Eric Groves, CEO of Alignable, spent time today at LSA16 talking about the importance of net promoter scores (NPS) especially in the SMB marketing space. Alignable is a social platform for SMBs and Eric said that they currently have 100K SMB members.

Alignable had released some of the scores earlier this year, but Eric provided a long list of interesting and practical takeaways from his session which included:

• SMBs trust each other.
• SMBs can trust large brands, but this only happens when these brands invest in building relationships with their clients.
• Facebook NPS scores started to decline when the company started throttling organic reach.
• If you’re just doing NPS surveys of your “brand ambassadors” you’re getting a false sense of security.
• Important to get out in front of your NPS score because the customer sentiment is out there.
• Once we get 50 to 75 SMBs to rate a brand the NPS doesn’t change a lot.
• NPS directly impacts cost of customer acquisition.
• The NPS score tells you if the wind is at your back or in your face.
• You can’t buy word of mouth referrals.
• Without trust customer acquisition costs are astronomical.
• In social media, trust becomes even more important.
• You need to join in the conversation about your brand without selling.
• Your customers own your brand.
• If you give SMBs realistic expectations you can win their trust.
• GoDaddy is an example of how customer service/support was able to elevate NPS score.
• 24/7 customer support elevated its NPS above other provider.