How do you foster a culture of NPS excellence in your organization?

NPS improvement can provide early evidence that your company is delivering more value to customers. That's important. But NPS as a score is almost worthless (and often even harmful) if not embedded in a system of listening deeply to customers, learning how to serve them better, and acting on what has been learned. That is why it's so important to define goals in terms not of "points of NPS improvement," but evidence that customers are staying longer, buying more, costing less to serve, and encouraging their friends to become customers. It's not a "vision for NPS," but a vision for enriching customers' and employees' lives.

Very often there is an overly strong focus on "improving our NPS" as the goal of the program. We need to focus on what drives the NPS. If we fulfill our promises to our customer with the best experience possible, then why wouldn't our customers recommend our product or service to a friend or colleague? We need to treat NPS as a guide not a score. We need to look after all the aspects of the customer experience that is important to our customers and the NPS will reflect that.

The leadership team presents a clear roadmap during a company-wide meeting, detailing the what, why, and how of NPS. You break it down: What: Increasing the NPS score signifies enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Why: This goal aligns with the company's mission to lead in customer success within the tech industry. How: The strategy involves collecting robust feedback through NPS surveys, followed by deep analysis to understand customer sentiments and identify improvement areas. Each department is tasked with specific action items, from product development focusing on feature enhancements to customer support training to handle inquiries more effectively.

You empower employees, turning every employee into a customer experience champion. They learn the profound impact their daily interactions can have on customer perceptions and company success. Following the training, you roll out a toolkit for employees, filled with resources to enhance customer interactions, gather meaningful feedback, and tackle service issues proactively. You recognise individuals and teams who make significant contributions to improving NPS, from solving a customer's problem creatively to implementing a suggestion that came directly from survey feedback. Team members don't just learn about NPS; they see how their actions create ripples, transforming customer satisfaction into loyalty.

Your customer success team sends out NPS surveys via email and in-app notifications, ensuring a broad and varied collection of feedback. Armed with this rich tapestry of data, cross-functional teams dissect the feedback, identifying key themes. Promoters rave about your platform's ease of use, passives are indifferent due to a lack of certain features, and detractors voice frustrations over customer support response times. These sessions are a cornerstone of your company's commitment to continuous improvement - enhancing support, developing requested features, and running targeted campaigns to convert passives into promoters.

When analyzing NPS feedback, it is easy to over-rotate on the quantitative questions. However, the jewel in the NPS crown is very often in the customer verbatim. When given the opportunity to provide feedback, what the customers submit as their verbatim commentary represents their top of mind. Analyzing unstructured qualitative data takes a lot more time and effort than analyzing quantitative data but the insights yield is significantly higher.

Every piece of feedback triggers a tailored response: Promoters receive a heartfelt thank-you email, along with a request to share their positive experiences on social media or as a case study. This not only reinforces their positive view but also turns them into brand advocates. Passives are sent a personalized message expressing gratitude for their feedback and probing deeper into what could elevate their score to a promoter level. This shows them that their opinion is valuable and that you're committed to improvement. Detractors are approached with a direct phone call or a detailed email from the customer support team, acknowledging their concerns and outlining specific steps being taken to address their issues.

Acting on NPS feedback is the most important part of this whole process. Before closing the loop with customers, we must first close the loop internally. We need to treat NPS as a team sport. The customer listening team that gathered and analyzed the NPS feedback should be reviewing the findings with the appropriate internal teams, such as product, engineering, support and training. Together, the extended teams who can take action on the feedback need to commit to an action plan to act on the NPS feedback.

Stories of exceptional customer experience are spotlighted: a developer who added a much-requested feature, a support teammate whose quick response turned a detractor into a promoter, and a sales teammate who went the extra mile to understand a customer's needs. These success stories, along with the improved NPS score, are then shared on social media, and through a series of blog posts that detail the journey to NPS improvement. These stories not only boosts internal morale but also strengthens your reputation externally, showcasing your company as one that truly values and acts on customer feedback.

What we have found to be critical in driving and sustaining a strong NPS culture is to lead from the top. When the executive leader of the business walks the talk when it comes to NPS, it demonstrates that NPS is not lip service and it is a vital focus for the organization. Executive business reviews need to go beyond reviewing the financials but also customer experience metrics such as NPS.

To keep improving NPS culture: Listen to customers' feedback. Act fast to solve problems. Train the team about NPS. Encourage everyone to share ideas. Celebrate successes and track progress regularly.