NPS for events: why it’s crucial and how to start using.
NPS, or Net Promoter Score, is one of the most relevant methodologies to measure brand success. It’s already being used by several companies. Today, you’ll learn everything you need to start using it.
Probably, you already got yourself lost and confused in data analysis. We got you covered when it comes to event planning, in any situation. And even when you need to market your conference for free, or are in doubt about tools you should use, we’re here too.
But how to measure, differentiate customers and get the best insights for your business? At the end of this article, you’ll have full comprehension of how valuable a single Net Promoter Score question best practice can be to measure the success of your events, both for your guests as well as for your sponsors.
What’s NPS?
NPS, or Net Promoter Score is a concept first disseminated by researcher Fred Reichheld at Harvard Business Review in 2003. Later on, Bain Company made NPS and the Net Promoter System practically the official ways of earning the passion and loyalty of customers. It is the most efficient methodology for measuring customer satisfaction, and is applied by many brands around the world. Its applicability is possible in any sector or industry – from the pharmaceutical and financial sector to entertainment and high-tec. It’s a straight to the point method that show the likelihood of your client to order something from you again.
After obsolete after-sales departments struggle to understand what customers wanted, it was clear that long forms and surveys were not that efficient. Actually, that had a very low response rate. So a new way of measuring levels of satisfaction was created through a single question:
How likely would you recommend our company / product / service to a friend or colleague?
Generally, this response is supposed to be answered by the customer in a scale from 1 to 10. Out of your answers, it’s possible to group your respondents into three segments:
You have probably answered this question many times when making a purchase or contacting a brand. But the efficiency of this methodology goes far beyond what this simple question suggests.
Why is NPS important?
First, because the methodology is easy to apply and brings no further problem. You don’t need to clog up your client’s questions to understand the efficiency of your event or brand. Second, because it is a fairly reliable system for the market to keep loyal customers. Remember that passives who never get contacted have a much higher risk of churning or being more loyal to your competitors.
NPS is widely in use by the most diverse sectors of the economy since its implementation. It generates good insights for many companies in the United States and around the world.
In addition, NPS survey can still help customer relationship loyalty and growth, the big goals of every business. By applying this simple method, you enable your business to go straight to the point and meet your customer’s needs, demands and challenges.
How to measure NPS?
The NPS results is measured out of the application of simple formula:
+% customer promoters -% customers detractors = % NPS
Therefore, it is perceived that detractor clients are as important as the promoters. It is necessary to understand, above all, what leaves the customer dissatisfied with the brand or the product itself. For this, you can ask the customer to justify your note, not mandatory.
Depending on the outcome, the NPS score will result in a calculation to fit your company or product against the following criteria:
- -100 to 0: Negative feedback. There are critical points in this survey results and this customer relationship needs to be fixed;
- 0 to 50: Collected data shows that there are points to improve;
- 55-75: Product or brand caters to customer satisfactorily, but for some reason it has not yet been completely “conquered” by its brand;
- 75 to 100: Customer Success! These guys are your best advertising.
NPS for events
If there’s an economic sector that can take full advantage of NPS score, it is the events industry. After all, customer experience is the new marketing. However, satisfaction surveys used by organizers are still very extensive. Because of that, they don’t have 100% adherence from participants. Since your very first NPS Survey, the chances of response increase exponentially.
But the main advantage of a NPS survey for events is that it helps at the time of raising sponsors for future events. If your NPS in an event was high, you can use this data to capture new sponsors in future editions. If the NPS has not been so satisfactory, it is the chance to make the necessary improvements. Showing what improvements have been made and what results are expected it’s critical to gain the trust of a sponsor.
How to apply NPS in events?
Because events are a specific product with a set o specific features, you can make NPS measurement scale more objective. For instance: by reducing the scale from 0 to 10 by a score of 0 to 5. You can ask attendees and delegates to respond to this satisfaction survey via email marketing or even with the help of event applications with this functionality.
An event app can still help with participant satisfaction. That’s due to the fact that it provides a unique way of interaction between participants and organizers, promoting optimal event networking. Disseminating the right message, information and contacting the event speaker via app can also be a good strategy to achieve this goal.
Applying NPS in events with other customer experience methodologies.
