NPS Drivers is the most hands-on way to work with NPS with a quantified overview showing what works well, what should be improved and what is important to guests. It visually conveys what affects your NPS the most. It is a more detailed and actionable method compared to the classical ratings of hotel room, cleanliness, food or service etc.
It will allow you to focus on what matters most and ignore areas that are not important to guests.
How to read the chart
The chart displays how guests rate different parts of their stay.
- The green bar shows how many guests think this area works well.
- The red bar shows how many guests think this area should be improved.
- Wide bars are more important to NPS.
- No bar / very narrow bars are less important to NPS.
Each bar then has sub-level bars. The bar for Restaurant has sub-bars for opening hours, service, food quality, menu, beverage options etc. Hence the chart gives very detailed insights within areas as well and it is not uncommon with the chart often showing over 80 different areas of the guest stay.
The end result
If very few guests have anything to say about a particular area, such as Booking in this case. Then this is something that does not cause annoyance but is also nothing that is the cause for a high NPS. However if an area with many votes, such as The room, then it has high impact on NPS.
To increase NPS
- Make sure you work out the problems causing the widest red bars.
- Use the wide green bars to your advantage, these are what guests are likely to talk about.
These are your strengths.
The workings of the model
The drivers model starts with the NPS question "How likely are you to recommend ...".
The second survey question provides all the details to the drivers chart.
Those guests who think you should improve something
Guests that are detractors (0-6) or passively satisfied (7-8) are not likely to recommend you in the future and are open to your competition. They will have feedback on what you should improve for them to become more loyal guests. That is why they are asked "What do you think we should improve?"
They are presented with the main areas such as Room, Restaurant, Facilities etc. When clicking on an area, they get to choose from the sub areas that they think should be improved.
Example: If they think you should improve the restaurant, then they get options about if it is opening hours, service, food quality, menu or beverage.
Those who think you are doing great
Guests that are promoters (9-10) are already happy with you. They are not a good source for improvements however they will know what your strengths are and what they tell their friends about. They get to rate the same areas and sub areas.
The results of the rating
Guests will not rate what was not important to them, and they can easily, with a few clicks, rate what is important to them.
What might not be obvious
Some areas will likely only be rated negatively when they are rated - and that is OK.
One such area is cleanliness. Guests will not talk to their friends about the cleanliness of your hotel unless it is a problem. They will not rate it in the survey unless it is a problem. Because of this it is likely such areas will only ever get a negative score and not having a score should be considered good.
Some things affect guests but you can't do anything about them - and that is OK.
The drivers model is about the customer journey and the guest experience. It is not all about your internal processes. This means that whilst explaining the cause of a NPS score we might come across areas that you do not offer.
- If it is hard to find the hotel, then that is part of the guest experience.
- If the parking option feels unsafe or you get a break-in in your car, that is part of the guest experience.
- If the hotel does not offer breakfast, but the guest expected it, that is part of the guest experience.
It might feel strange giving a guest options to rate something when you do not offer it or can't do anything about it. If you want to understand the guests then you need to give them the option to rate it even if you know you can't do anything about it. The drivers will explain why you get the NPS, it will not change the NPS. There is no risk in providing options that include services that you do not offer, since those options will let you understand if the lack of the service has any consequence to you.
- Maybe it is an area you can prepare the guest with better information about to set their expectations right?
Pros and Cons
Compared to more traditional scale rating questions there are both Pros and Cons using drivers.
Pros:
Fewer questions - Only one question, besides NPS, to collect the driver data. Scale questions have one question per area, which amounts to 5-7 questions. Fewer questions increases response rates.
More details - The questions commonly rates 60-80 different areas and sub-areas giving more insights not only if the room is good or not, but what is good and what is not about the room.
No diluted ratings - If guests are forced to rate areas that they did not experience or they do not care about. Lets say the restaurant they did not visit or the cleanliness that was not a problem. These guests are forced to rate and likely set a high grade to move along with the survey. Their votes dilute the votes of guests that had an experience and if 2 guests have a bad experience out of 100 that did not care - the traditional scale scoring has a problem picking it up.
Cons:
Unimportant areas - Drivers does not work as well for areas that are of less importance to the customer experience. This however seldom does affect hospitality that are in the experience business.
Trends - It is harder to follow trends when the number of responses to an area fluctuates with time or with areas becoming less important if they do not constitute a problem any more. This is a natural consequence. We encourage focusing on the NPS score for trends and the drivers as tools to increase the NPS.