Net Promoter Score Case Study

Does your company retain its customers or repel them? Customer retention is one of the most important aspects of growing your company, yet it’s one that many companies ignore to spend more time focusing on acquiring new customers.

The longer your company can retain its customers, the greater the value of each customer you acquire. The key to retaining customers is extremely simple: deliver value, and provide a great experience that makes customers want to stay with you and recommend you.

By far the most effective way to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty is via Net Promoter Score. We’ve discussed the value of Net Promoter Score in depth here, noting that it’s one of the most important growth metrics most startups and companies never

Because Apple, Amazon and Netflix users are such active promoters, they bring in new customers at no significant marketing cost for their respective brands.

What do Apple, Amazon and Netflix all have in common?

Simplicity and reliability

Apple, Amazon and Netflix all consistently score above their competitors in NPS. One reason for this is the simple reliability of each of their offers. All three companies have spent a great deal of time and marketing effort to highlight their relative simplicity next to their competitors.

Until recently, “it just works” was a phrase you heard very frequently in Apple presentations. The biggest initial selling point of Netflix was its simplicity — a great online entertainment service that saved you time. Amazon has invested a great deal of resources into making its sales, shipping and return processes as simple and reliable as possible.

Because these companies offer a simpler, more reliable product or service than the competition, their customers are incredibly loyal. People ultimately don’t want to switch from your product to a competitor’s offering, but they’ll do it very quickly if yours is unreliable or too

Any step that makes your product a more reliable, dependable choice increases the value a customer gains from staying with you.

Great customer service

All three of the companies we’ve profiled have fantastic customer service. Apple via its large network of retail stores, Netflix through its excellent phone and online support, and Amazon through its online customer service system.

Returning a product to Amazon is simple. Fixing a broken Apple device is straightforward. If a subscriber runs into a problem while using Netflix, it’s easy to talk to a real person. The brands that achieve the highest NPS don’t just focus on reliability — they also focus on great service.

This goes beyond the “great” to which most companies aspire. Amazon has made headlines in the past for refunding small balances of 16 cents to customers when the price of an item they’ve previously ordered decreases — a small action that most companies wouldn’t bother with.

Customers remember small actions, whether they’re positive or negative. Offering extra service and value to your customers, even if it’s a tiny 16 cent post-sale discount like Amazon offered to one of its customers, shows customers that you truly care and inspires fierce brand