“How likely are you to recommend our attraction to your friends and family?”
You can learn a lot about your guest experience by asking your customers this question. e following question:
In fact, this simple question will define a widely used customer experience metric that can predict guest retention, revenue growth, and overall success. It’s called the Net Promoter Score (NPS).
In this guide, you’ll learn how keeping track of your NPS can help you improve your guest experience and outperform your competitors.
5 tips for creating an NPS survey and getting more replies
How often should you run NPS surveys?
3 tips for analyzing your NPS survey results
- Look for trends and track changes over time
- Analyze NPS based on customer demographics
- Follow up with your detractors
3 strategies for responding to promoters
4 strategies for responding to detractors
How can NPS surveys help tours and attractions improve guest experience?
- Learn what makes your customers tick
- Persuade detractors to return and reduce customer churn
- Make staff aware of your NPS goals
- Share NPS feedback with the right departments
- Keep track of score changes
What is Net Promoter Score?
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a type of guest experience survey used by businesses of all kinds to measure customer loyalty. Unlike other survey-based KPIs, like CSAT and CES, that gauge how customers feel after a specific interaction with a company, NPS is designed to measure how they feel about your brand as a whole, taking every interaction into account.
At the minimum, NPS surveys ask guests a single question: “How likely are you to recommend [your attraction] to a friend or colleague?” Guests are prompted to respond with a rating of 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely).
Your NPS survey may include additional questions, like:
- Demographic questions where you ask guests about their age, gender, income, and location
- A follow-up question giving guests the chance to explain their rating
- Additional questions about their visit
The metric was developed as a way to predict customer purchase and referral behavior. Research has shown that a company’s NPS score is directly correlated with its growth rate. Customer loyalty is therefore considered one of the most important drivers of growth, which is why so many businesses rely on NPS data.
When to use NPS Surveys vs. CSAT vs. CES
CES and CSAT surveys, on the other hand, are best used to measure specific customer interactions.
A CES survey, for instance, can be sent after a guest calls in to make a request. The survey would ask guests to rate the difficulty in getting the issue resolved. Meanwhile, a CSAT survey could also be sent after a guest support call to gauge how satisfied they are with your team’s customer service.
Both of these surveys can be deployed at individual touchpoints along the customer journey, allowing your company to pinpoint trouble areas that need your attention.
How is NPS calculated?
Your NPS score is a number from -100 to 100. Your NPS survey will ask guests to rate how likely they are to recommend your company on a scale of 0 to 10, and you’ll categorize responses into three groups:
- Ratings 9-10 are promoters: Happy guests who are likely to bring in future visitors through positive reviews and word-of-mouth marketing.
- Ratings 7-8 are passives: Indifferent guests who are unlikely to rave about your attraction to others.
- Ratings 0-6 are detractors: Dissatisfied guests that could discourage others from visiting.
To calculate your score, you’ll first find the percentage of respondents that answered as “detractors” and the percentage of those that answered as “promoters.” Then, subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters.
For example, if 25% of your survey respondents were detractors and 60% were promoters, your NPS score would be 35 (60-25).
A high NPS score is a good indicator that your guests are satisfied with the experience and service you’re providing.
5 tips for creating a NPS survey and getting more replies
Here are five tips to frame your NPS questions in a way that encourages more replies.
1. Keep it short and sweet
First, you want to keep your survey short. You’ll receive more valuable insight from three carefully chosen questions than if you overwhelm your guests with a long, multi-question survey.
2. Use a simple scale
You also want to use a simple scale that your guests are familiar with. Most NPS surveys traditionally use a scale of 0 to 10, which makes it easy for guests to quickly choose a number to describe how they’re feeling.
3. Include an open-ended question
The third tip is to include a follow-up question that allows guests to elaborate on their ratings. Following up with a question like “What’s the reason for your score?” is key to gaining more insight into how your guests are feeling. This gives guests the chance to directly tell you what they like and dislike about your brand, allowing you to pinpoint areas that need to be improved.
