NPS® Taught Companies How to K.I.S.S.(Keep It Simple, Survey), but It’s Time to Go to the Next Level with AI.

Prior to the Customer Experience economy, when products and services were king and prices went toe-to-toe, conducting customer feedback surveys was a monumental task.

Companies needed a Pythagoras or Gauss on hand to create some sophisticated algorithm, or had to break their budgets to hire marketing research firms to task with ciphering complex metrics. Daunting, to say the least.

Then along came NPS in 2003. Introduced by Reichheld at Bain and Company, NPS taught companies how to K.I.S.S. — Keep It Simple, Survey.

It popped one question, “How likely are you to recommend our company to a family/friend?”

And, BOOM! A “mic drop” moment happened and the survey game was changed.

One question. And based on the customer’s answer on a scale of 0–10, they’re placed into one of three categories: detractors (0–6), passives (7–8), promoters (9–10).

The number of detractors are subtracted from the number of promoters and, voila, there’s your score. Simple question. Simple math. Simple survey. And who doesn’t like simple?

But the customer experience economy is far from being simple. It’s complex. It’s competitive. And it’s constantly changing. The right metrics must be in place. So, although NPS is a wonderful indicator to gauge customers’ perceptions, and in some cases, loyalty, companies need to go beyond the KISS and take their CEM to another level.

In this blog post, I will discuss:

• The need to check behind the score
• How money follows decisions, not feelings
• Adding AI to take your CEM beyond the KISS

There’s More Behind the Score

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest resource of learning — Bill Gates

I agree with Shep Hyken, that beyond the NPS score, you’ve gotta get to what’s driving the score. Not knowing what lies between 0 and 6 is to ignore pertinent data that could increase sales.

In The Loyalty Effect, Reichheld says, “…the goal of failure analysis must be learning, not concealment, and the boss must lead or at least cheer on the effort, not float in blissful ignorance.”

Detractors indicate that a company is failing to deliver what a portion of its customers need, so if the goal of failure analysis is learning, be ignorant no longer.

There’s a lot of customer intel being overlooked within the NPS score. Think about detractors, those between 0–6. The 6’s are closer to being a 10 than a 0. There’s a much higher chance of turning them into promoters.

Detractors could be NPS’s new BFF (Best Financial Fix), if given the rightattention; meaning, not just listening to their gripes, but finding out which among those gripes actually impact their decisions.

You know from experience that at the end of the day, how we feel may have no impact on why we spend where we spend.

Money Follows Decisions, Not Feelings

Even the open-ended NPS question can’t drill down into the score itself because the answers do not precisely indicate the experiences that have the highest probability of affecting customer decisions.

You may get a litany of complaints and you may even be able to narrow them down to the responsible departments. But who’s to say that those particular complaints are actually impacting your customers’ decisions? And if so, which ones.

If a teller gives me a “stank” attitude every time I visit my bank, I can still conclude that it’s more worth it for me to deal with it (instead of the hassle of switching over to a new bank) than to jump ship. My money follows my decisions.

What actually impacts your customers’ decisions (quality, relationship, social proof, etc) is what you need to first pin down. More importantly, based on which of those impacts your customers’ decisions most, it must be further broken down so you’ll know exactly where in your company to invest your time, efforts, and money to boost your NPS.

Perhaps some of the reasons above are why Hyken refers to NPS as a simple survey concept that doesn’t give deep data, so if you want specifics you will need to add other survey methods.

Adding AI to your CEM: Going Beyond the K.I.S.S.

I’d venture to say that most companies have figured out by now that they can’t live by NPS alone.

Add an AI metric to compliment your existing CEM that can sort through your pile of disgruntled detractors and get to the bottom of which of those complaints actually impact their buying decisions.

The Worth Index (Worthix) is also based on one question and it’s one we allask ourselves prior to buying, “Is it worth it?” If the answer is “Yes, it’s worth it,” then our money follows.

Worthix is the first Voice of Customer Survey that uses AI to deep dive into what’s impacting your customers’ actual decisions (detractors included) and pinpoints where the break down is for you to improve.

The AI powered survey questionnaire is led by your customers so you don’t have to design it. It identifies exactly what drives their decisions and the experiences that mean most to them to increase sales and reduce churn.

If you no longer want to be in the dark about how to go to the next level with your customers, let Worthix enhance your support system.

Originally published at blog.worthix.com.