Why Your E-Commerce Brand Should Care About Its Net Promoter Score

May 6, 2022
by Merikay Noah

Inboxes Everywhere Overflow With E-Commerce Tool Possibilities

Is your email inbox inundated with companies trying to sell you the latest whiz-bang digital marketing tool, app, or program? Do they say it will solve all of your problems while making your e-commerce company turn into pure gold? We get those emails too.

The sheer quantity of those gets so overwhelming that it’s tempting to consign them directly to your spam folder. Otherwise, you’d spend all day doing nothing but sorting through them. You’d never get anything else done.

A beneficial tool can get lost in that pile of discarded emails every once in a while. Then a real opportunity is lost. Still, it’s almost impossible to know which messages matter because there are so many.

We aren’t trying to sell you a whiz-bang digital marketing tool.

We do want to ensure you’re aware of a type of tool that we know will help grow your e-commerce brand – one that’s on-point for what’s essential in 2022.

What are we talking about exactly? Your Net Promoter Score.

What Is a Net Promoter Score?

Net PromoterPromotor Scores measure customer satisfaction and loyalty, two of the most important metrics for your e-commerce brand.

Those metrics give insight into what percentage of your customers will come back for more.

But Net Promoter Scores go even farther than that.

They look at what percentage of your customers are most likely to become advocates for your e-commerce brand. And that is information every e-commerce company needs.

If you could identify which customers will recommend your e-commerce brand to their family and friends, how would that help you scale and grow your brand?

How Valuable Are Peer Recommendations to E-Commerce Brands in 2022?

The gold standard for growing e-commerce brands today is peer recommendations.

Why this trend has grown to such an extent is complicated. It’s not a new phenomenon but its growth is.

It existed long before the internet was born. Before then, customers told friends and family about how merchants treated them over the back fence or on the phone. But the impact was geographically limited.

When e-commerce shopping was born, peer feedback and recommendations grew rapidly like everything else about the internet. That meant customers instantly reached far more friends and family than ever before, with no limits.

Why Your E-Commerce Brand Should Care About Its Net Promoter Score

The bottom line is that people have always believed their friends and family are more likely to tell them the truth. Knowing someone they trust who has had an excellent experience gives them the faith they need to make a buying decision they won’t regret.

Knowing peer recommendations represent an overwhelming trend, you need to determine which customers are most likely to tell others about their experience with your e-commerce brand.

That’s what Net Promoter Scores do best.

According to Fortune,

At least two-thirds of the Fortune 1000 use the Net Promoter Score, including most or all of the financial service companies, airlines, telecom companies, retailers, and others…you have..been touched by it—guaranteed. That’s because you have received an email or a phone call asking the one simple question at the foundation of the NPS empire: ‘On a scale of zero to 10, how likely is it that you would recommend [Company Name] to a friend or colleague?’ You were probably asked a second question also: ‘Why did you give the answer you gave?’

Because the two questions asked are simple, fast, and easy to answer, most people are far more likely to respond than with traditional surveys.

A direct correlation exists between improving an e-commerce company’s Net Promoter Score and an increase in that company’s income.

Should You Pay To Use a Tool or Try To DIY Your Net Promoter Score?

You don’t absolutely have to use a tool. You can try to DIY it with an Excel spreadsheet.

Doing it the DIY way is far more time-consuming and cumbersome, but it’s possible if you can’t justify a tool’s expense.

Here’s how:
  1. When you get your survey responses, enter them into Excel.
  2. Then sort the answers into three categories:

              A. Detractor Customers (score from 0 to 6, including negative and neutral answers)

              B. Passive Customers (score from 7 to 8, reasonably positive answers)

              C. Promoter Customers (score from 9-10, your advocates)

4. Use Formulas to get the total for each group of customers.

5. Divide each group total by the number of responses to get the percentage for that group.

6. To get your Net Promoter Score, subtract the Detractor percentage from the Promoter percentage.

While that arithmetic might seem simplistic, the full system is intended to inspire teams to deliver experiences that are not merely satisfactory but remarkable. When customers feel cared for, they come back for more and bring their friends.” – Harvard business Review

How Should I Use My Net Promoter Score Once I’ve Gotten It?

The Harvard Business Review quote above is from an article about how Net Promoter Scores benefit e-commerce brands. It also discusses how some companies mistakenly misuse them in a way that’s neither good for their teams nor their customers. Learn from their pitfalls, so you don’t make the same mistakes.

In short, the benefits or pitfalls lie in how you interpret and implement your Net Promoter Score.

Does This Seem Good But a Bit Overwhelming?

The Bottom Line on Net Promoter Scores is that they’re valuable tools for growing your e-commerce brand if used appropriately.

We know every person reading this has different levels of resources available to them.

  • Some of you will run with this, get a tool to make it easy, and not look back.
  • Some of you will try the DIY method to see where your e-commerce brand stands. Some will do research and use that to implement their score as effectively as possible.
  • Some of you will think, “My team has hit its limit. We can’t take on this, even though it sounds great. Is there another way to add this to what we’re doing?

We hear you. Running an e-commerce company Is hard. Trying to figure out how to scale your business responsibly is even more challenging.

If you want help with Net Promoter Scores or to talk about how to scale and grow your e-commerce brand responsibly, reach out because we’re here for you.

About the author: Merikay Noah has over 20 years’ experience in digital marketing. She worked with e-commerce B2C and B2B websites of all kinds, from Fortune 100s to small start-ups, at two of the top three search engines and at a Los Angeles ad agency. Her successful e-commerce book publishing website, PopcornReads.com, attracted an international audience of bookaholics for over eight years. She now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where she works as a copywriter and loves to hike with her small but fierce doggy protector – Miss Lucy.

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