Customer Experience

7 Smart Tips to Convert your NPS Detractors into Promoters

7 Smart Tips to Convert your NPS Detractors into Promoters

Your unhappy and unsatisfied customers will not only provide you with negative feedback but also share their appalling experience with their friends and colleagues. This may tarnish your brand image and affect the conversion rate of your business.

Even though receiving negative feedback is hard to digest, but on another hand, it creates an opportunity for you to improve your product/services along with Customer Experience (CX). Thus, enhanced customer experience has become the key differentiator to convert your unhappy to happy customers. So, when it comes to analyzing customer experience and perception towards a brand, Net Promoter Score (NPS) Survey is the leading benchmark.

 Net Promoter Score is the proven metric that determines the loyalty of a firm’s customer relationships. Thus, the NPS survey results facilitate you with a great understanding of your customer psychology and preferences. Simply put, it is a tool that gauges the willingness of your customers to recommend your product/service to others.

Based on the rating (scale = 1 to 10) customers are classified into 3 categories:

  1. Promoters: They are those customers who range their willingness of recommendation to 9 or 10 and very satisfied with the kind of customer experience you are offering them. They are the repeat buyers, who recommend you as a brand and your product/service to other potential buyers.
  2. Detractors: They are those customers who range their willingness of recommendation from 0 to 6 and considered to be very unsatisfied. They are less likely to remain for long and denied to recommend you as a brand and your product/service to other potential buyers.
  3. Passives: They are those customers whose behavior falls between promoters and detractors. They range their willingness of recommendation to 7 or 8 and moderately satisfied with the kind of customer experience you are offering them. These kinds of customers never spread any negative word-of-mouth, but are not enthusiastic enough to promote your product/service.
nps surveys

When it comes to analyzing customer experience and perception towards a brand, NPS (Net Promoter Score) Survey is the leading benchmark. Net Promoter Score is the proven metric that determines the loyalty of a firm’s customer relationships. Thus, the NPS survey results facilitate you with a great understanding of your promoters and detractors. 

Customers are usually happy with the positive reviews, high NPS Score and follow their promoters to augment the sustainable growth of their business.

But what about your Detractors, unhappy customers who have given you bad scores?

Your detractors cannot only give you a negative score but also spread bad word of mouth. This can take a toll on your brand image. According to the study negative feedback has more impact on the mind than a positive one.  

According to a survey of over 3,200 random consumers, 75% of consumers stated that they share a negative experience with their friends and colleagues, whereas 42% of them stated they’d recommend a product/service.

So, following-up with the detractors can provide you with the opportunity to improve their experience and convert them to the promoters.

Tips to Convert Detractors into Promoters

  1. Find Why Your Detractors Are Unhappy
  2. Do Result-Driven Planning
  3. Strategize smartly to Close the Loop with the Detractors
  4. Choose a knowledgeable Representative
  5. Address Their Concerns Without Being Defensive
  6. Highlight Areas Where Detractors are Facing Problems
  7. Don’t Make Any Kind of False Promises to Your Detractors

Why Follow-Up With the Detractors

Most of the business owners think that following up with the detractors is nothing but a waste of time and resources, yet there are thousands of companies who have experienced the positive impact of following-up with the detractors.

There are some very compelling reasons and evidence to help you to understand the importance of following-up with detractors.

  • Increase customer retention: According to Frederick Reichheld (inventor of NPS), a 5% rise in customer retention rate increases by 25% to 95% profits. Thus, retaining your lost customers can augment your profit rate drastically.
  • Less expensive to retain existing customers: According to Invespcro, it is 5 to 25 times more expensive to acquire new customers than retaining the existing one.
  • Reduce churn rate: According to inc.com, 50% of detractors from the NPS Survey are likely to churn within the next 90 days.

Smart Tips to Convert Detractors into Promoters

Transforming detractors to promoters is not an easy nut to crack. So, to ease your task, we’ve put together tips that can help you turn your detractors into ambassadors who can augment your brand image.

