Ready to learn the secret to improving customer loyalty over time?
One way to measure brand loyalty and customer happiness is through a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey. Your NPS is a numerical value that provides valuable insight into guest satisfaction.
You can find your NPS by sending your guests a pretty simple one-question survey asking, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our attraction to your friends or colleagues?”
Depending on how your guests respond, they’ll be considered (9-10) promoters, (7-8) passives, or (0-6) detractors of your brand.
To find your final NPS score, you’d subtract the percentage of “detractors” from the percentage of “promoters.” So if 10% of your survey respondents were detractors and 50% were promoters, your NPS score would be 40 (50-10).
The higher your NPS, the happier your guests are — and the more likely they are to rave about you to their friends and family and come back again.
In this post, we’ll show you how to improve your NPS score over time.
Why is improving your NPS score important?
9 proven strategies to get more NPS promoters
- 1. Embed a customer-first philosophy in your company culture
- 2. Quickly follow-up with detractors
- 3. Run NPS surveys focused on customer support
- 4. Monitor your NPS score regularly
- 5. Celebrate your wins
- 6. Reward your promoters
- 7. How to approach your passive guests
- 8. Personalize your surveys and responses
- 9. Call non-respondents
Why is improving your NPS score important?
A company with a high NPS score has a lot of loyal guests. This is because your NPS score is based on how customers perceive your guest experience. If you’re consistently meeting their expectations, their NPS responses will be positive and they’ll want to return for a second, third, and fourth visit.
Customers place so much emphasis on high-quality experiences that they’re willing to spend more for them. In fact, 42% of U.S. customers would pay more for a friendly, welcoming experience. Another 65% say that a positive experience with a brand is more influential than good advertising.
That being said, a negative guest experience can quickly drive them away. Did you know that 32% of all customers would stop doing business with a brand they loved after a single bad experience?
When we talk about improving your NPS score, we’re really looking at improving in the key areas of your experience that matter most to your guests.
The good news here is that the feedback your attraction receives from an NPS survey can highlight exactly what you’re doing right and what you need to improve upon. It’s much easier for a company to take action once it identifies the drivers behind negative reviews.
Feedback from detractors and passives specifically will highlight the areas that your attraction should be focusing on to improve your guest experience.
For example, Alaska Airlines is deliberately investing in key areas that matter to its customers, including overall value for money, in-flight entertainment, and seat comfort. As a result, customer satisfaction is up in each of those categories this year, according to a recent NPS report.
The airline led all others with an NPS of 71 by focusing on these key areas of flyer satisfaction.
9 proven strategies to get more NPS promoters
Improving your NPS requires listening to customer feedback and taking action. For the best results, you want everyone on your team to understand and support your NPS strategy. You’ll also want to monitor your score regularly and follow up with respondents when necessary.
Let’s dig into nine actions you can take to improve your NPS score over time.
1. Embed a customer-first philosophy in your company culture
Creating brand loyalty requires a customer-first mentality. Every action your company takes should keep the customer’s needs and preferences in mind.
For this to work, though, all of your employees need to be on the same page. Your staff should be asking themselves what they can do to improve the customer experience, which will also increase your NPS.
Your employees should be made aware of the importance of customer loyalty and how the company is tracking it. Explain the concept of an NPS survey to them and how their interactions with guests can impact your score, especially front-facing workers who interact with guests daily.
Destination BC has instilled the importance of visitor loyalty on a grand scale: The tourism organization called on local businesses and communities to measure and increase their NPS together. The goal is for British Columbia to become the most highly recommended destination in North America.
Attractions can similarly empower their employees to work toward the same goal. Consider offering incentives to encourage each department to provide guests with the best possible service.
At the other end of the spectrum, you can also use NPS surveys to gauge team morale internally. This could look like sending an NPS survey to your employees to find out how they feel about the company culture and your approach to the guest experience.
Your employees, especially front-facing staffers who interact with customers daily, can highlight different problem areas or solutions that you can tackle in-house. When you take an employee-first approach internally, your employees will also feel loyalty for your brand and want to pass that on to guests.
2. Quickly follow-up with detractors
While promoters are a brand’s best friend, detractors are the opposite. But that doesn’t mean you should turn your back and abandon them.
Attractions should quickly follow up with detractors to find out what went wrong. This is known as “closing the loop.” Without learning more about what caused their negative response, you won’t know how to fix it.
You can follow up with a detractor with a phone call or email asking them to explain the reasoning behind their poor rating. This shows the guest that you’re taking their complaints seriously and are taking the time to fix the situation.
Here are five tips when following up on negative reviews:
- Don’t be defensive. Instead, approach them with a “How can I help you?” mentality.
- Gain context on their issue. Look at previous customer data and try to understand where they’re coming from.
- Explain why you’re following up with them.
- Have a solution in mind. This way, you’re walking in prepared to fix the problem.
- Follow up with them again to track success.
