The best customers are those that do the selling for you

Those familiar with the Net Promoter Score (NPS) will know that there are three types of customers; Detractors, Passives and Promoters.

• Detractors are at the negative end of the scale; they tell others not to use your products or services.
• Passives are up next and are, as the name suggests, passive. They won’t tell anyone that you have a bad product or service, but they won’t tell anyone how good it is, either.
• The last category is where every business wants their customers to be – a Promoter. Promoters refer their friends, tell their family and will generally leave a favourable review online, too. Promoters are customers that “do the selling for you”. The more of these your business has, the cheaper your marketing becomes.

So how do you turn a detractor or passive into a promoter? Let’s take a look…

Identifying the issues

The first step for a detractor is to find out what’s wrong. This can be achieved via an exit survey, or an ongoing survey that you may send to current customers every 6 months or so. Keep it simple and keep it quick. Allow your customers to rate your business and then provide a section to add additional information or comments. Allow them to remain anonymous if they wish; people will generally be more honest when this is the case.

Taking steps & making improvements

Once you know what the issues are, you can create an action plan and work towards making improvements. A survey respondent may have stated that they felt unsafe at your business location at night (for example, a 24-hour car wash, storage facility, etc). An associated action would be to install better lighting or create sense of safety.

Follow-up & Close the loop

Once you’ve made the changes, be sure to contact those who made the comment in the first place. Of course, if the comment was made anonymously this wouldn’t be possible – but you may choose to create a monthly eNewsletter or similar communication.

If the comment wasn’t anonymous, it’s also a good idea to contact the person who originally left it to let them know that you’ve made changes based on their feedback and to thank them for helping you improve your business.

During your communication with them, you might also like to re-ask the original question from the survey – ie: “Given these changes, do you think you would recommend us to someone needing our services?” – thus allowing you to re-evaluate the customer. Hopefully, they’ll now be a Promoter!