If the company wishes to apply NPS with other methods of measurement, there is also another scale proposed by researchers in the field of marketing and sales.
According to Christopher Lovelock and Jochen Wirtz, authors of the book “Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy“, some selected criteria are important to understand what customers seek in a brand. From their feedback, you can create questions for your satisfaction form. Thus, it is possible to measure even more precisely the degree of customer satisfaction and whether your company is able to meet their needs. A NPS survey should ask:
- Credibility – degree of honesty of the service provider
- Safety – product free of greater risks and doubts
- Access – Ease of contact with brand representatives
- Communication – communicate what the customer wants, in a language that is clear
- Understand the customer – strive to understand the customer’s needs
- Reliability – ability to perform service with quality and safety
- Responsiveness – Willingness to help customers and answer their questions, providing immediate service on the product
- Competence – the knowledge to perform the service
- Courtesy – education, respect and sympathy of the sales team
You can measure that before organizing an event. Therefore, you’ll understand how the market behaves towards your brand, based on your customer feedback. Depending on the response, your event will be a great opportunity to generate more brand confidence and visibility. This is crucial to measuring the ROI of the event and applying specific solutions to your branding strategy.
Pay attention to every detractor
A detractor is not only not among your happy customers. The primary reason to detect them is that a detractor is the one who detracts, defames, disqualifies and devalues through word of mouth. The detractor is the customer who scores between 0 and 6 in the Net Promoter Score survey because he is dissatisfied.
These people are unhappy customers who speak bad things of your company on social media, to friends and family. The detractor client goes to great lengths to punish the company for a negative experience. But make no mistake: a detractor is not a lost customer. Despite the resistance, the detractor is open to conversation and negotiation.
They usually communicate via email and social networks as a last resort. This behavior and consequent actions indicate that the consumer wants to get the attention of the brand first, being willing to give it a second chance to fix their issues. The best way is to get in touch immediately, as it is not certain that they will give a third or fourth chances.
Examples of feedback survey questions to use
Businesses of all sizes host hundreds or even thousands of events each year: from small meetings to incentive trips and large sales conventions. In many situations, each process is handled by the company, with its own budget, branding and planning. In the organization of an event, it is a common benchmark that decisions regarding investments and, consequently, the adoption of new technologies, pass through the filter of one or more managers or employees who may be representing different areas.
To start a conversation during the event with your guests and put everyone in the same page, you can consider the following options:
- Ask a question (not related to the sale, that would not be the right question at this moment).
- Say something about the weather (of course it will depend on the context).
- Ask if they are enjoying the event.
- Ask if they need a hand to find something. (for instance: what theme are they interested the most or which category of sessions they’re looking forward the most).
- Ask about their work.
- Comment on the venue, the place you’re hosting your occasion.
- Compliment them on their clothing.
- Ask for help.
- Ask about their plans.
An event app is currently the best choice to make any NPS question or ask for reviews. Cookies in these apps enhance events value with an outstanding number of benefits. For example, they gather and store audiences data. Besides, as consumers behaviors, minds and ideas are constantly changing, these cookies can also keep this data updated, in real-time. Finally, these cookies also provide you with answers that are not declared, which means they did not go through any conscience filter. What marketing department or senior management wouldn’t want to know their consumer at this level?
However, our goal here is focusing here is a survey that is based on both quantitative and qualitative feedback and self-aware wording, as the main objective is to know if the guests are happy with their user experience in the event. We want to listen to their suggestions and what is missing for them to finally purchase from you. We explain how to go through this work, on a step by step presentation, in the blog post: https://blog.inevent.com/en/event-technology/event-feedback-10-ways-to-skyrocket-attendee-survey-response-rate.html .
And finally, after sessions and workshops you want to evaluate, good categories and examples of questions to be done include (preferably, one NPS question on each page of the feedback survey form):
- What score would you give us?
- How do you relate to the learning paths?
- How you relate to the speakers?
- How easy was the navigation through all event areas?
- Was there something you didn’t like?
- Did we meet your expectations?
- How efficient was your accreditation and check-in?
- What was the best thing of the event?
- Are you willing to come over to our next editions?
- Would you recommend it to your friends? (the ultimate question! A referral from family or friends is the most valuable advertising weapon)
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