It's always better to know the truth than to put your head in the sand.
That's why it's important to get a regular measure of your customer satisfaction.
The best way to do this from my experience is to use the Net Promoter Survey method.
What I like about the Net Promoter survey is that it allows you to benchmark your performance against previous performances.
How does it work?
The net promoter survey asks members on a scale of 1-10 "how likely you would recommend "your gym" to your friends and family?
The reason for asking this is that we would only recommend things to friends or family that we think are good.
It someone scores a 9 or 10 we call them a promoter. In other words, they actively promote your business through word of mouth. They are a raving fan!
Someone that scores a 7 or 8 is considered neutral. They are not a raving fan, but they are satisfied with your service.
A person that scores 6 or below is considered a detractor. In other words, they have some level of dissatisfaction.
The beauty of the NPS survey is that you are left with an end result.
Your detractors are subtracted from your promotors, leaving you with a score. This score could be negative if you have more detractors than promoters.
For example, if you had 123 promotors, 69 neutrals and 98 promotors, your net promoter score would be 8.7%.
(Promoters make up 42.4% of responses and detractors make up 33.7%, 42.4-33.7= 8.7%)
A score above 0 is considered solid, whilst a score above 50% is considered excellent.
Here are some NPS scores from well-known companies
- Apple - 70%
- Amazon - 69%
- American Express - 41%
The second step in the net promotor survey is to follow up with all of your detractors by asking them.
What would we need to do differently in order to get a 9-10 from you in the future?
This allows you to identify areas of improvement that you can proactively act upon.
The NPS is powerful because it drives a culture of ongoing improvement and allows you to measure when you improve.
Sometimes companies can put their head in the sand and not survey their customers because they don't want to face the truth. I have been in that boat, I hate getting negative feedback from customers, so in the past avoided doing things like the NPS out of the fear of getting some negative feedback. You are better off hearing the truth than ignoring it.
I recommend conducting an NPS survey with your members every 6 months as this will help you to monitor your customer satisfaction as well as generate ideas for ongoing improvements.
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