When employees conducting your Net Promoter Score survey are evaluated based on survey results, they may explain the survey instrument too thoroughly to customers: "If you don't rate me a nine or 10 on this scale, I'll fail and I could lose my job."
Faced with a statement like the foregoing, no customer can be expected to provide a truthful answer.
To avoid lifting the curtain when conducting a Net Promoter Score survey, ensure employees collecting data are not also being evaluated according to the results produced. This may mean hiring someone to survey recent customers.
Net Promoter Score Survey Oversimplification
How can one oversimplify a survey that only has one question?
Surprisingly, many companies taint their Net Promoter Score survey results by trying to further simplify an already immensely concise tool. If a customer has purchased multiple products or services from your organization, inaccurate results may be seen when asking that customer to answer a Net Promoter Score survey about the organization.
Overarching opinion is important; you know you have done well when a customer unhappy with one product still self-identifies as a promoter for your company in its entirety. However, more accurate results may be seen by augmenting your Net Promoter Score survey with questions referring to specific products and services.
Failure to Comprehensively Evaluate Results
Imagine you've hired an independent contractor to conduct a Net Promoter Score survey during a period of two weeks. At the end of this time frame, you're provided with a report showing that your company's Net Promoter Score is well above your desired target, showing substantial improvement over your last survey. Delighted, you pay your contractor and assume you are on the right track. But shortly after you receive these encouraging results, business drops and you see several negative Web reviews of your products. What happened?
Even if a company's Net Promoter Score remains strong overall, a defect in product or service quality may create Detractors. It's not enough to simply review your overall score. If pockets of Detractors exist, seek a common factor in their experiences. Did they purchase the same product or service? Did the same employee help them? Did they come at a time of day when your employees are slow to provide service? If you can discover a factor common to your Detractors, you can reach out to all individuals sharing that trait and offer a solution.
How do you provideNet Promoter Score survey without allowing conscious or unconscious bias to sway results?
