Top 10 Ideas To Work More Closely With Your Promoters

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January 2019

Now, unless you’re new to the world of NPS, you’ll probably understand that surveying your customers to collect NPS data is only one piece of the puzzle. The feedback you receive helps you understand what drives engagement for your customer base but also gives you a great opportunity to engage with, and delight, your customers who responded to your NPS survey.

What should you say to these customers? Well, that’s heavily dependent on how they feel about your company, and whether they fall in the Detractor, Passive, or Promoter camp. 

If you’re dealing with a customer who’s a Detractor, it’s important to quickly address their problems and if you cannot fix it now, then explain how and when you can resolve the issue. This type of service recovery is key to understanding where you fell short, and making it up to your customer. 

If you’re addressing your Promoters, on the other hand, you’ll want to take the opportunity to work more closely with them, so that you can increase their Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), and get them to help market your brand to your other customers as well.

In this article, we share 10 ways to work closely with your Promoters, and maximize the value of their feedback. Read on to find out more!

#1: Get customer opinions on new products and features

Launching a new product line or a new product feature, or thinking of changing your business model? Don’t just plunge in without doing your due diligence; instead, speak to your Promoters and ask them for their feedback.

At the end of the day, the goal is to put yourself in your customers’ shoes, and there’s no better way to do that than to ACTUALLY speak to your customers. 

So tell your Promoters you’d love to get your input on an upcoming product or feature, invite them for coffee, and start pitching to them. You don’t want your Promoters to go easy on you -- ask them to play Devil’s Advocate so that you can have a clear view of all the challenges/obstacles that you’ll face down the road! 

#2: Get customers to help you refine your products

Bearing in mind that we live in a digital era, your website can make or break your entire business.

Think about it: if your website is poorly designed, hard to navigate, and doesn’t communicate what your business is doing in a clear, effective manner, then you’re probably losing out on a ton of potential leads, sales, and customers.

To make sure this isn’t the case, create Five Second Tests that measure people’s recall and first impressions, and get your Promoters to take the tests. Once you have enough data, sit down and analyze the numbers, then work on optimizing your website.

PS: Doing these tests with your Promoters is much more effective than simply surveying your internal team, and asking them what they think. Your team might be too invested to provide an objective opinion, so it’s worth getting perspectives from your Promoters (or other external stakeholders) here.

#3: Get customer feedback to refine touchpoints

Website aside, it’s important to make sure that your other touchpoints are also well-optimized, and deliver a great experience for your customers.

Many of SightMill’s customers add a web-based survey to new sections of a website – for example, within a new e-commerce checkout process – to help understand feedback that bring to life usage stats from analytics software.

For instance, say you get plenty of enquiries on your Facebook page, and you’re trying to figure out how to structure and improve on the page such that it provides your customers with a better experience.

Again, you’d talk to your Promoters to get their feedback. Some questions you might ask them include:

  • How quickly do you expect to get a reply if you message a company on Facebook?
  • Are you okay with communicating with a Facebook Messenger chatbot, or do you prefer to speak to an actual human being?
  • What do you think of a company using multiple Calls To Action on their Facebook page? Does it make the next steps clearer, or is it too salesy and aggressive?

Once you’ve optimized each touchpoint, move on to making sure that your customers get a cohesive, consistent experience across all your touchpoints, and that they don’t have to repeat themselves when they visit a new touchpoint. 

#4: Ask customers what they want to learn about to improve your content strategy

These days, pretty much every company has a blog that they update frequently. That said, many businesses still fall short when it comes to interesting, compelling content that resonates with their customers.

How do you ensure that the content you’re putting out is relevant to your target audience? Simple - ask your Promoters! 

There are several ways you can go about this. If you already have a couple of blog post ideas, for instance, you can run those topics through your customers and ask them for feedback. Alternatively, if you’re starting from scratch, simply interview your Promoters about what content they’d be interested in reading about, and take it from there.

#5: Ask your customers to nominate or vote for you

Working on getting more PR for your brand or company? One way of mobilizing your Promoters is by asking them to nominate you for an award, or vote for you to win an award you’ve already been nominated for.

For instance, say you own your own brand of wireless earphones, and you’re hoping that your products will win an award from a reputable tech publication that does an annual review of the best consumer tech products. Go ahead and ask your Promoters to nominate and vote for you!

#6: Ask customers to review your product


Bearing this in mind, it makes sense to get your Promoters to leave you reviews and testimonials. Don’t just draw the line at those standard, boring text-based testimonials, though. For eCommerce store owners, get your Promoters to create unboxing videos for you; if you’re in the B2B industry, try asking your Promoters if they’d be open to being featured in a video testimonial where they endorse your company.

SightMill includes a couple of features that make this action really easy: after a promoter leaves feedback, you can ask them to review you on TrustPilot or LinkedIn, or your Facebook page.

#7: Encourage customers to join your loyalty program

Here’s the thing: recruiting new customers costs five times as much as retaining current customers. Since you’ve got a bunch of highly engaged customers (ie: your Promoters!), why not encourage them to join your loyalty program, and stick with you for the long run?

Obviously, you’d want to offer members of your loyalty program special discounts, but that aside, do also invite them to exclusive launches, sales, and other events. You’re not just prolonging your customers’ lifespan; you’re building a community! 

#8: Cross-sell or up-sell customers new features

Running in the same vein, you can also cross-sell or up-sell your Promoters, and increase your revenue generated from there. For instance, if you’re running an SaaS business, you might reach out to your Promoters, and encourage them to upgrade to the Premium tier of your plan. 

You already know that they get a ton of value out of your tool (so much such that they’d gladly recommend it!), so this makes it much easier for you to convince them to upgrade. 

#9: Encourage customers to refer a friend

Your Promoters have already indicated that they’re likely to recommend your company to a friend, so go ahead and ask them to do just that.

To get the best results, make it easy for them to refer a friend. For example, auto-generate a link or a code that they can just copy and paste to their friend. We also recommend giving them a perk (eg: $10 off or 10% off their next purchase, once their friend has made their first purchase) to sweeten the deal.

#10: Ask customers to be a brand advocate

Want to expose your brand to a wider audience, and reach out to a new pool of customers? One easy way to do this is to ask your Promoters to be brand advocates.

There’s no hard and fast rule as to what this entails, exactly, but most companies will ask their brand advocates to post on social media and recommend their products to their friends and family. In return, brand advocates get first dibs on new products, get exclusive access to parties and other invites, etc. 

Brand advocates are essentially micro-influencers, but we find that they can promote companies more effectively and authentically than actual influencers. (After all, they know your product/service inside-out, and they’re really a fan -- they’re not just promoting it because they’re being paid!)


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SightMill is an NPS survey software that helps businesses gather, analyse and act on customer feedback. Create a free trial with SightMill now!





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