4. Think twice before using incentives
You might be wondering if offering an incentive, like a giveaway,will get you more replies. Surveys that reward customers for responding do have a higher response rate, but they can also throw off your responses. Guests might rush through the survey without being completely honest just to get the reward, and this can lead to biased feedback that won’t do your company any good.
5. Leverage software to collect NPS feedback
NPS software can automate the sending of NPS surveys for you, as well as collect feedback from more than one channel like email, chatbots, and SMS messages.
For example, you can send NPS surveys directly from within Xola. So, you can collect feedback from guests and then view all of it in the NPS report.
How often should you run NPS surveys?
The best time to send out an NPS survey is right after a guest has a meaningful interaction with your company, such as following a visit to your venue or a customer service phone call. A good rule of thumb is to base your survey frequency on how often guests interact with you, then multiply that by two.
This means that if your customers interact with you monthly, you’d send them an NPS survey every two months. These are referred to as transactional surveys, as they ask for feedback following a specific interaction.
Relational surveys, on the other hand, ask guests to rate how they feel about your brand as a whole. Many companies send quarterly relational NPS surveys to get a feel for how customer sentiment is changing over the year.
That being said, you don’t want to bombard your guests with a survey every time they call or email your company. This can lead to survey fatigue, which is when your audience becomes uninterested and stops answering.
Overall, you should only send surveys as frequently as you can track the feedback you’re getting in return. You need time to respond to detractors and create an action plan in between surveys.
3 tips for analyzing your NPS survey results
There’s more to an NPS survey than the score itself. The feedback you receive needs to be analyzed and interpreted so that you can use it to improve both your NPS score and your guest experience over time.
The following tips can help you make sense of all that NPS data.
Look for trends and track changes over time
Sending periodic NPS surveys will result in a large amount of feedback data over time. With NPS software, you can store your responses and observe how your score fluctuates over time. You should be specifically looking for a sudden decrease in your NPS score so that you can further investigate what’s causing the dissatisfaction. And if you see that a long-term promoter is starting to drift away, you have the chance to follow up with them before they abandon your brand.
Analyze NPS based on customer demographics
Not every guest will perceive your brand the same way. Guests will have different preferences and expectations depending on their age, gender, and location. When analyzing NPS surveys, consider grouping guests based on their demographics.
This way, you’ll be able to identify aspects that appeal to each target group. For example, you may find that younger guests enjoy using a mobile app during their visit, while older guests’ biggest frustration is not being able to locate a staff member when they need assistance. These insights will help you create more personalized experiences based on your target audiences.
Follow up with your detractors
Dig deeper into negative feedback to fully understand what went wrong. You can reach out to detractors with a personalized email or phone call to give them a chance to elaborate on what they didn’t like about their visit. This will help you and your team identify problem areas and take action before your company loses more customers due to the same reasons.
What’s a good NPS score?
Your NPS score is a number from -100 to 100. The higher the score, the more likely your guests are to recommend your attraction to others — a factor that signals customer loyalty.
Pro Tip: Here are some NPS score benchmarks by industry.
NPS scores vary a lot by industry, and it might be more useful to compare yourself to your industry average. The most recent report by NICE Satmetrix reveals that hotels are leading the travel sector with an average NPS of 49. Airlines followed with a score of 45, while travel websites had an average of 32. Airbnb tops the travel website category with an NPS score of 43.
That being said, any score above 0 is “good.” Bain & Co., the creators of NPS, use the following benchmarks to categorize scores:
- >0 is good
- >20 is favorable
- >50 is excellent
- >80 is world-class
What’s a bad NPS score?
A negative NPS score means you have more detractors than promoters, and that’s a problem. If the majority of guests are walking away with a negative experience, your company should investigate what’s going wrong before you lose more customers.
