Social Proof and Consistency: Why NPS Needs to Be Measured More than Once

NPS Is The Tool for Measuring Customer Loyalty 

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a number between -100 and 100 that lets you know how likely your customers would recommend your product or service. 

It is no coincidence that you can find NPS surveys almost everywhere: on product pages, in newsletters, on websites… The list goes on.

With NPS, you can track your customer loyalty, engagement, and retention, and recognize trends in overall customer satisfaction.

How to Calculate NPS?

Calculating NPS is simple.

Ask your customers “how likely are you to recommend our product or service to a friend or colleague?”

The answer is given on a scale from 0 to 10. Based on the answer, you customers can be divided into three groups: Promoters, NPS Passives, and Detractors.

You can calculate your final NPS by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters.

The more Promoters and the less Detractors you have, the better.

NPS in itself is an effective evidence of social proof, but NPS surveys can be used to generate even more social proof content. Promoters are people who would be ready to recommend you – so why not let them do that? 

An NPS survey connected to a review or testimonial request can be a good way to leverage your existing customers’ positive experiences.

Try it yourself:

When to Measure NPS?

“Why should I measure NPS more than once?”, you might ask.

Well, let me tell you!

Regular NPS surveys can help you figure out how each stage of the customer journey is experienced by the clients. 

If you notice sudden changes in NPS, you can figure out why that is and how you could fix it.

Some examples of events when you could ask for a rating:

• Someone visits your website
• Visitor reads your blog
• Prospect has a meeting with you
• You have closed a deal with a new customer
• Your customer has made a purchase
• After the customer has been with you for a while
• For all your customers at certain times of the year, regardless of current status or events

Trustmary allows you to set automated messages to your customers when they are in a certain stage of their journey.

With a CRM tool like Piperdrive or Hubspot that is integrated with Trustmary, you can easily follow the progress of opinions of each customer. 

Social Proof and Consistency

Let’s add some science to the mix.

Robert Cialdini wrote his famous book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” in 1984. In the book, he introduced the results of his research observations regarding influence strategies in real-life situations.

Cialdini identified 6 principles of persuasion:

1. Reciprocity
2. Commitment and consistency
3. Social proof
4. Authority
5. Liking
6. Scarcity

These six principles by Robert Cialdini have become one of the most cited words in the field of marketing.

Marketing can use NPS in many ways!

According to Cialdini, the principle of social proof is based on the fact that people often look to others when assessing the correct ways to act and behave in situations.

The principle of consistency means that once people establish a behavior, they make a commitment to it and feel pressured to follow through with the behavior.

Have you ever been in a situation where you have felt the pressure to say something even when that is not your real opinion, or act differently than usual? How about did you feel the need to continue your behavior again in the same company?

Yep, that’s what happens when you face the power of these two principles of persuasion.

Now imagine if your customers get to answer your NPS survey multiple times throughout the customer journey. If they give a good rating once, they will feel like doing the same thing again when the time comes, unless something dramatic happens.

Social Proof Gets You Sales

If you are able to leverage the social proof psychology trick, you can reach better sales and lead generation results.

Social proof can be established by expressing one’s opinion about something. In case of business, asking for reviews and testimonials from customers can be one way to utilize social proof.

A great tool for measuring your overall social proof is the Net Promoter Score, which we discussed earlier.

If you are not convinced about why you should use social proof, take a look at these statistics:

• 40% of consumers rely on recommendations from friends and family when looking for new brands
• Almost 70% of customers read online reviews before the decision to purchase something
• Over 92% of B2B buyers are more likely to make a purchase after reading a trusted review

Feel persuaded yet?

Check out these social proof examples in B2B marketing and get inspired.

Improve the Customer Journey with NPS

Think of the customer journey as a flywheel. In order to get to the next phase, you need to keep the wheel moving.

How to make sure that the wheel is moving? Improve your service at every turn.

How to know what to improve? Ask the people who know it best: your customers and prospects! And do so consistently throughout the whole customer journey.

When you optimize every stage of the customer journey, you can not only keep the flywheel rolling, but also speed it up!

While you get valuable feedback, you can also use the feedback as social proof: make it into reviews and testimonials to showcase online.

Remember when we discussed the principle of consistency? After your customer has already stated that they would recommend you, what stops them from telling why they would do so?

This is easy when you are using Trustmary’s NPS survey tool. Try it out!

