Net promoter score (NPS) is a useful tool for quantifying and tracking customer satisfaction and loyalty. It is, however, just a metric, and improving it just to meet an arbitrary goal or check a box on your quarterly review is unlikely to have a real impact on your business overall.

Instead, you need to focus on what’s going on behind that score.

And, so, when we talk about improving your NPS score, there are no shortcuts or quick fixes — you need to make a considered effort to improve the customer experience at every stage of the journey.

In this article, we’ll outline a 5-step action plan to improve the customer experience and increase your NPS as a result.

Step 1: Identify the cause of a low net promoter score

The first and most straightforward way of identifying the cause of a low NPS score is to get more qualitative data from your customers. You can do this in two ways — add a follow-up question with a free text box or drop-downs to your NPS survey, or through a follow-up process after a score is received.

Both of these are valuable, but the latter serves an important dual purpose — it helps you identify the ‘why’ behind a low score and gives you an opportunity to stop churn in its tracks by reaching out to detractors and offering help. You can scale this process with an automated journey, emailing NPS responders with a message based on their score and sending notifications to relevant teams via Slack or email.

If this process results in conversations or meetings with customers, ensure your team takes meeting minutes and passes any relevant feedback onto the appropriate team/s. Feedback is only helpful if it is actioned — and customers who can see their feedback is being taken seriously are more likely to remain loyal.

You can also use your NPS software connected to a CDP or CRM to conduct a data deep dive. This will help you identify the type of customers who are more likely to become promoters or detractors.

For example, you could look at how your NPS score changes based on the industry a customer is in, the products or features they use, or their level of interaction with support, success, or sales.

Step 2: Improve detractors

Once you’ve identified some of the things driving negative scores through qualitative customer feedback and data, it’s time to set up a working session to improve them.

Start with the individual detractors — NPS survey journeys typically restart every 90-180 days, so you can think of this as a performance improvement plan (PIP) time frame and have relevant team members work together to outline an action plan and deliver on it.

The aim of this activity is to win detractors back before they churn, but the steps taken along the way should positively impact your customers at large — for example, product updates, changes to your support documentation or processes, or tweaks to your customer lifecycle campaigns.

In some cases, you may have identified that specific customer segments are more likely to go on to become detractors. If this is the case, improving detractors could be about changing your ICP and targeting in the marketing and sales phase.

Step 3: Leverage and increase promoters

Improving detractors should be priority number one to avoid churn, but your promoters have just as much to teach you about the customer experience. Look at commonalities in industry type, features used, interactions with your team, and marketing messages received to tell a story about who your promoters are and the role your brand and product play in their life.

With this information, you can double down on what’s working and aim to generate more promoters.

You can also set up a referral program or rewards-based system to encourage promoters to refer more business. Word-of-mouth referrals tend to be a better product fit and easier to convert, lowering acquisition costs while increasing customer loyalty.

Step 4: Don’t forget about passives

Most NPS improvement plans are wholly focused on improving detractors and increasing promoters — but when customers who feel ‘meh’ about your business fly under the radar, you’re missing an important piece of the puzzle.

Taking that 90 or 180-day survey repeat window as a PIP timeframe, look at any additional feedback they’ve shared or data you have collected on their experience, and make tweaks along the journey to turn more passives into promoters.

If your team is too focused on the more pressing job of winning back detractors to work on passives, use your data to identify the most high-value passive customers and start with them.

Even if only a handful of high-value passives are being actively investigated, you’ll likely set off a chain of events that improves the customer experience overall.

Step 5: Become a customer-centric organization

Customer satisfaction is an implicit goal for support and success teams, but for an organization to become truly customer-centric, every team needs to put themselves in the customer’s shoes in every decision they make. It’s a larger, structural change that can dramatically improve business outcomes.

For example, product managers or R&D teams should implement platforms, tools, or processes to identify the product updates or new releases that are most important to their customers. Marketing and sales teams should consider how messaging impacts a customer’s experience after they’ve signed on. Business leads should give their customers a metaphorical seat at the boardroom table.

When customers are central to business decisions, NPS becomes an important metric not just for the support or success team, but for the entire organization — and improving it becomes a company-wide initiative, leading to better outcomes.

Final word: A jumping-off point for a more sustainable business

Think of your NPS score as a jumping-off point — it is a simple metric that helps quantify customer loyalty and can help you identify which customers and journeys taken have the best outcomes for your business.

While not every detractor’s gripe will need to be addressed and not every promoter's experience will be replicable, being open to feedback and proactive in your pursuit of insights will reveal areas of improvement that, when actioned, can improve business performance overall.