You already know that your Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a reflection of your customer’s loyalty. Are your products or services delighting them to an extent where they wholeheartedly recommend your company's products or services to others?

By developing a strong relationship with your customers, you will be building a community of people who will become advocates and drive further business growth through positive word-of-mouth. In fact, a CustomerGauge research shows that if you increase your NPS score by 10+ points, it could result in a 3.2% increase in revenue. 

For that reason, you need to regularly monitor your NPS. It’ll help you gauge the health of your customer relationships. But how to improve NPS and develop strategies to cultivate long-term loyalty?

In this article, we’ll be covering the 12 steps to improve your NPS.

How To Improve NPS, Step 1: Listen To The Right People At The Right Time

To improve NPS, you need to start listening to the right people at the right time. It's important to differentiate between transactional and relationship NPS surveys to get meaningful insights.

Keep in mind, when collecting NPS feedback, it's crucial to focus on input from your most valuable customers and avoid feedback from outliers. This ensures the insights you gather are representative of your core customer base. Regular, scheduled NPS surveys, rather than ad-hoc collection, also prevents you from acting on outdated information.

By listening to the right people at the right time, you can gather the most relevant and actionable NPS data to drive meaningful improvements to your customer experience.

How To Improve NPS, Step 2: Close The Loop With Respondents

In the pursuit of how to improve NPS, don’t forget to close the loop with respondents. This involves quickly acting on feedback to resolve issues and convert detractors into promoters.

By demonstrating to customers that their feedback is valued and that you are taking tangible steps to address their concerns, you show a commitment to providing an exceptional customer experience. This, in turn, can help turn detractors into passive or even active promoters of your brand.

Closing the loop requires a systematic approach, which starts by prioritizing responses based on the severity of the issue and the customer's level of dissatisfaction. Reach out to detractors promptly, listen to their concerns, and offer a genuine, personalized solution. Follow up to ensure the problem has been resolved to the customer's satisfaction.

Remember, closing the loop is not just about addressing individual issues; it's about building trust, fostering loyalty, and creating a culture of continuous improvement within your organization.

How To Improve NPS, Step 3: Ask The Right Questions

A crucial step to improve NPS is designing surveys to include questions like 'Would Recommend' and 'How can We Improve?' These questions provide valuable insights into what customers think about your brand and where you can make improvements.

By analyzing the feedback gathered from these survey questions, you can generate actionable insights to understand the key factors driving your NPS. Look for patterns in the responses–what are customers praising or criticizing? What aspects of your product or service are they most satisfied or dissatisfied with? This information can help you identify areas to focus on for improving your NPS.

Additionally, the 'How can We Improve?' question gives customers a platform to directly share their suggestions. Carefully reviewing and acting on this feedback demonstrates your commitment to providing a great customer experience. Implementing changes based on customer input is an effective way to boost your NPS over time.

How To Improve NPS, Step 4: Focus On A Few Important NPS Factors

There are several factors that could have an impact on your NPS, so it's important to focus on the ones that have the biggest impact.

Through in-depth analysis, you should identify the top 3-5 areas that significantly influence your NPS. These may include factors like customer service, product quality, pricing, or ease of use. By concentrating your efforts on optimizing these critical elements, you can drive meaningful improvements in your overall NPS.

Since this is an ongoing process, it's essential to regularly review your analysis to ensure you're staying focused on the right priorities. As your business and customer needs evolve, the key NPS drivers may shift. Continuously monitoring and adjusting your approach will help you maximize the impact of your NPS improvement initiatives.

How To Improve NPS, Step 5: Create KPIs For NPS Drivers

Defining KPIs that drive NPS is crucial. This means identifying the specific factors, behaviors, and actions that have the most significant impact on your customer's likelihood to recommend your brand. These could include survey response rates, resolution times, or the percentage of customers who receive a personalized follow-up.

It's important to encourage employees to make an effort to drive these behaviors, rather than just focusing on improving the NPS score itself. This ensures your team understands how their day-to-day work directly contributes to enhancing the customer experience.

By establishing clear KPIs for your NPS drivers, you can effectively measure progress, identify areas for improvement, and make data-backed decisions to elevate your customer loyalty and advocacy.

How To Improve NPS, Step 6: Conduct Root Cause Analysis And Implement Fixes

If you’re wondering what part you’re missing in the NPS puzzle, it could be that you need to deeply understand your customers’ experience. Once you've collected NPS feedback, the next critical step is to conduct a thorough root cause analysis.

The goal of root cause analysis is to identify the underlying issues driving negative customer experiences, so you can implement fixes that resolve the problems. One effective technique is the "Five Whys" method–asking "why" multiple times to peel back the layers and uncover the root causes.

For example, if customers report frustration with long wait times, you might ask:

1. Why were there long wait times? Because call volumes were higher than expected.
2. Why were call volumes higher? Because a new product launch created a spike in support requests.
3. Why wasn't the support team prepared for the increase? Lack of training on the new product features.
4. Why was training inadequate? Rushed timeline for the product launch.
5. Why was the launch timeline so tight? Pressure from leadership to hit a deadline.

By getting to the true root cause (in this case, leadership-driven timeline pressure) you can implement fixes that prevent the problem from recurring, rather than just addressing the symptom of long wait times.

