You got promoters after your NPS: What next?

This blog post is meant for customer success leaders, enthusiasts, and managers alike. If you have never heard of an NPS survey or have never been involved in the process of managing an NPS survey: this blog post is not for you.

Now that I have that out of the way; and you are still reading this blog post. Let me ask a question? What do you do after your NPS survey? If you are like most customer success teams, scrambling to engage your detractors asking them why they rated you so low. Once that is done, you will move over to your passives and ask them how you could get a higher rating. By the time you are done with this exercise, it is almost time for your next NPS survey!

And you have committed the cardinal sin that is not reaching out to your promoters! Call it complacence, call it concentrating on churn, call it whatever you like: your promoters are as important as your detractors if not more important than your detractors.

Here are some activities that you can do with your promoters that will help you maximize your portfolio.

Thank them and ask them why they rated you so high

Most customer success teams spend such a large amount of their time finding out what is not working for their customers, they forget to ask their promoters what is working for them.

If you are a customer success leader or a product manager, ask your customer success managers what are the top 3 things that are working for customers in their portfolio. I will not be surprised if you get a series of blank expressions or incoherent mumbling. Ironically, ask your customers success managers what your customers hate about your product, you will not get them to shut up!

NPS was never meant to be a defensive metric. What do I mean? Customer success teams spend such a large part of their time concentrating on the negative end of the NPS that they are always on the back foot and in damage control mode.

I am in no way advocating not reaching out to your detractors, you must do so but not at the cost of ignoring your promoters.

So a simple email that thanks them for their faith in your product followed by a question like “We would love to know what made you rate us so high?” will help your team answer that golden question “What is working for your customers”.

Ask them for a review

There are so many social media avenues where your customers can leave you reviews, from LinkedIn to G2Crowd. No one likes a company blowing its own trumpet but get your customers to talk about you: everyone will pay attention.

Depending on the type of product you are selling, you can chose to incentivize your promoters for leave you a review or if they agree to let you quote them on your social media channels.

In fact, you can do most of the heavy lifting for them. Once they answer the question what worked for them. Just ask them for a picture and phrase their response as a quick customer review. Once you have approval, go ahead, and post it on a social media channel of your choice!

Ask them if they will be a referenceable customer

Depending on your relationship with your customers, you can ask them if they would agree to be a referenceable customer. You can choose to spread your referenceable customers based on industry type, function, and other criteria. Your sales team will love you for having a ready reference list available for them to tap into. Important caveat though: you need to set the right expectations and limit the number of reference calls your customers will be able to make. Not to mention, you need to protect your prospects from being ‘overused’ for reference purposes.

By the way, your existing reference base (that is what I am calling them) can also be used for account management purposes.