enables patrons to share their candid feedback during the purchase process.
Prevent churn with real time analysis
Using real time analysis, marketers can find the loophole, number of detractors to promoters and avoid high churn rate. With real time analysis, the support team can attend to detractors faster than usual. This is also a main reason for customer delight. People usually want resolution and they want it immediately. Real time analysis on the dashboard is a boon. This activity converts detractors to promoters and brings in more loyal customers.
Conclusion
Businesses in the modern business world need valuable feedback from customers through NPS surveys, email queries, social media interactions, phone calls, demos, real-time dashboards, and CES (Customer Effort Score) metrics. Convert detractors to promoters by leveraging the feedback loop in customer journeys involves acknowledging concerns of unhappy customers by offering solutions or compensation quickly. Then follow up with additional communication or offers that continue building a positive relationship aimed at increasing customer satisfaction and reducing churn rates. Promoters bring sales & profits up while helping your brand’s image and competition through referrals.
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