Understanding SaaS NPS Detractors (and What to Do After)

Growing SaaS overtime requires that you not only reach new customers but keep existing customers. Only with both new customers and returning customers can you create sustainable growth. You can’t have new customers coming in and customers leaving at the same rate. Your customers’ satisfaction is fundamental to your ability to increase revenue and grow your SaaS product. Finally, there is a metric that really helps to determine customer satisfaction and help SaaS teams learn more about their users - NPS score.

Your NPS score measures how likely your users are to share your product with peers. NPS puts your users into three categories:

• Promoters - users who are highly satisfied with your product and willing to recommend your product
• Passives - users who are neutral on your product
• Detractors - users who are not satisfied with your product and will likely churn out soon.

Clearly, having promoters on your team’s side is ideal. They not only are continuously paying customers but also able to be a powerful tool for your marketing and sales team. A study by HubSpot shows that 75% of people don’t believe adverts, yet 90% trust suggestions from family and friends and 70% trust consumer reviews. Promoters can bring credibility and access to new users. But what about detractors? They have their perks as well.

Here is how your team can better understand and utilize NPS detractors to improve your product and sales:

How do you find detractors?

First, let’s start by taking a look at how to find detractors. You get your NPS score and consequently identify your detractors by surveying your users by asking them to rank their satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10.

• Anyone who rates your product from 9 to 10 is a promoter.
• Anyone who rates your product between 7 and 8 is passive.
• Those who put your product at a 6 or below are detractors.

With the right tool to survey your customers, you track exactly who they are. Best practice is to survey users within your app with a sidebar or popup and through email as well.  

Beamer is a great tool for collecting data to determine your NPS score in an intuitive and effective way. Beamer’s NPS tool is perfect for asking users to rate your product within your product. With Beamer’s NPS tool, you can create a simple pop up within your app that asks users to rate 1 through 10. Users can answer and continue using your product. You're more likely to get a better response rate if you ask users in context rather than email which rarely gets a very high open or engagement rate. On Beamer’s backend, your team can track results and get a complete, concise look at your NPS score and your users’ satisfaction. With Beamer, you can also segment NPS scores by specific user groups like role, location, plan, account, industry, etc. This can give your team a lot of insight on which type of users and at what level or service they are most unhappy with your product. You can also aggregate your NPS data from in-app surveys, emails, and links into one place on the backend so your official tally is clear. You can use tags to track common keywords and phrases to check what the trends are in responses so your team can take action. Your team can set auto-response messages that are triggered by a users’ response so that you can keep engagement up.

What makes a detractor a detractor?

At its most simple definition, a detractor is anyone who scores your product equal or less than 6. But it reveals a lot more about what makes a detractor dissatisfied. There is a lot more information for your team behind that low score. Someone who scores your product a 6 or less is not seeing value in your product for them. They are experiencing more inconvenience than benefit with your product. A detractor is someone who is tolerating your product for now but is likely looking for another alternative and will likely churn out in the very near future. Detractors also may be a problem for your marketing team in leaving negative reviews publicly which can hurt marketing and sales efforts.

Analyzing who your detractors are is important.

Who detractors are can also clue your team into some insight about how your product is being received.Your team may find that detractors are from a certain industry or segment or role within a company. This shows your team that your product is not fitting certain users and failing to provide the right value to them. This can help determine how your product needs to improve to better serve user groups or how you can better position your product to ensure customer success.Using a tool like Beamer that can successfully track demographics on detractors can help your team learn more about them to put them to better use.

How do you communicate with detractors?

The way your team communicates with detractors can make or break whether they churn out or stay and determines how much your team is capable of learning from detractors. Your team has to keep engagement with detractors high and let them know that you’ve heard their feedback. Beamer’s automated messages mentioned earlier are a great way to do that. You want unhappy users to know their opinion matters to your team and you are actively making changes. You want to communicate personally as quickly as possible.

What are some ways to flip detractors to promoters?

After identifying and getting in touch with detractors specifically, your team can start to work with detractors to learn from them to improve your product and flip them into promoters. Here are some ways you can work with detractors to get a better outcome and improve your NPS score.

Offer to speak with your customer service team to solve issues:

The best course of action is to get personal right away. Step in and let detractors know that your team has gotten their score and are interested in personally supporting them in improving their experience. An automated message with a follow up for a further conversation can help show that presence from your team.

Actively ask for their feedback:

Make a point to ask for feedback in the further conversations that you have with detractors. Send additional messages and emails asking for specific feedback on your product. What features do they want to see? What needs to be fixed? What integrations would be helpful? These are the questions detractors can help you with. Showing that your team is interested in their opinion to improve your product shows them that you are willing to make progress. They are more likely to stay on if they know that your team is working to improve your product for them.

Show your team is working on it:

You have to show that your team takes their suggestions and feedback seriously. There’s nothing worse than a “we’ll get back to you” email with no further action. You’ll want to make good on your interest. Send messages and send emails letting users know that specific features and updates are on the way. Ensure that your team is taking steps to improve your product for all customer segments and you are working to ensure customer success with your product. You want to show that your product is advancing and your team is supportive of customers. Beamer is a great way to make sure users stay in the loop in terms of advancements. You can announce new features and updates on your in-app Beamer changelog and through push notifications through Beamer. You can let users know that what they’ve asked for is on the way in context. You can add photos, videos, GIFs and CTAs to your updates to make them visual and actionable. You can also segment updates so that you can send a specific message to detractors showing that your team has taken their concerns and turned them into action.

At first, detractors may seem like a burden on your team but they are a huge opportunity. They can be a wealth of information on where your product could improve. They can show you your weaknesses and give you active suggestions on where you could make real improvements that benefit your product’s long term value. If your team can work effectively with detractors, you can turn them into one of your greatest product marketing and sales assets. Decreasing your churn rate and improving your product is the only way to true growth. Working with detractors brings you both! Try Beamer for a great way to track your NPS score, find detractors (and promoters) and better engage your users.