10 ways to boost wom advocacy scores

Five Ways to Boost Your Word of Mouth Advocacy Scores

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Measuring Word of Mouth Advocacy

Increasing WOM Advocacy Scores There are five ways that companies can increase their WOM Advocacy scores, as shown in the chart:

Thousands of companies are using the Net Promoter Score® to measure how likely customers are to recommend their brands and products. Created by customer loyalty guru Fred Reichheld and management consultants Bain & Company, NPS is based on the results of the “Ultimate Question” for customer loyalty, as shown below:

1

Identify more Advocates

2

Amplify Advocates

3

Turn Passives into Advocates

4

Turn Detractors into Passives

5

Abandon Detractors

“How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?”

Extremely Unlikely

0

1

Somewhat Likely

2

3

4

DETRACTORS

5

6

7

8

WOM Strategy by Segment

Very Likely

9 1

PASSIVES

ORPHANS

ADVOCATES Increase Amplify

DETRACTORS

PASSIVES

0 PROMOTERS

Calculating NPS A simple formula is used to calculate Net Promoter Score:

% Detractors minus % Advocates = NPS

For example, a company whose NPS is 22 may have 52% Promoters1 and 30% Detractors. (The percentage of Passives is not calculated in the formula.)

As interest in Net Promoter and Word of Mouth marketing has grown, marketers and others are asking how they can improve their NPS.

Source : Zuberance

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Identify more Advocates

The first and most obvious action your company can take to boost your Net Promoter Score is to identify more Advocates.

Three actions companies can take to identify more Advocates are: • Reach more customers via surveys that feature the Ultimate Question • Monitor social networks like Twitter, focusing on customers and others who are advocating brands or products • Place recommend badges on your website and other branded venues Of course, identifying more Advocates won’t necessarily boost your NPS if expanded efforts to reach customers also results in finding equal numbers of Detractors. So while the percentage of Promoters may not increase relative to Detractors, the actual number of Advocates may increase.

1 We use the terms “Promoter” and “Detractor” inter-changeably in this white paper.

2

©Copyright Zuberance, Inc. This report may not be reproduced without permission from Zuberance, Inc. Email us at sales@zuberance.com or call us +1.866.967.9746

2

Amplify Advocates

One of the most effective ways a company can increase its WOM Advocacy score is by making it easy for Advocates to share their enthusiasm for a brand or product.

Symantec is a good example of a company that has increased its WOM Advocacy Score by amplifying its Advocates. The company has developed an award-winning program called “Norton Advocates” that encourages highly-satisfied customers to create, share, and publish product reviews and testimonials. Importantly, the company does not pay or provide financial incentives to customers to spread positive WOM. Since starting the program, thousands of customers have created and/or published reviews and testimonials. Net Promoter Scores for Symantec’s Norton line of anti-virus software have doubled over the last year. The company attributes the NPS increase to product improvements and by making it easier for Advocates to share their enthusiasm for Norton products with others.

The Halo Effect

One of the reasons why amplifying Advocates is effective in boosting NPS is what Zuberance calls the “Halo Effect.” Positive WOM builds on itself. The more customers who recommend a brand or product, the more likely customers people are to recommend it. Even people who have never purchased or used the product may recommend it based on positive reputation.

Virgin, the travel and media company, is an example of a company that benefits from the Halo Effect. In an informal poll of travel marketing executives, about 75% of travel marketing executives said they recommended Virgin America even though only about half of the executives polled said they were Virgin America customers.

3

Turn Passives into Advocates

The third way companies can increase NPS is by getting Passives to become Advocates. A business customer who answers the Ultimate Question by answering 8 may actually be very satisfied, given that business products or services do not typically elicit the same kind of passion that consumer products and services do.

Here are some actual comments from business customers of a large telecommunications company who answered 7 or 8 to the Ultimate Question: •

• •

“Your web site is excellent. It’s very user friendly which enriches the customer experience. Congratulations for the thought put in.”

“I am pretty happy in general so you do not need to improve much.”

“Overall good standard of service.”

Here are a few examples of actions companies can take that have been proven to turn Passives into Advocates: • Make modest improvements to products and services • Make slight increases in product benefits • Maintain competitive prices or reduce prices slightly • Making Passives aware of features or benefits they may have been unaware of

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Turn Detractors into Passives

The fourth way companies can boost WOM Advocacy scores is by decreasing the percentage and/or number of customers who are Detractors. While the ultimate goal may be to turn Detractors eventually into Advocates, it may not be realistic to transform highly dissatisfied customers into Advocates in the short term.

Detractors are very unlikely to recommend the companies they do business with and/or the products they’ve purchased. There are several reasons why customers become Detractors: • The company or product did not deliver the expected or promised benefit • An incident occurred that angered the customer. For example, a service outage caused a loss of revenues.

• The company failed to resolve a customer complaint in a reasonable time • The company’s reputation is damaged as a result of negative publicity In order to turn Detractors into Passives, companies must make significant improvements to the product or service. Decreasing Detractors may even require that the company pro-actively communicate that it is making these changes.

Domino’s Tries to Boost NPS Domino’s Pizza is a recent example of a company trying to repair negative Word of Mouth and decrease Detractors.

The company’s reputation and sales suffered recently the after a YouTube video showed an employee engaging in unsanitary behavior.

Domino’s has launched a bold advertising campaign in which it tells customers in a brutally honest tone that its pizza crust tasted like cardboard and the sauce was like ketchup. The ads shows the company’s test kitchen where chefs and company executives tout improvements to its pizzas, presumably partly aimed at get back into the graces of disgruntled Detractors.

©Copyright Zuberance, Inc. This report may not be reproduced without permission from Zuberance, Inc. Email us at sales@zuberance.com or call us +1.866.967.9746

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5

The Final Word on WOM

Abandon Detractors

The last way a company can improve its WOM Advocacy Score is to discontinue doing business with Detractors. While getting rid of customers seems like an unwise practice in a down economy, there are several reasons why a company might decide to abandon Detractors.

The company has recognized that these customers do not fit with the profile of the customers wants or is capable of serving well The company determines that the cost of resolving Detractors’ problems and concerns do not outweigh the benefits The company determines that it cannot resolve the problems that is creating Detractors

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In the final analysis, improving customer experiences is fundamental to boosting Net Promoter Scores. For example, Symantec would not have been able to double its Net Promoter Scores solely by amplifying Advocates. The company made key improvements to its Norton products, which both organically created more Advocates and gave existing Advocates more reasons to recommend the brand.

ŠCopyright Zuberance, Inc. This report may not be reproduced without permission from Zuberance, Inc. Email us at sales@zuberance.com or call us +1.866.967.9746

About Zuberance Zuberance is the leading Social Marketing Platform company and the only one that delivers measurable ROI. The Zuberance Social Marketing Platform energizes Brand Advocates across Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, brand websites, email and more, driving sales and positive Word of Mouth. Forrester named Zuberance the winner of the prestigious 2009 Forrester Groundswell Award in the Energizing B2C category. Zuberance customers include leading B2C and B2B companies across multiple verticals. Zuberance is backed by Emergence Capital Partners, the leading venture capital firm focused on early and growth-stage Technology-Enabled Services companies. Zuberance is a member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

For more information, visit Zuberance at www.zuberance.com call 866.967.9746 email sales@zuberance.com Share This If you enjoyed this report, please share it by using of the links below: Twitter Facebook Digg Delicious