PPB June 2015

52 / 108

If you want to win them over, you'll have
to find out what will make them happy and
loyal, and then decide whether it is worth it
to spend the resources to make those
changes or whether it’s more cost efficient
simply to go after new customers who will
be happy with the way your company cur-
rently operates.
Make sure you’re getting your
money’s worth from promoters.
Generally speaking, promoters are a positive
asset to your company. But before going all-
out to attract as many as possible, take the
time to understand how valuable a promoter
is, both in terms of revenue and in how
many new customers a promoter brings to a
company. The best way to understand how
much revenue a promoter generates is to tie
actual sales to survey responses to see how
many promoters actually recommended
someone, and how many of those people
who heard the recommendation actually
became customers.
With some estimate of the number of
promoters you need to gain a new customer,
you can then weigh the cost of new pro-
grams, features, pricing and promotions to
determine if the benefit from new customers
outweighs the cost. For example, if you have
to reduce the price of your product to turn
customers into promoters, gaining those
promoters might not be financially sustain-
able. Or you might find that it would cost
close to a quarter of a million dollars to add
a new feature to a product, while that new
feature would generate only 10 new promot-
ers—not worth it. And for websites, a new
“customer” might just be a new visitor or
subscriber, so the cost of gaining new pro-
moters can be important.
One more point: If you use a particular
price, deal or feature to gain promoters, think
twice before changing it after those people
have begun singing your praises. Remember
my experience with The removal
of a feature turned me from a promoter to a
detractor. Nobody likes to experience a bait-
and-switch.
When you can use analytics to find out
why customers buy from you, how often
they do or don’t recommend you to others,
and so on, you can make better product
decisions, provide better service and make
changes to ensure you create many more
loyal customers.
Jeff Sauro is a Six Sigma-trained statistical analyst and pioneer in quantify-
ing the customer experience. He specializes in making statistical concepts
understandable and actionable. He is the founding principal of MeasuringU,
a customer experience and quantitative research firm based in Denver,
Colorado. Clients include Walmart, PayPal, eBay, Lenovo, Google and
Charter Communications. He has published more than 20 peer-reviewed
research articles on statistics and the user experience, and is author of four
books including Quantifying the User Experience: Practical Statistics for
User Research and A Practical Guide to the System Usability Scale. Read
more at and on Twitter @MeasuringU.
GROW 50 • PPB • JUNE 2015