What is NPS?
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a benchmarking tool for customer (or, in your case, patient) satisfaction, which gives insights about customer loyalty by measuring their willingness to recommend your business to friend, family member, colleague, or acquaintance.
NPS differs from other satisfaction metrics in that it indicates a customer's general sentiment about a brand, as opposed to their opinion on specific interactions or purchases. NPS is used by companies worldwide, making it a great way to gauge performance against other brands in your industry.
With FollowApp you collect NPS automatically from your patients. After their appointment, patients receive a form which includes the following question:
Using the scores collected from your patients, we can determine the NPS score. First, patient responses are split into 3 categories:
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Promoters: patients who respond with a score of 9 or 10. These patients are deemed more likely to exhibit behaviours that generate value to your business, such as returning more often and over a longer period of time, as well as referring more people.
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Passives: patients who respond with a score of 7 or 8. They are considered moderately satisfied, may remain loyal to the brand, but ultimately have the potential to change businesses if the conditions are right.
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Detractors: patients who respond with a score of 0 to 6. They are usually considered as actively dissatisfied customers, with the potential to damage your brand reputation though negative reviews, social media interactions, or word-of-mouth.
Then, to calculate the NPS score, we simply deduct the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters:
NPS scores can range from -100 to 100. Although the average NPS varies across different industries, a general rule of thumb is that a score above 30 is good, and anything above 70 is great (resulting in lots of positive word-of-mouth referrals).
Why is NPS important?
As previously mentioned, NPS helps businesses to measure customer loyalty - in other words, how likely they are to return, refer their friends and family, and resist pressure to switch to a competitor.
Even more important than any 1-month score is the trend of NPS over time. Using this methodology, and by referring to the Analytics Dashboard in FollowApp, you'll be able to track your NPS score over time, as well dive in to the patient responses to see why patients are promoters or detractors of your business.
In having this consistent feedback loop between your business and your patients, you're able to identify areas of concern from patients, and have a chance to change their negative impression. It also helps you channel customer service in the efforts to improve patient satisfaction, which can result in an increase of loyal patients, who are in turn far more likely to refer others to your practice (The American Dental Association suggests that between 70-80% of new patients come from patient-to patient referrals, whether by word-of-mouth or online).
Please visit our Best Practices section to understand how to best manage patient feedback and how to turn detractors into promoters.