According to a 2016 Nielsen study, the vast-majority (more than 80%) of Americans seek recommendations when making a purchase of any kind. What our friends, colleagues and neighbors think truly matters, even when it comes to business decisions.

One standard industry rating, known as the Net Promoter Score® or NPS®, offers an easy way to gauge how your customers truly feel about you. It boils down to one simple question: Would you recommend this product or service to a friend? Listrak recently surveyed clients to see how satisfied they are with Listrak solutions and services and the results were quite revealing.

The results showed that Listrak’s Net Promoter Score came back as an 80 -what NPS considers “world-class.”

To give you some background, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) ranks a customer’s willingness to recommend a product or service to others on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being extremely likely to recommend and 0 being not likely at all to recommend. Respondents are then divided into three categories: Promoters (9 or 10); Passive (7 or 8); and Detractors (6 and below).

According to product and NPS specialists, Net Promoter Score is recognized as a key performance indicator. Any score above 50 is excellent, while anything above 70 is deemed “world class.”

As Customer Marketing Manager with Listrak, my main focus is and always will be customer awareness and satisfaction. How do our customers feel about us? Are they content? Do they know enough about our products? So, when Listrak decided to use this ever-telling question in a recent survey focused on satisfaction, I was ecstatic when more than 31% of our active clients responded. This, compared to the average 10-15% response rate for external surveys according to SurveyGizmo.com.

The satisfaction survey also included an open-ended question asking customers what one thing Listrak could do to improve its Client Services team, followed by sentiment questions asking respondents to rate their Account Manager from 1-10 on qualities that included their responsiveness, product knowledge, knowledge of client business, and overall satisfaction. The average rating for Client Services personnel yielded a 9.4.

“One of our core values at Listrak is Customers come first in everything we do.” says Carly Povilaitis, VP of Client Services. “It’s a commitment that we live by as an organization and is at the foundation of who we are and what we do. Our Client Services team is dedicated to providing top quality service and support to all of our customers. The results from this survey illustrate we are delivering on this promise.”
So, what is to be done with this information? For me, it’s going to be to take a step back, take a deep breath and say, “thank you” to our valuable clients. And, also to take a look at those who didn’t rate us as highly, because they did so for a reason (so I’ve learned) and there’s much room for improvement to be had. A recommendation, to me, is the utmost achievement and in order to continue to receive them you’ve got to always strive to satisfy your clients in new and innovative ways. And most importantly, listen closely to what they’ve got to say.