What part does social media play in Net Promoter Score (NPS) measurement?

The rise of social media means there is a wealth of customer feedback readily available for businesses to access. However, does this available information go towards replacing NPS surveys? With social media you are given very timely insights into specific complaints and issues which can often lead to identifying systems failures before your internal processes can. The real challenge that exists with social media is that the volume and quality of data can be sparse and poor. This can lead to an incomplete picture of what you do well or need to improve on as a business as well as not giving a clear idea of why customers hold greater importance with some products or services over others. This is where a more detailed customer survey like the NPS can give you a truer insight into your customer base.

Why should you measure NPS?

The value that exists within the various approaches to customer feedback surveys has never been found in the absolute number. The true value that companies look to see is around what you do with the information that gives you the number. The NPS helps companies look at why they have received a positive, neutral or negative score and look to answer a variety of questions:

  • Why do our Promoters promote and our Detractors detract?
  • What was the difference in customer experience?
  • Do we have a homogenous set of customers or do differences exist?
  • What is the distribution of responses?

If a company is able to gain understanding by answering these questions, they can be effectively empowered to make business change to drive improvement in their customer experience and service. In so many industries, having a positive customer experience can offer a powerful competitive advantage over other rival companies and this can lead to reduced customer attrition, high repeat purchase levels and higher perceived and actual value to the customer and, as importantly, potential customers.

NPS return on investment

Determining your score is only the first step and many companies waste valuable resources by not going beyond this number. There are some key areas which are important to identify and understand: 

  1. Identify key transactional pain points - Companies can fix what is currently causing a negative score, such as poor customer interaction points.
  2. Understand the value of increasing NPS - Identify the high value areas where investment to improve NPS will cause greater returns.
  3. Understand the NPS of customer segments - Identify what certain customer segments require compared to others.
  4. Identify key moments in the customer relationship - Understand the low volume but high impact events that can create promoters or detractors.

NPS considerations

The NPS journey is one that reveals a large amount of information on the customer base depending on the types of questions that are asked. With this in mind businesses should be aware that there are some key considerations with the use of the NPS.

  1. The heterogeneous nature of any customer base is something to be aware of, with certain customers never becoming Promoters regardless of your service as they have such high expectations.
  2. The NPS should be used as a diagnosis tool rather than a real time barometer of performance given the potential for the survey to be such low volume.
  3. Linking NPS to customer data is essential, as there is great power in linking customer's sentiment and their actual behaviour.

As customers become more empowered and share experiences with other people it becomes crucial to understand what they are telling you, either through social media platforms or bespoke surveys.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.