Detractor Management (Low NPS® Score Submitted)

You can’t expect to receive a perfect 10 on every NPS® survey. Because of this, you should have a plan for how you want to handle detractors. As a refresher, detractors (those who score 6 or lower), are unhappy patients who may communicate their dissatisfaction to their friends and family members and are more likely to drop out of care early. Potentially, these patients can provide valuable insight into what should be improved at your clinic.

Because of this, we highly recommend following up with detractors. The goal of detractor outreach is to gather additional information about their experience and identify specific reasons for their low score submission. This data can be used to pinpoint problem areas, and adjust your clinical and operational workflows as needed. Additionally, outreach like this may also help prevent early dropouts.

This document provides a possible workflow for handling detractors, starting when you receive a detractor alert.

Detractor Management

1. When a patient submits a score between 0 and 6, a Detractor Alert is triggered. The Detractor Alert is sent via email to users with the Low Score Alerts turned on in their user profile/settings and provides a link to the NPS result in Reach.
   
2. Click View Score. This opens the patient’s NPS response page in Reach. From this page, you can view the NPS score and any comments they submitted. You’ll also be able to see demographic information for the patient.
3.  When a Detractor score (NPS of 6 or below) is received, it is highly recommended that clinics attempt to reach out to the patient directly via phone to gain a better understanding of their experience and the additional reasons for submitting their low score. This patient outreach can improve the overall satisfaction of the patient and may help to prevent early drop off in care.  

Possible Phone Script:   Hi there, This is (name and title of caller) with (organization name). Thank you so much for providing your feedback score on your experience! Our patient’s satisfaction is our highest priority. If you’d be willing to share your experience with me, I'd love to hear more about what we could do differently to improve,  and I would be so very grateful for your insights. Thank you so much for your honesty.

It's important to listen actively, not become defensive, and to ensure that your patient feels heard. 

4. Alternatively, you can draft an email to send directly to the patient. Consider if you want this email to come from the patient’s therapist, the clinic owner/manager, or someone else. Because the purpose is to get a response, you do not want to use a no-reply address. When comfortable with the content, send out the email. 

5. We highly recommend adding Trends. Trends can be created or added from the drop-down. This will help you categorize the responses, and set you up for success when additional reporting around NPS trends becomes available.

6. Once a trend is added, hover over the trend to assign the NPS Color to the trend. Use Green if it is a positive/promoter trend, use Gray if it is a neutral/passive trend, and use Red if it is a negative/detractor trend.  

7. As a best practice, you should document all detractor outreach in the Notes section of the NPS response page. This allows other users to see that action has been taken. Be sure to use the Save Notes button when the entry is complete.   8. Adjust the status of the NPS survey.

You can continue to update this NPS page as the patient responds or other actions are taken. We do not recommend following up with patients who do not respond to the initial request for additional information.

NPS Survey Status

NPS surveys may have one of three possible status; Open, Replied, or Closed.

• Open: Open survey scores require attention and are indicated by an open envelope icon on the NPS Dashboard.
• Replied: Replied surveys may required additional attention or further escalation to resolve. Replied surveys are indicated by a reply arrow icon on the NPS Dashboard.
• Closed: Closed surveys have been addressed, resolved, and require no additional action. Closed surveys are indicated by circled x icon on the NPS Dashboard.