Why is someone a Detractor if they answer "not sure" to my NPS question, but they answer "satisfied" on all other questions?
The terms Promoters, Passives and Detractors come solely from the customer's response to the Net Promoter Score question on your survey (aka your "recommend" question.)
There are 3 Customer Experience (CX) questions typically used on our surveys, each driving one of the 3 CX metrics you see in your LoyaltyLoop account: 1) Net Promoter Score (NPS), 2) Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and 3) Product Quality (PQUAL). Both CSAT and PQUAL are indicators of the past (how the customer felt), or what we call a "lagging indicator". Whereas NPS, which is a measure of loyalty, is a "leading indicator" predicting how customers are likely to behave in the future. Understanding the difference between a lagging and leading matters, in that a customer could be satisfied with their last experience and the product quality, but not likely to recommend your business to others. Each question gets at different aspects of the customer experience.
The NPS question is not asking the customer to make an actual referral, but asking if the customer feels as if they could recommend your business to someone else. The question comes from years of research, and multiple books written about that one question. The research shows that question evokes an emotional reaction from the customer about your business/brand. The research also shows that customers who answer the NPS question as a Detractor ("Not Sure", "Unlikely", "Very Unlikely", or 6 through 0) act like a headwind to the business, and represented over 80% of negative word-of-mouth comments in the marketplace about the business. Understanding this helps you react appropriately for each customer category - Promoter, Passive, Detractor.
Using the 5-phase scale, statistically-speaking Promoters are those customers who answer "Very Likely" (an answer of 9 or 10 on the traditional numeric scale), Passive customers answer only "Likely" (answer of 7 or 8), and Detractors are "Not Sure", "Unlikely" or "Very Unlikely" (answer of 0 to 6). If you click the help icon from the left main menu, you'll find a full description of Net Promoter Score, and the mapping to the different scales used on that question.
It is not uncommon to have customers answer "Not Sure" on that scale. If you have lots of customers answering "not sure", don't be dismayed. This is how your customer feels. If you have many customers answering "Not Sure", make certain they are in fact contacts who experience your business. If they don't experience your business, you can always remove the contact from your survey list, or add them to your opt-out list to remove them from your future surveys. The other option is to consider changing scales from the 5-phrase scale to the 11-point numeric scale. But remember, even in the numeric scale a customer answering 5 or 6 is still considered a Detractor. In general, it's not a good idea to flip-flop between scales. You want to choose a scale that works for your business, and stick with it, to ensure historical comparisons are meaningful.