I walked into the grocery store tonight and this blog post topic hit me. What if online reviews took a backseat to a business’s Net Promoter Score (NPS)? Pull up Google, Yelp, Facebook, TripAdvisor and there it is, NPS front and center for each business. Maybe it’s also on a sticker on the business’s door or window.
Why It Could Happen
- Review saturation. Consumers continue to get more savvy on the amount, the detail and the type of information they consume in their buying decisions. While many businesses struggle just to get their first few online reviews on the web, certain businesses and markets are almost over saturated. Who is going to read 500 reviews on a popular Manhattan restaurant or hotel?
- Still simple, but better. Zero to five stars doesn’t give you as much range either, where as NPS is a -100 to 100 score range. You can get more more detailed with how a business ranks in overall satisfaction with a wider range of scoring.
- Companies can contribute. Businesses are often frustrated with how hard it can be to get happy customers to write an online review. Use of NPS could actually be supplied by the business itself to other sites. Companies would be likely to get behind something they can help shape, procure and report. (I’ll leave the problems/needs with this for another post.)
Challenge: The Adoption of Net Promoter Score
One big reason this won’t happen is the public at large being aware of Net Promoter Score. It seems that half of the businesses I talk with on a weekly basis haven’t heard of NPS, so the public at large isn’t likely to use it for judgement on who to do business with (unless someone makes them).
It’s the reason this blog post idea hit me. I walked into the grocery store and was confronted with the store’s promotional stand to make customers aware of the NuVal food scoring system. Simply put, NuVal gives each food item a number from 100 (best) to 1 (worst). It’s like that food’s credit score, for how healthy it is based on nutrition factors. A banana, that’s a 100 and a can of Coke is a 1.
Enough about food scores, this post is about business scores. The thread here is that the public needs to care or be told why they care about NPS in order for this data point to leap frog reviews. NuVal faces it for consumers shopping and NPS would as well.
Opportunity: Start Measuring and Improving Your Net Promoter Score
If this future comes true, you can be prepared. Is it likely? No. But capturing your NPS and putting it to good use is something you can start doing today. Your opportunities with NPS are:
- Understand how your customers feel about your business, service or product.
- Benchmark and strive to improve your NPS.
- Rally your staff around a simple to understand success metric.
- Gain a score you can be proud of, market it yourself.
Thanks for entertaining my grocery store trip for ice cream ideas. While the possibility of NPS trumping online reviews might be low, the opportunity that you can do some great things with NPS is very high.
