BigSpeak celebrates another year of partnership with industry thought leaders and executives, we also celebrate our commitment to customer service as reflected in our NPS.

If you’re not involved in analytics or customer experience in your role at your organization, that acronym might mean nothing to you. But the NPS reflect businesses as a whole, and every department in a company contributes to their NPS in ways big and small.

To start off with: what is an NPS?

Net Promoter Score is a metric measuring customer satisfaction with a service or product, ranking numerical  scores on a scale from -100 (catastrophic) to 100 (an unheard of high). BigSpeak Speakers Bureau is proud that we maintain a lifetime NPS score of 79-80, representing over two decades of customer satisfaction, and a year-to-date NPS of 88 that truly reflects the amount of care we put into each interaction with our customers.

As a point of reference,the perfect 100 score is almost completely impossible to reach, so top-ranked brands sit anywhere in the range between 50 to 100. A score at this level means your organization has gone beyond mere customer satisfaction, but into happiness, repeat business, and even recommendations to peers.

As numbers vary wildly even among well-thought-of brands, It’s more helpful to compare median net producer scores across industries if you’re really looking to figure out what your NPS means when it comes to your company’s offerings. A car manufacturer shouldn’t be comparing their results to those of a big-box store and scratching their head over wildly different numbers. For reference, for  professional services, the median NPS falls around 44, which is quite far below BigSpeak’s NPS range. As a result, we know we’re doing something right.

Why does this really matter?

Well, everyone loves to see a high score and pat themselves on the back over earning it. But it’s also true that the end goal of NPS surveying and measuring isn’t simply to reach the highest number you can. The NPS is a metric, not a reward in of itself, serving an end goal of better customer relationships and an increase in repeat business with satisfied consumers.

For us, the NPS is an entire process that lets us dial down on the experience we provide. It helps us stay attuned to those customers who rate us highly so we can nurture our relationships with them , and also analyze our detractors and understand what we can do to give them a better experience should they choose to work with us again.

To ascertain our score, BigSpeak uses a direct to client survey to check in with our partners after each event, asking clients about their experience with both our in-house staff and our roster of speakers. This survey enables us to look at wider trends, as well as identify pain points at each step of the process. Our survey also lets us look at which customers chose to give us their feedback, and ensure we are getting truly representative responses across the many industries we partner with.

This model also allows us to give feedback to specific members of the team, which, of course, often includes effusive praise for our fantastic sales advisors and events staff, who frequently receive shoutouts from clients for their top-of-the-line service.

We truly take the results of this survey to heart, sharing them in our weekly sales meetings and at our monthly All-Hands. When a client has a complaint or suggestion, the relevant department and staff members do some digging at their end and reach back out to see if our partners have further suggestions. It’s an invaluable tool that shouldn’t be ignored, opening the door to difficult but necessary conversations and enabling leaders to give credit where credit is due.

We strongly encourage anyone who is not currently surveying their customers and sharing the results across all departments to do so. The survey we use is quick and simple, taking two or three minutes to complete on average. We enjoy a completion rate of 96%, mostly due to offering a small gift-card as an incentive. This small expense is well worth the data and more personal commentary that can be gleaned from such a survey.

Does your company measure their NPS, or are you interested in starting? Need a customer service speaker to give your culture an update and ensure client satisfaction and retention? Reach out to us at info@bigspeak.com and one of our advisors will work on connecting you with an excellent speaker.

For tips on retaining customers, be sure to also check out BigSpeak EVP Ken’ Sterling’s recent article for Inc.