How To Improve NPS, Step 7: Link NPS To Business Value

To truly drive action from your NPS improvement program, you need to connect the data to tangible business metrics. This step involves converting your NPS data into insights that resonate with senior leadership.

By linking NPS to revenue, retention rates, and other key performance indicators, you can build a solid business case to gain support for your customer experience initiatives. This helps ensure NPS is viewed as a strategic priority, not just a vanity metric.

Some best practices for connecting NPS to business value include:

• Calculate the revenue impact of your Promoters vs. Detractors
• Analyze how NPS correlates with customer retention and lifetime value
• Quantify the cost savings from reducing customer churn
• Showcase how improvements in NPS drive growth in key business KPIs

With these types of insights, you can demonstrate the true ROI of your NPS improvement program and ensure it gets the attention and resources it deserves from senior management.

How To Improve NPS, Step 8: Engage With Your Detractors

This step might be the most unwelcoming one to implement, but is a crucial part of the process. Detractors, those who provide a score of 0-6, can be a valuable source of feedback to help you enhance your products and services.

The key is to proactively address complaints from detractors in a timely and empathetic manner. Ensure that you follow up with them within 24-48 hours to demonstrate your responsiveness and willingness to address their concerns. This not only shows that you value their input, but it also provides an opportunity to turn a negative experience into a positive one.

When engaging with detractors, approach the conversation with an open mind and a genuine desire to understand their perspective. Ask clarifying questions, listen actively, and work towards a resolution that addresses their specific pain points. By doing so, you can not only improve their perception of your brand but also potentially convert them into loyal customers.

How To Improve NPS, Step 9: Leverage Promoters And Passives

Now that you’ve tackled the issue of detractors, you need to nurture your promoters and convert passive customers.

Promoters are your most loyal and enthusiastic customers. They're the ones who actively recommend your products or services to others. Maintaining their loyalty and turning them into brand advocates is key. Engage with them, show your appreciation, and encourage them to provide referrals and online reviews.

Passive customers, on the other hand, are satisfied but not necessarily loyal. Their feedback can provide valuable insights to help you convert them into promoters. Analyze their responses to understand their pain points and what would make them more likely to recommend your brand. Then, take targeted actions to address their concerns and strengthen their relationship with your company.

How To Improve NPS, Step 10: Embed NPS Culture Throughout The Organization

Embedding a customer-centric culture throughout the organization is critical to driving sustainable NPS improvements. Regularly communicating NPS results across all departments helps ensure everyone understands their role in delivering a great customer experience.

Fostering organization-wide buy-in for your NPS improvement program starts with securing support from leadership to reinforce the importance of NPS and customer centricity as a key business priority. Then, share NPS insights and progress with teams across the company, from sales and marketing to product and support.

Providing visibility into NPS performance and tying it to individual and departmental goals helps everyone stay aligned and accountable. Celebrating successes and acknowledging areas for improvement keeps the focus on continuous customer experience enhancement.

How To Improve NPS, Step 11: Optimize Survey Design And Delivery

This might seem like a drop in the ocean, but keeping surveys short and relevant with carefully crafted questions can significantly improve NPS. In fact, the average survey response rate is about 33%, and shorter surveys help improve it.

The key to do it is to avoid overwhelming respondents with lengthy, repetitive, or irrelevant questions. Instead, focus on a few concise, targeted queries that provide actionable insights.

When it comes to survey delivery, choose the right channels to reach more of your customer base. Email and SMS are popular options, as they allow you to quickly distribute surveys and collect responses. Consider the preferences and behaviors of your target audience to determine the most effective delivery method.

How To Improve NPS, Step 12: Consistently Track And Adapt

Finally, regular monitoring of NPS scores and trends for ongoing analysis is critical for improving your NPS. By consistently tracking your NPS, you can identify patterns, detect changes, and gain valuable insights to inform your optimization efforts.

Closely monitoring your NPS scores over time allows you to spot emerging trends, such as seasonal fluctuations or the impact of new initiatives. This data-driven approach enables you to make informed decisions about where to focus your improvement strategies.

Equally important is the ability to adapt your tactics based on new insights gained from ongoing NPS tracking. As customer preferences and market conditions evolve, you must be nimble in adjusting your approach to maintain high levels of customer loyalty and advocacy. Continuously seeking ways to enhance the customer experience will help you drive sustainable NPS improvements.

In this pursuit of how to improve NPS, you can leverage AI solutions to help you reach your goal.

Leveraging AI Chatbots To Improve NPS Score

One of the easiest ways to improve NPS is by implementing AI chatbots, which can provide personalized, efficient assistance that enhance the customer experience and gather feedback to drive NPS improvements. 

By implementing an AI chatbot to improve your NPS score, you can:

• Personalize interactions based on customer data
• Proactively address customer issues before they escalate
• Gather customer feedback and insights automatically after they’ve taken an transactional or relational action
• Provide consistent, 24/7 support to customers
• Integrate with other customer systems for a holistic view of customer behavior trends

In addition, analyzing chatbot data over time can uncover trends to inform product and service enhancements. Integrating AI chatbots can be a cost-effective way to improve NPS and build customer loyalty.

At Nurix, we can help develop and deploy custom AI chatbot solutions that can handle both text and voice queries and feedback from customers.

Contact us today to discuss how our tailored AI chatbot solution can help improve your NPS score!