You can lessen the impact of a negative review or prevent negative word-of-mouth marketing by offering detractors a viable solution.
Up to 95% of customers will give you a second chance if you handle their complaints successfully and promptly. As you get the conversation going, you might even be able to turn the guest into a passive or promoter.
The feedback you collect from these respondents will show you what’s bothering guests the most. Working on these issues will make more guests happier and lead to more promoters.
Let’s say Jane visited a museum and felt quite lost inside. There was no map handed out at the entrance, and she couldn’t find anyone to ask for directions once wandering the museum. She responded by a “3” in her NPS survey.
The museum quickly reached out to her and apologized for the poor experience. It offered her a free entrance ticket for another visit. Since then, they’ve increased the number of staff throughout the museum and make sure every visitor receives a digital map with their email confirmation orders.
Jane appreciated the effort and says she’ll consider visiting again in the future.
3. Run NPS surveys focused on customer support
Customer support is one of the main pillars of the guest experience.
Knowing this, your attraction can use an NPS survey focused on customer support to gain insight and ideas on what to improve.
Overall, your customer service staff should be helpful and attentive. They should be trained to anticipate guest’s needs and be proactive about solutions. If you’re seeing low ratings on your customer support NPS survey, you may need to regroup with your staff.
You may also consider technology solutions that have proven to boost customer support satisfaction, such as 24/7 chatbot support.
A chatbot is a computer program that uses artificial intelligence to instantly answer guest’s most frequent questions. It can help solve simple guest issues to reduce the number of support requests and free up your staff to focus on more urgent matters.
For example, let’s say Daniel calls your customer service line to cancel his visit due to a family emergency. Your staff member quickly processes his refund while he’s on the line. Daniel then receives a confirmation email explaining that the refund will take 3-5 days to process.
In a follow-up email, Daniel sees an NPS survey asking about his recent support request. He responds with a 9, so you know your customer support team did a great job.
4. Monitor your NPS score regularly
You can’t improve what you don’t measure and track regularly.
If you notice that your score is beginning to drop, you can immediately look into what’s causing the dip. The quicker you’re able to take action, the fewer promoters you’ll lose. You can track customer sentiment in real-time and quickly jump on any issues before they escalate.
Companies that continuously improve their customer experience based on NPS feedback will gain more promoters.
Last-minute hotel booking platform HotelTonight closely monitors its NPS surveys to quickly address problems as they arise. As soon as negative feedback rolls in, the company starts working on a solution to improve the issue.
HotelTonight has been able to grow its NPS score to 75 over time, significantly higher than the average score for the hospitality industry.
5. Celebrate your wins
You shouldn’t only focus on your negative feedback. A good NPS score is a reason to celebrate.
When a guest leaves you a glowing review, remember to thank the guest. And, consider sharing it with your employees.
You can also encourage staff to keep the customer top of mind by rewarding the employees or departments responsible for good reviews.
6. Reward your promoters
If you only follow up with your detractors, your brand’s loyal fans may feel you only pay attention to bad reviews.
Your promoters also deserve your attention. Show them your appreciation by thanking them for being loyal to your brand. Consider offering them special rewards for their constant support, such as loyalty cards, discounts, or the opportunity to be the first to try out a new experience.
For example, The Savoy hotel group rewards travelers with 10% off when they sign up for its loyalty program. Guests also get hotel credit to spend at on-sire restaurants.
7. How to approach your passive guests
Passive guests can be easier to convert to promoters than detractors, which is why they certainly shouldn’t be ignored.
Attractions should follow up with their passive guests to find out why they weren’t more enthusiastic about their experience. Approach them with specific questions like “What part of your visit could’ve been better?” or “What could we have done to impress you?”
These responses will show you how you could elevate your experience from average to amazing.
It’s key to reach out to these guests before they start considering another brand. Connect with them soon after their visit and work on convincing them to return for another try.
8. Personalize your surveys and responses
Personalizing your follow-up emails can bring you more detailed feedback. A detractor who had a negative experience inside your venue shouldn’t receive the same email as one who rated a customer service call poorly. Make sure your follow-up is specific to the interaction they are unsatisfied about.
Also, consider asking your survey respondents about their preferred method of communication. Email might not be the best channel for every guest. Some may prefer a quick text, while others find a phone call more personal and effective.
9. Call non-respondents
Many businesses ignore their non-respondents. However, there’s a chance to reach more promoters if you can get more guests to respond to your surveys.
If you have customers that seemingly enjoyed their visit – they’ve visited more than once or posted positively about it on social media — yet didn’t answer your survey, you might consider reaching out to them in a more personal way.
You can try to call them and learn more about their experience. If they have any issues with their experience, you’ll learn about it firsthand. Then, you’ll be able to offer them solutions to bring them back into your circle of loyal fans.
***
Improving your NPS score is one tactic you can use to improve your guest experience.
Instead of having to use and integrate yet another software, you can send NPS surveys directly in Xola to your guests and analyze all of the data with our NPS report.