Overall, it’s more beneficial to compare your score to your industry average. Let’s say the industry average for attractions of your kind is 30+. If your escape room has an NPS score above 30, you’re already above the industry average. That’d be a sign that your brand is faring well against competitors.
If your NPS score is 25 or below, though, you’re starting to fall behind your competitors. This is why it’s important to compare your scores with your industry to get a sense of where you stand in your market.
3 strategies for responding to promoters
Your promoters are your strongest brand advocates. They’re the ones who are most likely to recommend your company to others, and this is your chance to encourage them to do so.
Here are three tips to follow up with your promoters:
- Start with a thank you. Whether you’re following up with your promoters or detractors, always remember to thank respondents for their time.
- Encourage them to recommend your attraction to others. Give them instructions on how to recommend your brand to others, such as encouraging them to share photos from their experience on social media and tag your company. Or you can also offer them a referral code.
- Personalize your response. Acknowledge specific details in your promoters’ responses. Send them more information about what they liked most and get them excited about what’s coming next.
4 strategies for responding to detractors
Following up with your detractors is your top priority. These are the guests who had a negative experience. They might even discourage others from visiting, further hurting your attraction.
When you follow up with a detractor the right way, you have the chance to offer a solution for their negative experience. You might even be able to recuperate a lost guest: 95% of customers will give you a second chance if you handle their complaints in a timely and successful manner.
Here are five tips for responding to your detractors:
- Pick up the phone. Calling your detractors shows them you’re taking time out of your day to personally reach out to them to continue the conversation.
- Explain why you’re following up. Let your detractors know that you would like to learn more about their experience so that you can find ways to make it up to them.
- Don’t be defensive. The criticism you receive could make you upset, but it’s important to keep your cool. You should be reaching out to your detractors to offer a solution, not defend your brand.
- Get to know your customers. Before responding to a detractor, take a look at their previous interactions with your brand. Learn as much about them as you can so you can better understand where they’re coming from.
How can NPS surveys help tours and attractions improve guest experience?
The feedback you receive from NPS surveys can help you make future decisions that can make or break your business. This insight helps you work on the aspects of your guest experience that need maintenance while continuing to improve on the ones that your guests already love.
Learn what makes your customers tick
Your NPS feedback will provide you with valuable insight into your customers’ expectations. You’ll not only find out what they love about your brand, but also what makes them the most disappointed. When you understand what makes them tick, you can focus your energy on tackling these issues. NPS surveys can help you curate the best guest experience for your customers by showing you exactly what makes them happy — and what doesn’t.
Persuade detractors to return and reduce customer churn
Did you know it’s more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one? This is why it’s important to follow up with your detractors before they walk away. When you reach out to them to follow-up on their responses, make sure to have a viable solution in mind. This way, you have something to offer them in return for their feedback, and hopefully, your solution is good enough to regain their trust.
Make staff aware of your NPS goals
Companies that monitor their NPS are adapting a customer-first mentality, and your staff needs to be on board for this to work. You can start by explaining to them what NPS means and why it’s an important metric to track. Then, break down how their specific roles can impact the company’s overall NPS. This way, you can collectively work toward improving the guest experience.
Share NPS feedback with the right departments
NPS feedback will provide valuable insight into what needs to be improved in your guest experience, but make sure you’re sharing it with the right departments. If you’re receiving a poor rating for on-site customer service situations, for instance, you’d share that with the team that’s working the grounds at your attraction.
The best way to share this information is to create a report, and then present it to the right department. You can schedule a meeting with your on-site team to present them with recent NPS feedback — which will show them that customers aren’t happy with the service they’re receiving. This report should have actionable steps that your staff can take to improve the situation.
Keep track of score changes
Finally, you want to ensure you’re keeping track of sudden score changes. NPS software can help you monitor your scores in real-time so that you can quickly identify and mitigate issues as they come up.
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There you have it: Everything you need to know about measuring, tracking, and using Net Promoter Score to improve your guest experience.
