Oh good, so yes, as we said, staying on top of our customer satisfaction is something we all need to do. But no-one is interested in lengthy time-consuming surveys or unwieldy telephone calls. I don't know about you, but several times I have been sent a quick Survey Monkey type questionnaire and given up after a few questions because they simply demand more input than I initially thought or they simply take too much of my time.

Yes, exactly that, so one thing I have to advocate is the use of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) which is a quick and effective way to keep track of your overall success.

 Sound interesting -  tell us more about that then?

 Yes, so the brilliant thing about the NPS system is that it involves one simple question, or two if you follow my example and it can be anonymous too which means you really aren't taking much of your customers time. Then at the same time, you can start to build some testimonials which you can then use in your marketing.

 We've said before about how testimonials are really important, especially when starting out as you're trying to establish your all-important credibility factor. Then if you're using online reviews on platforms such as TripAdvisor, Google Reviews, Booking.com, AirB&B, Facebook, and Checkatrade, for example, it's doubly important as this can affect your rankings too on these platforms. And businesses with higher star rankings are seeing increases in revenue as well as improved trust and loyalty with their customer base.

That's exactly right. So, diving straight into the net promoter score. what it does simply is it immediately categorises all customers into one of the three groups—promoters, passives, and detractors—allowing you to see right away whether a customer experience was a success or a failure—and why.

How does it do that?

 Well, you either do this by phone but it's easier to add a hyperlink to your final invoice where you direct people to a landing page on your website that captures the information through a form or using a tool such as Survey Monkey or I use Wufoo forms as then it notifies me when I get a response. There you ask one simple question, so write this down listeners — How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague? —Customers then respond on a 0-to-10 point rating scale and are categorised as follows:

Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others, fuelling growth.

Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offerings

Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth.

To calculate your company's NPS, take the percentage of customers who are Promoters and subtract the percentage who are Detractors. And that gives you a baseline score that you can seek to improve upon over time if needs be.

So I suppose if you get anything above 7 you're doing okay and then if you also get a load of detractors, you need to do more to put things right so to speak? You could decide to go back to them at this stage and see if you can remedy any problems they may be having?

Yes, for sure, especially if people have been given the option to add their email address

You mentioned a couple of other questions that you add to this?

So, I believe ideally you want to dig a little more deeply from this question and this is done by simply adding the next question. So listeners, write this down cos it's a biggie. Your first question is "How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague?" Then the next question is "Why?"  - this insight enables you to quickly identify issues that create detractors—and the actions you need to take to address them.

Oh, I like it, two questions and you're done. I can see that Net Promoter surveys are not traditional customer satisfaction su...