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Does NPS become a sole devise to know how a store is performing? If not, what else?

About: Net Promoter Score

HS Brands India 6 Stories

Wednesday March 21, 2018 , 3 min Read

Customer service is the soul of a business!

‘Customer’ is that one word that’s rooted in the mind of each and every person in an organization, right from the top to the bottom strata. And, when it comes to customer satisfaction, you need to go extra miles to understand the needs of your customers and serve them in the best possible way. Don’t forget, word-of-mouth, is still the most influential tool. If your customers like your product and services, they will definitely spread the word. If not, then it can be dangerous for your brand.

Fathoming customer experience

As far as measuring customer experience is concerned, the role of NPS or Net Promoter Score cannot be denied. It is, in fact, one of the most important customer experience tools, which is being used by a majority of brands or companies all over the world to understand and improve the level of customer experience is that’s provided.

Net Promoter Score – the Pros and Cons

• NPS is simple and straightforward. As told earlier, the entire concept of NPS revolves around just one question, “How likely would you advocate our brand or products or services?” Unlike other surveys, wherein respondents can interpret something entirely different from what you actually meant or asked, NPS is straightforward.

• Its findings are easily understandable. ‘Customer loyalty index of your brand’ is 6.5 or ‘70% of your customers are detractors or promoters. Which of these statements are more understandable? The latter one, right? Rest, you are smart enough to understand.

Cons of NPS

• Alone, NPS is not that insightful. It is undoubtedly a good customer loyalty metric. However, if you are working on improving your products or services, it won’t be helpful to a great extent. It needs more detailed and defined customer survey to get to the roots of a problem and fix it properly.

In this regard, mystery shopping is way more effective and insightful because mystery shoppers’ prime focus is to provide you with real-time feedback about what is actually going on in your shop. Let’s take the example of a premium automobile brand’s dealership.

A mystery auditor/shopper will look into each and every aspect right from welcome, reception, need analysis, product presentation, test drive experience, ambience and finances, which is practically not possible using NPS.

• NPS might not be accurate all the time. For example – consider the scenario of a retail store or an automobile dealership. Not everyone visiting a store or dealership knows or understands what an NPS is. Some customers just tap the buttons on an NPS monitor just like that without even reading what’s being asked of them.

Such scores are also recorded. And, in no case, those scores are useful. Isn’t it? However, when you deploy mystery auditors, you get to have a look at the exact scenario at your store.

Mystery shopping to complement NPS to fetch a better insight

In simple words, NPS is not completely insightful and accurate and needs more structured and detailed customer satisfaction survey tool to get more insightful findings. And, that complimentary tool is mystery shopping, a reliable and effective market research tool. It has the capability to overcome the loopholes that NPS leaves behind. It helps you get real-time feedback that mystery shoppers experience in reality. Its data and findings are more real and reliable than NPS.