The NPS® system offers many advantages that allow companies to visualize the state of customer loyalty and gain an overview of their strengths. From here, a range of possibilities opens up to exploit strengths or improve weak points.

To improve customer loyalty, there are four elements to consider when using the NPS® system. Below, we will name them and discuss how leading companies serving B2C and B2B markets put them to work.

1. Target the right segments

NPS® must be based on an understanding of this target group. These are the core customers that a company must strive to serve better than anyone else and, as such, they should be the focus of efforts to identify and recruit more like them.

2. Compare yourself against the right competitors

Compare the organization’s NPS® relative to that of its direct competitors in relevant product markets and geographies.

3. Let your customers help you make better decisions

NPS® is a powerful tool for driving change deep within the organization. Scores provide a benchmark of how the business compares to the competition and help managers identify actions that can truly differentiate the customer experience. Textual responses from top-down respondents help identify key issues customers face in their interactions with your organization (and your competitors) that have the greatest potential to increase your number of promoters or create detractors.

4. Measure simply, measure well

The effectiveness of a top-down NPS® program is a direct consequence of the integrity of the survey process. Companies that do this well keep their surveys short and simple, but are careful about how they implement them. They carefully choose their survey sample to target key customer segments and ensure that the sample size for each is large enough to produce statistically significant results. To protect against any temptation to game the system and produce predetermined results, they hire a third-party research firm to conduct the survey using a double-blind process.

The simple yet powerful Net Promoter® disciplines provide the rigor, speed, and thoroughness to transform a company into a loyalty leader. Because loyal customers spend more with companies that treat them well, cost less to serve, and refer more customers like themselves, the Net Promoter® approach can yield significant dividends.