If there’s one customer experience metric you should be tracking, it’s your Net Promoter Score (NPS).
That’s because NPS is a proven metric that measures customer loyalty, which is a key indicator of growth and success.
In an earlier post, we shared how to create an NPS survey.
This is an especially useful feedback tool for tourism businesses and attractions since the responses will tell you how happy your guests are with their experience.
In this post, we’ll learn how attractions can analyze NPS and use that feedback to improve guest satisfaction.
How are NPS Scores calculated?
What can you do with your NPS score?
- Inform your marketing strategy
- Find areas of improvement and eliminate bottlenecks
- Reduce potential churn
5 tips for applying NPS analysis to improve guest satisfaction
- Follow up with your detractors
- Don’t forget about your promoters
- Make your staff aware of your NPS goals
- Use NPS feedback to train staff
- Keep track of score changes
Why is NPS so important?
NPS helps businesses gauge the quality of their service.
The better you meet your guests’ expectations, the more they’ll want to recommend your attraction to their friends and family.
NPS is specifically used to measure customer loyalty. Why was a metric created to measure loyalty? Because loyalty is one of the strongest drivers for growth. Loyal customers become organic promoters of your brand. They bring in additional revenue by recommending your brand to others, helping you sell tickets through word-of-mouth marketing.
Overall, loyal guests have a 306% higher lifetime value. Studies show that existing customers spend 67% more than new ones. Your brand promoters, or those who would recommend your company to others, are 5 times more likely to buy from you again and 9 times more likely to try your new service than those guests that wouldn’t recommend your company.
Not only do loyal guests continuously give you their service, but they also recommend your brand to their friends and family. A loyal guest will rave about their experience online and encourage others to visit you.
At the other end of the spectrum, NPS also identifies the problem areas that are driving your guests away. While the surveys ask guests to respond with a simple number rating on how likely they are to recommend your company to others, you can include an open-ended question asking them to elaborate on their answer.
For example, an unhappy guest could say your staff was unhelpful, which will bring a possible customer service issue to light.
If you’re losing more customers than gaining, an NPS survey can give you an idea as to why.
This is valuable information for a company that might be unaware of the critical issues impacting their guest satisfaction. The feedback attractions receive from NPS surveys allows them to focus on key areas of improvement to provide a better experience for their guests.
This will lead to more positive reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations — in other words, more ticket sales. Because of this, businesses with high NPS scores lead their industries with 2x more growth.
How are NPS Scores calculated
Step 1: Send your guests a survey asking, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [Your Attraction] to a friend or colleague?”
Step 2: Categorize your responses into three groups of customers.
- Scores 9 to 10 are your “promoters,” or brand advocates that will encourage others to visit you.
- Scores 7 to 8 are “passives,” or guests who had an OK time but likely won’t recommend your attraction to others.
- Scores 1 to 6 are “detractors,” or guests who didn’t enjoy their experience and might even discourage others from visiting you.
Step 3: Find the percentage of “detractor” responses and subtract it from the percentage of “promoter” responses. If 10% answered as detractors and 60% answered as promoters, your NPS will be 50 (60-10).
An NPS greater than 0 is generally considered as good, but the highest performing organizations score somewhere between 50 and 80.
Pro Tip: You may consider investing in dedicated NPS software to automate this process for you. Or, use booking software, like Xola, that offers this feature. Xola makes it easy to automatically send surveys, store responses, and keep track of changes in your score in real-time.
What can you do with your NPS score?
The valuable insight your company gains from an NPS analysis can be used to:
- Inform your marketing strategy
- Find areas of improvement
- Eliminate bottlenecks
- Reduce potential churn
Inform your marketing strategy
Firstly, your company will be able to design more relevant ads once it knows what makes customers tick. For example, if your NPS analysis shows that customers love how easy it is to get around the park with the map provided in your mobile app, you can start creating ads showcasing just that.
Southwest has one of the highest NPS scores in the travel industry, mostly because it has focused on the issues that matter most to its customers. This includes low fares, free checked bags, and excellent customer service, all of which are apparent in the airline’s marketing strategy.