1. Find Why Your Detractors Are Unhappy

Before interacting with your detractors, you need to find the reason why they are unhappy and unsatisfied with your product/service. Either you read their feedback thoroughly and understand their requirements or else ask them directly the reasons for less Net Promoter Score.

You could also use a Net Promoter Score Survey Software that gives you logic-based questions. By using skip logic and branching in the survey, customers view only questions relevant to them and have a better experience while giving feedback. Here are some best ways in which you could use Survey Logic and Branching in your feedback forms.

2. Do Result-Driven Planning 

Before jumping on to the interaction session with the detractors, you must create a plan that clearly defines your action. Make a plan that how you going to approach them, what are you going to present to convince them, and much more. Sometimes, representatives are short with the ideas, facts, and solutions to convince the detractors. Thus, in this case, prior planning can help you to manage the process efficiently.

3. Strategize smartly to Close the Loop with the Detractors

If you are attempting to close the loop with your detractors, then your focus should be on strengthening the relationship with your grumpy customers. Thus, design your closed-loop feedback strategies in such a way that it delivers a positive impression to detractors that you have read their feedback and you want to improve their experience.

If you can convince your detractors that you’ll deliver them with the amazing customer experience in the future, they can become your biggest promoters. Learn some more prominent ways to close the feedback loop using the feedback automation app.

How NPS Survey Tool enables you to strategize action for closing the feedback loop:

  • Automate Your Responses – Backed by robust functionality and high-level automation, the NPS tool helps you to not only detecting negative feedback quickly but also provides you with the advanced framework, where you can respond to your detractors automatically. Automated response workflow helps you get information about your detractors and their concerns. The automated response system helps you to reduce your resources, time and effort with an individualized response.
nps detractor
  • Do Personalized Follow-Ups – It is essential for you to follow-up with your grumpy customers to convert them into promoters. When it comes to interacting with detractors, there are two ways to approach them, either create an automated response workflow or dive straight into a phone call. Address their concern and assure your detractors that you are here to help them again.

4. Choose a knowledgeable Representative

During the survey of customers in the U.S. and worldwide in 2018, 39% of respondents from the United States stated that a good customer service experience would be one with a knowledgeable representative. So, always choose experienced and knowledgeable representatives who have a better understanding of dealing with grumpy customers and have the potential to convert them to promoters.

net promoter score survey

5. Address Their Concerns Without Being Defensive

Open your conversation with your introduction; give a light introduction to you and your company. You can also begin with the apology note and assure your detractors that you are here to help them again. Your detractors may take this situation as that you are trying to hard-sell them. So, in this scenario, you need to patiently address their concerns without being defensive.

6. Highlight Areas Where Detractors are Facing Problems

If your customers have ample time, then dive into the meat of the conversation. Open your interaction with the introduction of newly added features and add-ons in your product. Don’t restrict your conversation with the closed questions (Yes & No), ask your detractors to explain the concern in-depth. If it is about the product, ask them to demonstrate how they use the product and highlight the areas where they are facing problems. To make your conversation smooth, you can also make notes simultaneously.

7. Don’t Make Any Kind of False Promises to Your Detractors

You cannot rectify the errors or find the solutions right on the call. In this case, it’s better to follow them later, but don’t make any false promises. False commitments will irritate your detractors and they will start spreading bad word of mouth. This, in turn, will tarnish your brand reputation in the market. So, actively follow your detractors and deliver them with the impeccable solutions within the specified time frame.

People usually avoid the practice of following up with their detractors, as there is no surety of positive results, but Detractors in NPS Survey provide a true picture of your performance. This will also provide you with the opportunity to identify the areas where you need improvement. 

Learn more about the Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Download Free Net Promoter Score Calculator on Excel by Zonka Feedback

Published on Aug 26, 2019. Updated on Oct 14, 2021.



Archit

Written by Archit

Aug 26, 2019

Experienced Content Writer and Strategist, been in the IT industry for the last 7 years. Associated with the Zonka Feedback. Passionate about writing customer experience, customer satisfaction, customer feedback, and Net Promoter Score.

Download Free Net Promoter Score Calculator on Excel by Zonka Feedback

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