Understanding customers in the solar industry can be stressful: As a sales person or marketer, you may be struggling with competition, commoditization, and customer churn. Here is where where Net Promoter Scoring (NPS) can help.
In the fifteen years since introduction, NPS continues to show value to a wide variety of companies. Teams selling and marketing to other businesses or directly to consumers can benefit - as can product development (a future post). By segmenting customers, NPS can enable differentiation in an industry where commoditization is a key challenge.
To recap the definition of Net Promoter Scoring, the NPS score equals the percentage of survey respondents who answer 9-10 minus the percentage who answer 0 to 6 on a 0-10 scale to the question of “how likely are you to recommend [company] to friends and colleagues”. The 9-10 group are labeled ‘Promoters’, 7-8 are Neutrals, 0-6 are Detractors. NPS = percentage of Promoters minus percentage of Detractors.
Sounds straightforward, but there’s a lot that comes from this beyond benchmarking your company’s NPS against others in your industry or vs other industries. Here’s a run-down of what you can do with each group: Promoters, Neutrals, and Detractors.
Promoters 😊
First off, what makes a Promoter a Promoter? Beyond demographics, there should be a root cause of that exemplary experience: is it the benefits of the product, the emotions it stirs (and which emotions?), or an excellent sales experience – one where the customer didn’t feel like they were being “sold”. Analyze the open-ended responses to dig deeper about what resonates.
Plus, you can create a profile of Promoters based on survey answers, demographic, or company information and search for look-alikes among your current database of leads. Lead scoring using NPS could improve the quality of leads, and make it easier for Sales to convert those leads to paying customers.
If nothing else, finding Promoters among current customers suggests a ripe opportunity to create a Call To Action to advocate for your brand – invite them to create their own review, user generated content, or a more formal testimonial statement (or video) hosted by your company.
Neutrals 😐
Then, learn the same with Neutrals: why are they Neutral and NOT a Promoter (yet)? Asking this as a part of a customer experience survey can point you to the type of content that makes them into Promoters. Isolate the one issue that occurs most frequently with Neutrals. If it’s the same feedback you see with Detractors (more on this later), then so much the easier to create a countermeasure to improve a Neutral’s experience. Also, for Neutrals who become Promoters, you can get their feedback as to why – and test whether they perceived your actions were as successful as you might.
Detractors ☹
For Detractors, the most interesting insights can come when looking at why they are Detractors. One effective technique can be to evaluate the qualitative comments and group them. Then look at the NPS for groups of each type of comment.
For example, if the NPS of Detractors who commented about the quality of customer support was better but the NPS of Detractors who had something to say about installation issues, then this would be a flag for the product team to work on, or for the partner liaison to flag with their . Volume of Detractor comments would suggest how widespread issues are, while the team could also have a qualitative measure for ease of fixing each issue.
Results:
Content, content, content. Showing your customers that you care about why they are not willing to promote your brand, by publishing content that addresses those concerns, can speak to making the sale much easier. Or pushing Neutrals to become Promoters. Or nudging Promoters to celebrate their own success, advocate about their experience, and build your brand.
Ultimately this leads to a return on investment on collecting and acting on Net Promoter Score:
Lowering cost of customer acquisition in an increasingly competitive marketplace
Deepening customer relationships - lowering customer churn - in an industry where relationships count
Improving sales to existing customers
All of this is critical for generating the leads that fuel the entire sales process. NPS is valuable for content strategy, beyond producing a single metric gauging brand health. More later on how NPS can be used for Product development or other stakeholders.
Jason Grillo is an independent marketing consultant living in Greater Boston. You can contact him at terralucesllc@gmail.com.
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