To run a successful funeral home, you must provide an exceptional experience for families every time. Beyond facilitating a memorial service, your staff should provide for the emotional and logistical issues that come with a loved one’s passing.
With that said, it’s not always obvious when your services fall short of such lofty goals, making it essential to develop metrics to measure your client experience. A simple yet effective way to do this is determining your NPS score.
What is an NPS Score?
A net promoter score (NPS) allows you to measure the loyalty of customers to your funeral home. Developed by Bain and Company, NPS is widely viewed as the standard metric of customer (or family) experience.
To find your NPS, you’ll start by asking families a single question. Based on their responses, you can begin to gauge how they perceive your funeral home.
The Question
Widely used in customer satisfaction surveys, NPS consists of one sole question: How likely are you to recommend [funeral home name or service] to a friend or colleague.
Families should answer this question on a scale from 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (incredibly likely).
The Equation
Once you’ve gathered a decent sample size of responses, you can calculate your NPS by subtracting the percentage of families who respond with a 6 or lower from the percentage of those who answer with a 9 or 10. The score can range anywhere from -100 to 100.
For example, let’s say you’ve obtained 30 responses to your question. You have 20 responses of a 9 or greater (66%) and 8 responses of a 6 or lower (26%). This would give you an NPS of 40.
The Results
Based on individual scores, the NPS framework divides families into three different categories:
- Detractors (Score of 0-6): A family that scored your funeral home in this manner won’t likely recommend your services to others. In fact, they might even actively discourage others from seeking your services.
- Passives (Score of 7-8): While they do not pose a threat to your funeral home, those in the passive group are unlikely to recommend your services. Most importantly, these people could be converted to promoters with a bit of effort, making it important to learn what held them back from scoring your business more favorably.
- Promoters: (Score of 9-10): Fully happy with the experience provided by your funeral home, promoters will not only remain loyal to your business, but they’ll also boost your reputation through word of mouth.
By calculating your funeral home’s NPS, you can begin to understand how families feel about your services. By inquiring further as to the nature of their responses, you can also draft initiatives to create more enthusiastic families.
How to Get Your NPS Score
To obtain an NPS for your funeral home, you can add the NPS question to your existing feedback survey. Alternatively, you might even consider sending out an email that only contains the NPS question. For example, with J3Tech Solutions Performance Tracker X, you could send emails directly to families and monitor the results on your computer.
Why Does Your NPS Score Matter
An NPS provides a comprehensive way to examine the satisfaction of your families. When targeted toward particular services (cremation, for example), you can even use it to find more granular insights regarding particular facets of your funeral home.
This metric also serves as a useful launch point for more thoroughly understanding your families. While a low NPS provides little in terms of tangible, constructive criticism, it can certainly provide you the basis for a conversation with detractors and passives, both of whom can ideally be converted to more enthusiastic clients.
When measured over time, an NPS allows you to track your funeral home’s performance and progress. A steadily increasing score will let you know that your strategic growth efforts are working, while a declining score can alert you of deeper issues.
How to Handle the Results
Unless your funeral home miraculously scores a 100, your NPS will undoubtedly illustrate that there’s room for improvement. In many cases, you’ll want to focus heavily on families that fall into the passive group and figure out how you can provide them with more fulfilling services. To help plan these types of initiatives, you might also enlist the help of consultants.
At Johnson Consulting Group, our team of death care professionals has decades of experience working with funeral directors to provide a better experience for families. Not only can we help you obtain the necessary data for an NPS, but we can also leverage this metric to make lasting improvements to your funeral home business.
The bottom line is an NPS is useless without corresponding action. With the help of JCG consultants, you can make data-driven strategic decisions that create more enthusiastic and loyal families.
IMPROVE YOUR FUNERAL HOME