A friend of mine recommended this nice little café. So I went there the other day with a couple of friends. It was such a great place that we all said we would come back with our families. The next day I told my colleagues about it and one went there with her husband. They too absolutely loved it.

As customers, getting a recommendation for a restaurant, product, or service is one of the best ways to increase our chances of being happy with our purchase. Therefore leading us to recommend it to our friends and colleagues.

As for business owners, wouldn’t it be great if you could measure customer loyalty. As well as identify the type of loyal customers who would lead potential new customers to come to your business?

Great news – you can!

It is called Net Promoter Score, often referred to as NPS.

And what is the Net Promoter Score Ultimate Question, you might wonder?

NPS is a surveying technique where you find the customers who love your company and the products you sell by asking one single question:

“How likely is it that you would recommend our brand/product/service to a friend or a colleague?”

The answer is rated using a 0-10 scale, 0 being the lowest and 10 the highest.

A Net Promoter Score Survey is both quick and easy to answer, which means that most customers will actually take the time to give you feedback.

You calculate your Net Promoter Score by using the respondents’ answers. The scores are divided into three different groups:

• Promoters (score 9-10): these are the loyal customers who will return to your business over and over again and also lead others to you.
• Passives (score 7-8): they are satisfied but not as loyal, meaning they are sensitive to competitive offers.
• Detractors (score 0-6): this is a group of unhappy customers who might cause damage to your brand and slow down growth by providing negative feedback to others.

It is easy to calculate your Net Promoter Score, but you do need a calculator (unless you use Netigate where all the calculations and reporting are included!).

You take the group total and divide by the total number of respondents. Then you subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters and voilà. You have calculated your Net Promoter Score. The Passives are included in the total number of respondents, but don’t directly affect the overall score.

As a business owner you could always send a “thank you” message to your loyal customers who scored you 9 or 10. Just a suggestion, although you’ll need to ask the Net Promoter Score ultimate question first 😉