Stages of the Customer Journey

There are many ways to model a customer journey. Whether you think of it as a wheel or a funnel, the principle is the same.

A customer goes through the following stages:

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Acquisition
4. Service
5. Loyalty

Awareness	During the awareness phase, the customer is only a stranger that is learning about your product or service. Maybe the stranger has seen your advertisement, maybe your sales people have contacted them, or maybe they had a friend recommend your product to them.
Consideration	If interested, the customer turns into a prospect. The prospect might browse your website and search for experiences about you.  At this point, social proof is one of the most powerful ways to capture this prospective customer. Showcase reviews and testimonials online to capture this prospect.
Acquisition	Once you notice the prospect is qualified, the Sales take over. If the sales process is successful, and you are able to guide them through the acquisition stage, the prospect will become an actual customer and move to the next stage.
Service	Next, you need to provide outstanding service in order to turn your customer into a promoter.
Loyalty	The promoters are loyal customers who are happy with your service and like to say so.  The promoters might be just the people who trigger the next stranger into becoming aware of your product or service.

So the circle is closed… ideally.

How to Close the Circle with NPS and Social Proof

Let’s recap: new prospects are lured into your sales process by social proof and other measures.

The existing loyal customers generate social proof for your new potential prospects to see.

But often the experience is not that smooth. Businesses do not know how their prospects and customers are feeling about their journey, and new customers cannot find recommendations from existing ones to support their decision-making process.

This flaw might well stem from thinking about the customer journey as a funnel rather than a circle or wheel.

Trustmary helps you solve this problem and make your flywheel roll smooth and fast.

By utilizing easy NPS surveys and other tools that Trustmary software offers, you can start collecting feedback and social proof, and automatically featuring them in your website.

You will no more have to worry about missing out on the influence that your loyal customers have in the customer journey of future clients, and you will no more have to wonder how your customers are doing.

Project-based Customer Relationships and NPS

If your business is working project by project, here’s one simple example of how to close the loop by using NPS:

Triggering Event	Timeline	NPS given	Next Step
Delivery of product/service	Right away	9-10	Thank for feedback, contact within two weeks and make a testimonial request
		7-8	Contact to figure out what you can do better
		1-6	Contact right away and fix the issue

Pro tip! Once some time has passed since the product or service was delivered, make sure the customers are happy with what they got.

Triggering Event	Timeline	NPS given	Next step
Delivery of product/service	1-2 months	9-10	Thank for feedback,Ask immediately for testimonials (video, written) or make a case study
		7-8	Contact to figure out what you could still improve to make them 9-10
		1-6	Contact immediately to handle any type of misunderstandings and to help them get the most out of your product or service.

Benefits of Tracking NPS on Project-Based Deals

By tracking your customer satisfaction, you’ll gain invaluable insight on why someone bought from you in the first place and what makes them buy again or stops them from repurchasing.

In addition, you’ll be able to further improve your products and services to prevent the same issues from coming up further down the line.

How to Use NPS to Track On-Going Collaborations

You can still adapt the above-mentioned trigger events in asking NPS while doing on-going collaboration with your clients, or you can make it a more regular occurrence.

You could send NPS surveys to all your clients at the same time, let’s say three or four times a year. This way you get a good overview of how your business is doing.

You can also track the individual client’s answers along the way, depending on what kind of business you are doing, what needs you have and whether there are some critical points in your customer’s journey with you.

For example, you could send three NPS surveys after you get a new customer:

1. → After 3 months

2. → After 6 months

3. → After 12 months

With Trustmary, you can create automations that send the surveys at chosen points in time.

Create a Social Proof Strategy

Social proof and consistency are some of the most important persuasion principles. One great way to leverage them is measuring NPS.

You should start measuring NPS regularly, because:

1. You know who your loyal customers are and who are about to leave you.

2. You get feedback and tools to improve your performance.

3. You can turn positive feedback into reviews and testimonials, which lure in new customers.

4. All these things help you grow your business.

The best thing is that you can use Trustmary to automate the whole process. You don’t have to sacrifice your limited resources for collecting feedback any more.

Further Reading

Trustmary Blogs

• The Definitive Guide for Understanding the Power of Social Proof
• NPS – A comprehensive guide to understanding Net Promoter Score
• How to improve Net Promoter Score? 7 Ways to Improve your NPS

Other Resources

• The One Number You Need to Grow by Frederick F. Reichheld

FAQ