The Human Factor in NPS Maximization

Retailers today are spending 40% of their technology budget on digital transformation. The focus is on faster service and increasing conversion rates, and business owners often overlook their Net Promoter Score. However, if retailers want to stay competitive, NPS needs to be front and center.

Studies on buying behavior show that 88% of customers are more influenced by user reviews, rather than descriptions given by companies. Others reveal that an average increase of 7% in NPS, results in an average 1% growth in revenue. For retail businesses, this implies a need to constantly improve, or maintain NPS at an optimal level. And if recent cases are an indication of the future, the best way to improve promoter score is through human experience, rather than just machine intelligence.

The Power of Human Intervention

Chatbots and similar automation provide swift responses and information. But the human factor still remains a key booster of NPS. This is because trained agents can succeed where bots fail. They can:

• handle situations with empathy
• provide customized solutions
• create human connect
• gain promoters for the brand

Skilled human intervention can also provide retail owners with the opportunity to judge a customer’s emotional affinity to the brand. For years, companies were tracking ‘what are consumers buying?’. Now, the focus is on ‘why are they buying from us?’.

With 10% of budgets going into emotional analytics, an agent’s touch becomes crucial. This is evident from one of our client’s experiences.

Revitalizing NPS Through Support

A leading online medical store in India, our client’s main business driver was the trust customers had in their brand. They followed a hybrid model of service delivery and employed both human agents and digital interventions. Suddenly, however, their sales started dipping. The initial analysis put the blame on the following reasons:

• Delay in refunds
• Online payment issues
• Issues with order fulfillment
• Poor management of repeat orders

However, on digging deeper, the main issue was in how the pre-sales and post-sales issues were handled. A high average handling time (AHT) also aggravated the situation.

A Healing Touch to NPS

A friction-free customer experience was the core to solving the client’s issue. To achieve this, we set up the following support buckets:

• Pre-sales support – Diagnostics support, order entry, and product support
• Post-sales support – Order tracking, refund management, NPS surveys, and dispute management

Skilled native speakers and trained support staff were deployed to handle all customer queries. AHT was reduced and customer relationships were improved. The result was an NPS boost of 48%. CSAT scores also sky-rocketed to 89%, proving that the human factor is crucial to maximizing NPS. 

Is That A Hard No to Bots?

A recent article by Forbes highlighted the importance of human intervention in customer service and how bots could do more harm than good. However, considering future forecasts, going for a minimal bot approach may not be the right decision.

Factors like query response rates, behavioral analysis, market study, consumer study, experience management, etc., contribute a great deal to NPS. With millions of customer data points to analyze, digital interventions are the need of the hour.

Balance is Best for Business 

The retail giant of the future will have the perfect balance between digital intelligence and human expertise – agents who provide customers empathetic solutions, and digital tools to tackle requirements that do not require a personal touch. Even so, with competition growing, juggling business decisions and focussing on these aspects become increasingly tough.

That is why many companies today prefer to outsource these processes. It is easier to provide better to the customer and get trained resources who can equipoise the best of both worlds.

Allsec’s Customer Experience Management services provide the perfect balance of human experience and machine intelligence to improve brand value, boost revenue, and increase NPS scores. Reach out to us to start your retail transformation.