Find Your Biggest Fans | Net Promoter Score for Recruiters
Take a Proactive Approach to Client Relationships with Net Promoter Score
Recruiters love to boast about their ability to build relationships, yet so few can actually quantify these relationships. The truth is relationships form, fade and even turn cold over time. For agencies working with a large and varied portfolio of clients, it can be increasingly difficult to gauge which clients are becoming raving fans and which are on the downward spiral of dissatisfaction.
Fortunately, we’ve seen a resurgence of active customer surveying, and the most used form is known as ‘Net Promoter Score’ or ‘NPS’. NPS asks one simple question: “How likely are you to recommend this business to a friend or colleague?”.
Clients are asked to rate their answers on a scale ranging from 0 to 10. After answering this simple yet telling question, respondents are given a score ranging from -100 through to 100. Based on the data gathered, they’re placed in one of three categories:
Detractors
Detractors are those who gave a score of 6 or lower. These are highly dissatisfied clients who may actively damage your agency’s reputation through negative word of mouth.
Passives
Passives gave a score of 7 or 8. While these clients are somewhat satisfied, they are unlikely to be loyal to your brand and may be open to competitor offerings.
Promoters
Promoters are those who gave a score of 9 or 10. These clients are your biggest fans. They love your service and will likely engage with you again in the future.
Although simple, NPS scores can be a telling indicator of an agencies future repeat business. While most agencies would like to assume that the majority of their clients are promoters, recent trends would suggest otherwise.
Source: www.inavero.com
We know that recruitment is a volatile industry. Competition is rife, candidates can be flaky and clients can be unreasonably demanding. All these factors make active promoters hard to come by.
The above table shows promoters are not only becoming increasingly scarce, but the average percentage of detractors has more than doubled since 2010. Agencies as a whole aren’t maintaining customer satisfaction, leaving their clients open to competitor offerings. If your business is to be an exception, the solution starts with establishing a firm focus on nurturing client relationships.
How to Implement Net Promoter Score
The first step to making NPS surveying a standard in your organisation is to secure senior leadership buy-in. The next important step is achieving consultant and company-wide buy-in. Ultimately, NPS requires a unified effort where recruiters are able to act proactively based on real-time feedback.
Both senior management and the consultants that manage accounts will need to be clear on what measures are to be taken once feedback is received. A simple way of following up with your clients is to ensure that all detractors receive a timely account management phone call, passives could benefit from a check-in email and promoters could be leveraged to provide references or testimonials.
Once all internal parties are clear on the process, the final step would be to identify a distribution and analysis method. If you’re using Bullhorn as your recruitment CRM, you already have the capability to send out NPS surveys automatically, collect the data, and analyse it within the platform. For those that are on older or less equipped systems, you may consider alternative email and survey marketing options.
The key advantage of having this functionality within your recruitment software is that it’s automated, monitored over time and exists within one easy to access platform. In the case of Bullhorn, NPS data may be combined with other CRM tools such as Bullhorn Pulse. Pulse is patented technology that automatically captures all email communication data received and sent by your organisation. Comparing these data sets could show you which clients are becoming less engaged with your agency while providing a more holistic picture of client relationships.
An inside look into Bullhorn’s relationship management overview dashboard.
Manage Net Promoter Score over time.
Dive deeper into client relationships.
Bullhorn ensures your agency has the tools required to proactively build relationships. For more information, get in touch today!