Take the Bags Fly Free campaign, for instance. The campaign specifically appeals to travelers who don’t want to pay extra for checked baggage, something Southwest knows its customers really care about.
Find areas of improvement and eliminate bottlenecks
NPS survey responses will also pinpoint the hiccups and bottlenecks that are negatively impacting your guest satisfaction. It’s much easier for your company to improve upon these issues when you’re fully aware of them.
Airbnb, for instance, began sending NPS surveys to customers in 2013 to understand the likelihood of a repeat booking. By comparing their NPS data to travelers’ overall trip experience scores, Airbnb found that only 26% of customers remained promoters after a bad accommodation experience.
So in 2015, the company launched an eLearning hub with tips and online trainings for hosts. This helped hosts provide a better accommodation experience, and therefore increased customer trip satisfaction and brand loyalty.
Reduce potential churn
Additionally, having a better handle on customer sentiment will help you reduce potential churn. The survey responses will explicitly show you who’s not feeling so great about your brand. This gives your company the chance to reach out and try to patch things up with them.
You especially want to reach out to detractors before they start talking negatively about your brand in public. Your NPS surveys give you the chance to reach out to unhappy guests and change their minds about your company.
Finally, if you see your NPS score declining, you can quickly look into what’s causing the dip.
Up to 50% of your NPS detractors are likely to churn within the next 90 days. Learn from Airbnb’s approach where the company quickly addressed the root cause of negative stays to improve customer satisfaction and decrease customer churn.
5 tips for applying NPS analysis to improve guest satisfaction
An NPS score itself won’t do your company any good. What you do with your NPS analysis, though, can bring about wonderful changes that speed up your company’s growth.
Follow up with your detractors
Rather than feeling down about negative feedback, look at it as an opportunity for your company to show up. It’s more expensive to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one.
Start by following up with your detractors to understand what went wrong. Talk to them about what they didn’t like about their visit and brainstorm solutions that will bring them back. This ultimately shows guests how dedicated you are to improving your customer experience.
Here are a few tips for reaching out to detractors:
- You can set up an automatic email response asking for more information or call the customer directly.
- Explain why you’re following up with them.
- Don’t be defensive about the criticism you receive.
- Learn more about the customer before responding to them.
- Keep a solution in mind, whether it be an apology or a refund.
Don’t forget about your promoters
Promoters are your most loyal customers. They deserve to be noticed and appreciated, especially since they’ll be advocating for your brand in the future.
You should reach out to them to thank them for their positive feedback. Make sure to encourage them to recommend your attraction to their friends and family.
Too often, brands only reply to the fires or negative posts, and then they wonder why no one leaves positive reviews. The relationship between your business and your guests is a two-way street. The more you communicate with them, the more comfortable they’ll feel about being vocal about their experiences.
Make your staff aware of your NPS goals
Companies that monitor their NPS are adapting a customer-first mentality. They’re focusing on customer satisfaction first and foremost because they know that loyalty can drive tremendous growth.
It helps to make your staff aware of this guest-centric vision so that everyone is on the same page. When your employees understand that your goal is to turn every guest into a promoter, they’ll be incentivized to provide them with spectacular service.
A good place to start is to explain to them what the metric means. Then, break down how their specific roles can impact the company’s NPS. The next step is to ensure NPS feedback is reaching the right department. For example, website complaints should go to your web team.
The best way to do this is to invest in the right tools that can track and organize customer service tickets and NPS scores as they come in.
Use NPS feedback to train staff
You should include open-ended questions in your NPS survey or follow up with guests directly to better understand the reasoning behind their rating.
Your guest responses will provide valuable insight into what needs to be improved in our guest experience. This can serve as a guide to train staff on the key areas that matter most to your guests.
Keep track of score changes
If you notice that your NPS score is beginning to decrease, you might want to analyze why. Monitoring your scores in real-time can help your company discover and mitigate potential problems before more customers are turned away.
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Now that you know how to analyze your NPS survey, it’s time to start tracking customer satisfaction the right way.
Keeping tabs on your NPS can help you build a more relevant marketing strategy that actually converts customers, as well as improve your experience to make even more guests happy.
Guest loyalty is a powerful metric to stay on top of, and now you know that an NPS survey is the easiest way to do so.
