Erin Sowell & Anna Svarney | The Next Steps: Working with Net Promoter Scores to Fuel Growth Centricity

A net promoter score is one of the best market research metrics available. With it, you can determine if a user is a potential promoter of the product, service, or company. In today’s episode of Aligned, Sean interviews research professional and founder of Thoughtful Research Erin Sowell and Fitzmartin’s Anna Svarney to discuss the utility of a net promoter score and why middle-market leaders should research before making decisions.
Research shows areas you could improve.
To transform for success, you can’t expect perfection. You must bring people to guide you as you make customer-facing company decisions. An NPS question often asks, “have you ever recommended or not recommended a line of research?” but human interactions are not always so cut and dry. An NPS gives more actionable data regarding who is a promoter and who’s a detractor. Limitations of an NPS score:
NPS, from a performance standpoint, creates bias.  For employee NPS (ENPS), scores determining leadership interactions inherently contain interpersonal bias. The same holds true for service and customer relationships - the customer knows the score will influence the employee. Those happy with your brand should be training for advocacy, whether through a testimonial or follow-up, to understand how they experience your brand. Different testimonials influence people differently depending on where they are in the sales cycle.  Passive consumers and promoter advocates:
Passives are people who have a good experience but are not good enough to warrant promoter levels of advocacy.  These consumers don’t need to speak positively about their experience, and they’re influenced by competitors.  With passives, you want to ask them different questions, learning what experience or change will drive them past passivity. Because they’re looking at different competitors, they’ll have a specific but essential market perception. What do they think about competitors, and how do they compare? Transactional versus relational loyalty from consumers:
Transactional loyalty is using a product or service as long as it meets your needs. Relational loyalty is using a product or service because you like the company and are excited to work with them. Some businesses will function with either model - one is not inherently better than the other. An NPS can indicate which model your company uses but look for a directional trend instead of an absolute number in your NPS score. Research is about meeting customer needs to connect with audiences. Inspire your CEO to take steps to learn through research. Don’t let an NPS be your only insight into customers this year - there should always be some level of customer research within your company.
For more insights from Erin, contact her at erin.sowell@thoughtfulresearch.com or via her website, thoughtfulresearch.com. You can reach Anna Svarny at anna@fitzmartin.com.
This episode is sponsored in part by FitzMartin’s Sales and Marketing Alignment:
Why does proper sales and marketing alignment result in a 32% average lift in revenue? Because a unified company centered around its prospects can’t help but thrive.
FitzMartin’s Sales and Marketing Alignment program will analyze your current sales and marketing structure to deliver a plan based on the needs of your prospects, bringing you increased revenue, expansion opportunities, and (above all) a unified front when communicating with prospects. 
To set your company up for success, visit fitzmartin.com/solutions to discover how to unify your sales and marketing for the best results. 
This episode is sponsored in part by Fitzmartin’s Organization and Culture Alignment:
Company culture and retention are directly connected. After all, if you fail to build good company culture, you fail to retain top talent. At FitzMartin, we help leaders like you raise their NPS scores from the low 60s to the high 80s (and, more importantly, present a plan to help you do the sa