Understanding Net Promoter Score (NPS): The What, the How & the Why

Understanding how our customers feel about the service that's been delivered to them is incredibly important. Not only for our clients’ benefit, but for our - and your - continued growth and success. It’s why we initiate a post-service survey on nearly every job, with the aim of understanding how we, and you, perform.

Similarly, it's important to us that we capture and understand the feedback you have for Agero - how we work with you, what you think about our processes, our technology and more. Which is why we send you our provider survey every quarter.

However, one big question is: do you really feel comfortable with the concept of Net Promoter Score (NPS), the standard we use to capture feedback ratings?

Read on as we walk you through what NPS is, how it's calculated, what we consider a good score and why we choose to use NPS feedback to drive change.

WHAT IS NPS?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is an industry-standard question and scoring system used by businesses all over the world to measure customer loyalty by analyzing customers’ willingness to recommend a business, product, or service. In our case, we’re leveraging NPS to understand customer and provider loyalty.

Screenshot 2024-06-04 at 11.14.57 AM

To ensure accuracy and consistency industry-wide, NPS surveys are always only one question, written the exact same way: “How likely is it that you would recommend [Organization X/Product Y/Service Z] to a friend or colleague?” Respondents then provide a score between 0 and 10.

💡 Note: In the quarterly surveys we send to our providers, we often receive variations of the same comment, “Why would I recommend you to a competitor who could take my volume?” It’s important to know that we aren’t expecting you to actually recommend us to the company with whom you compete. The question is only theoretical and your response does not affect your volume. 

Why is NPS universally done this way? 

Using the same wording in every survey means every business using NPS is measured in the same way. This provides a true and reliable benchmark to compare businesses within and across industries. Changing the question in any way would mean the data can no longer be considered a genuine Net Promoter Score and can’t be compared accurately to other NPS results.

Businesses all across the country use NPS to track everything from comparing their company to others in their industry, to understanding how target markets and customers are responding to products, services and employees. With the ultimate goal of retaining loyal customers, each time NPS is pulled, businesses have an opportunity to measure against historical performance and utilize comments to continue improvement.

HOW IS NPS CALCULATED?

NPS survey participants are asked to provide a score between 0 and 10 (0 being not likely at all and 10 being extremely likely to recommend), with opportunity to provide commentary explaining their score.

A high score (Promoter) generally means respondents are happy, will share word of mouth recommendations and repeat their business. A low score (Detractor) indicates dissatisfaction that may result in customer turnover. Scores that fall in the middle (Passive or Neutral) represent customers that are satisfied with what you're offering, but that aren't necessarily loyal to you; it's possible to lose those consumers to competition. For you and Agero, feedback collected via NPS can help your and our teams better understand concerns and establish what must be addressed and worked on.

Once the survey is complete, each response is sorted into one of the three sentiment categories mentioned above. Once calculated, an NPS can range anywhere between -100 and 100.

NPS Blog Images (9)

💡 Note: It's vital to understand that listening to what customers have to say (the good, the bad, and the neutral) is the best way to ensure repeat customers and drive your business to succeed.

Let's walk through an example NPS calculation

Let's say you receive 12 total responses: 1 Detractor, 1 Passive & 10 Promoters

NPS Blog Images (7)

WHAT DOES AGERO CONSIDER A GOOD NPS SCORE?

Negative 100 to positive 100 is quite a large range, so what is a good NPS score? When it comes to Agero, as outlined on page 18 of our Service Provider Handbook, you are expected to earn an NPS of at least 80. We consider tow providers that achieve an 85+ as outstanding, while we consider a score of 95+ to be outstanding for road-only providers.

As a reminder, the NPS that your business receives from these customer surveys is a key metric used in our provider selection process. This means your ability to meet (and exceed) our score recommendations, combined with other criteria, has a direct impact on your dispatch volume. It's important to both us and our clients that customers are pleased with the service they receive and NPS is a direct reflection of that experience. 

💡 Note: In situations when you are not the first and only provider called to the scene, customer survey responses will not count against your volume. These customers still receive an NPS survey, and we will show you these responses, but the scores won't factor into our volume selection logic.

CAPITALIZING ON YOUR CUSTOMER NPS FEEDBACK 

When investigating your performance, it is easy to focus attention on the Promoter and Detractor comments while overlooking key feedback from Passive respondents. The key to improvement is in considering ALL areas of opportunity. Every score has value. Let’s revisit our above example and change one Passive into a Promoter to see how much the score is affected.

Now you receive 12 total responses: 1 Detractor, 0 Passives, & 11 Promoters

NPS Blog Images (8)

That is a 8 point difference in overall NPS by only changing one Passive in our example data. That is a major improvement and could mean all the difference when it comes to volume distribution.

By understanding NPS you are best prepared to improve your business through positive customer experiences and cultivate brand loyalty through trust and credibility for your services offered.

WHY AGERO USES NPS TO DRIVE IMPROVEMENT 

Becoming the easiest motor club to work with is our goal and the opinions and comments we collect from NPS responses are incredibly important in helping us plan the right path forward in meeting this goal.

We run our Agero NPS survey quarterly; once every 3 months we ask you to rate us according to how you feel about working with us in that moment in time. Having these frequent touch points helps us to continuously pulse and prioritize what areas to work on. Your honesty helps drive our improvements and changes while also helping us to understand when we are on the right path with recent adjustments and implementations.

It is why we strongly encourage your participation in these quarterly opportunities. WE ARE LISTENING. Our team analyzes every response collected and we use that feedback to empower business decisions and add any critical updates to our road maps and timelines (such as reactivating our live job hotline, updated training for contact center and PAG agents, Swoop platform improvements, etc.).

We value what our network has to say about their experience with us. After all, we cannot fix what we don't know is broken. Help us to better help and support you by participating the next time you see our NPS survey in your email inbox and encouraging customers to do the same when you service them.

💡 Note: Replying to our NPS survey does not affect your volume or account in any way. The feedback shared in your commentary is used to drive improvements to our platform and processes. If we notice something is bothering you that we can fix - we want to help!

 

 

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Sources: 

Agero Service Provider Handbook, Page 18 Referenced 

https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/customer/net-promoter-score/

https://www.netpromoter.com/know/

 
 

Meet the Author: Talia Matrumalo - Engagement Marketing Specialist, Network

Talia Matrumalo is a seasoned Marketing Specialist working in support of service provider affinity and engagement at Agero. It is Talia's responsibility to ensure providers are well educated on changes made to Agero's technology and processes via emails, videos, tow show events, marketing materials and more. Talia also oversees management of our vehicle training library, Blueprint. When not working, her free time is mostly spent with her two Chihuahuas Louie and Nacho, reading, creating some little piece of art, or out enjoying nature on her chopper.
 
 

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