We have written extensively about understanding the impact and profitability of your loyalty program, including a number of articles showcasing the importance of measuring your “Net Promoter Score” as the “one number you need to grow“.
We have even done a short five minute video explaining its importance as perhaps the single most important metric used by loyalty professionals worldwide.
That’s how important we see the “Net Promoter Score and System” and this article discusses the same idea from an operational perspective – helping you to understand the capabilities of our loyalty marketing platform as an easy tool you can set up quickly and easily to consistently capture this critical feedback.
The Loyalty Scale
Firstly, below is a quick reminder of the loyalty scale we use to ask and understand how willing your loyalty program members, car wash subscribers or convenience customers are to recommend you – the “ultimate question” which measures loyalty insights in the simplest way imaginable.
On a scale of 1 to 10, if they rate you anything from zero to six they are a detractor, a seven or eight is passively satisfied, and a true fan – known as a “promoter” is any customer who awards a nine or ten to your business, app or product. By subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters, you can measure your “Net Promoter Score” as a single figure – anywhere on a scale from minus one hundred to plus one hundred.
The ratings scale used to measure your “Net Promoter Score”
What You Can Measure:
In our experience with loyalty programs in the convenience retail industry, there are at least three different areas of your business that you can focus on measuring as follows:
- The NPS for your company and overall brand – so your NPS as a retailer.
- The NPS for your app – helping you understand whether your customers find it engaging and useful to them. Whether it’s to enjoy exclusive offers, plays games or track their purchases in order to be rewarded, customer’s expectations are always on the increase, so measuring this will help you stay up to date on whether your digital strategy is working for the people it has been designed for.
- You can choose to focus your NPS research on asking members whether they’d recommend your products – for example your food menu. This is the approach we recommend to measure, monitor and improve customer loyalty in the restaurant sector.
Set It and Forget It
Like many of the features in our platform, your NPS research should be set up once and left to run without changes for as long as possible. This is to ensure you are measuring responses to exactly the same question over time.
Set-up Phase:
The Liquid Barcodes Customer Excellence Team is available to set up your “NPS Survey” and once it’s built, it can be accessed within your app for customers to find, or it can be shared with members via push notification on a regular basis. Many clients send the survey to customers twice or three times a year, with recipients targeted at random for a wide sample.
You have the option to incentivise your customers to complete the survey with your most popular products – we have seen rewards such as bonus loyalty points, a free car wash or a nice menu item such as a free coffee.
Once the NPS feature is configured, you simply monitor your loyalty dashboard for its performance and changes over time.
Customer Journey:
- As above, some retailers simply create their NPS survey within the app for members to find. Others set a push notification to share it with a random group of members each month, with no member being sent the survey more than three times a year.
- Customers are then asked the likelihood that they would recommend the store, loyalty program or restaurant to their family and friends. They simply tap their rating on the 0 to 10 rating scale as shown below.
- A free format field is also included to capture “verbatim” feedback if customers have something more detailed they’d like to share.
- Once they respond, their reward is available immediately to use on their next visit to your store.
An illustration of the customer’s journey responding to your NPS research.
Next Steps:
For anyone interested in exploring this concept further and how it has evolved, you can learn more from our friends in Bain and Company – the management consulting firm who first created and shared the concept for loyalty marketers around the world to benefit.
From our side, we’re encouraging every one of our loyalty program owners to ensure they’re measuring their NPS, so please reach out to us if you’d like help setting this up for you.
About Us:
Liquid Barcodes is a leading global loyalty and digital marketing technology company specialising in the convenience store and foodservice industries. Our proprietary cloud-based technology platform allow retailers to create and manage their digital marketing campaigns with a proprietary process we call the “customer connection cycle’ to engage, promote and reward customers activities in real-time across digital and media channels.
How we do it:
We have developed the most advanced loyalty and digital marketing technology platform specifically for convenience store and foodservice retailers globally.
Retailers use our self-service dashboard to create and manage loyalty driven marketing campaigns that increase purchases with their existing customers, as well as effectively target and acquire new customers through partners or paid media channels.
One core component of live loyalty is gamification. We have gamified branding, loyalty and promotions. We believe this approach is essential in order to get customers’ attention and ultimately truly engage them with repeatable actions thereby winning their loyalty.
Check out some of our exciting/proven results here:
About Me:
Chief Content Officer, Liquid Barcodes and Host of “Let’s Talk Loyalty” Podcast
With over twenty-five years marketing experience, I specialise in loyalty marketing articles and podcasts. In addition to working with Liquid Barcodes, my clients have included Telefonica O2 Priority, Three Mobile, Electric Ireland, Allied Irish Bank and The Entertainer Group (UAE), as well as Avios – the global points currency for some of the world’s top airlines. I am also a former judge for the Loyalty Magazine Awards and proud host of the “Let’s Talk Loyalty” podcast – the industry’s first podcast for loyalty marketing professionals.
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