Three little questions: A simple tool for getting promoters and silencing detractors

I’m a big fan of Net Promoter Score (NPS). If you haven’t heard of it before, you’ll see it everywhere after reading this.

It’s a simple way of getting useful quantitative and qualitative feedback from customers, so you can improve and turn them into your promoters – people who’ll voluntarily big you up.

It also lets you improve your relationship with detractors – those you’ve let down and who are going around saying bad things about you without you even realising.

It was created to measure customer satisfaction, but I use it in all sorts of ways.

Companies and project teams can use it to gauge staff happiness, too.

It’s a good way of uncovering issues that fester below the surface, hurting productivity and causing talent to go elsewhere.

You just need to ask three little questions.

The first is:

1. “On a scale of 0 to 10 to what extent would you recommend our company to friends, colleagues or other businesses?”

It’s a great question. It cuts to the chase by asking how I feel as a customer.

That might seem unfair, because how I feel could depend on the totality of the experience over years, or on something that happened yesterday.

It doesn’t matter: people remember you for how you last left them feeling. Most won’t bother to tally up historic goods and bads.

If I say 9 or 10, I’m classed as a promoter because I’m so pleased I’ll go around saying “they’re brilliant!”

A score of 7 or 8 means I’m indifferent or “passive”. Here I’m saying, “Yes, they’re okay, no problem really,” but I’m not motivated to think or say much else.

A score of 0 to 6 means you’re in trouble. I’m a detractor.

I’m hacked off about something and will likely let people know about it.

Detractors have power

Social media and electronic communications can be weaponised by detractors, and some companies get this. Here’s an example.

My internet service provider, BT, messed me about for two years, saying it was going to increase speed by a certain date.

That date came and went many times without any improvement.

One Friday, I arrived home to a chorus of familiar complaints: “The internet’s down again.”

After tea, I Googled the CEO and wrote him an email.

To my surprise, I got a reply at 10pm that same evening from his PA, followed by a phone call Saturday morning from the UK director of operations.

On Monday an engineer showed up, and was at my house all day.

He came back three times that week until the issue was sorted.

I also got three months free rental for my troubles.

How come a £19/month customer can snag the attention of the CEO of a £9bn organisation?

Because he knows the power of detractors.

By the way, I’ve had no trouble since, and I always score BT a 10.

What the score means

Your Net Promoter Score (NPS) is the percentage of promoters less the percentage of detractors.

It lets you benchmark how you’re doing over time, and against other companies.

An electronics retailer’s NPS of 10% compared to a high street bank’s 22% suggests the former has work to do.

If you have a negative NPS – more detractors than promoters – you’re in trouble.

If your NPS is positive, your business is likely to grow. If it’s 20%, you’re approaching best in class and if it’s 50% you’re getting towards world class.

We’re not finished, because you need to ask two more questions.

The second is:

2. “What is the primary reason for your score?”

Before the BT boss’s intervention, I’d have scored punitively low, and I’d have said, “The service keeps breaking down and every time I call I have to wait for ages and even then I get passed from pillar to post.”

But the boss’s intervention wiped the slate clean. All was forgiven!

“You get a 10! I feel like an important and valued customer and now everything works.”

Notice that this question asks what is important for the customer, not what is important for you.

Most customer satisfaction surveys I see are sneakily worded to cover what’s important to the vendor, but this question leaves you nowhere to hide.

The third and final question is:

3. What needs to have happened for you to score a 10?

Another brilliant question. I get to explain what improvement is needed to bridge the gap to 10, and you get to hear it.

Amazingly, some companies don’t want to know. They see this information as threatening and burdensome. They expect customers to fit in with their company’s own processes and preoccupations.

Good companies, ones genuinely and culturally geared toward customer service, treat this information like gold dust, and act on it.

And when they do things to bridge the gap, customers notice and feel good. Up goes their score. They’re on track to being promoters.

Psst. You can ask your own people these questions …

Companies spend thousands on staff surveys, and I think it’s a waste of time.

HR departments dream up questions that are important to them, or that they think are important to the board.

The survey goes out, and 35% of staff return it.

Most employees don’t because they believe nothing comes of it and the questions don’t represent what’s important to them.

The survey generates loads of data that is not really useful and everything carries on as before.

Companies can unleash the power of NPS internally by changing question one, so it says:

On a scale of 0 to 10, to what extent would you recommend working here to friends, family or other business colleagues?

Then ask questions two and three as above.

No consultants are necessary, whack it out on Survey Monkey free of charge, and watch the quantitative and qualitative data flood in.

Now you know what your people really think and feel, and what steps might be necessary to improve things.