Why You Need to Pay Attention to the Passives to Improve Customer Advocacy

Many companies use the Net Promoter Score (NPS) as an important metric. Two of the key questions and purposes of the score is to understand how likely customers are to recommend and repurchase. The methodology associated with the NPS score is that it classifies those respondents who assign a score of 7 or 8 as passive or benign. These respondents are anything but passive. Research over the years has found that this group can spread negative word of mouth, are less loyal, and may be more price sensitive than customers who score a 9 or 10. In fact, studies have found that passives tell several friends and associates about their experience. Sharing an ambivalent experience isn’t good for your company.

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Passives Can Be As Damaging as Detractors

Imagine if someone you trusted told you they just tried a new dry cleaners, store, bank, or hair salon and “they’d give it a 7 out of 10”. How likely would you be to go there? Also, this group is usually 10-20 percent less likely to remain loyal or intend to repurchase and as a result may be a higher cost to serve and at greater risk for churn. For many companies, this group often constitutes a large part of the overall customer base and represents a huge opportunity for new customer advocates. So while detractors may be more obvious and more vocal and their complaints more likely to be addressed, it is a mistake to ignore passives or set them aside.

Passives often represent 25-30% of your base, and since they usually haven’t had any serious problems with your product or service, they are more likely to be moved with low effort to a stronger advocacy position.

Convert passive customers into customer advocate, company.

Take steps to convert passive customers into active advocates.

Turn Passives into Customer Advocates

Here are three steps any company should take if they want to move passive customers into active advocates.

Change your point of view. Many organizations focus on the customers at the end of the spectrum. As an organization, change your point of view about passives. They can be a rich source of new customer advocates and shouldn’t be left to chance. Invest some energy in learning more about what probably represents a fairly large part of your customer base. Conduct at least one research study with this group.

Size and Structure. Determine the size of your passive segment and their personas? As noted, passives can be a quarter to a third of your customer base. Find out. Quantify the size of your passives. Then calculate the incremental revenue value (directly in terms of their sales and indirectly in terms of referrals) if passives were to become advocates.

Take action. Develop a plan of action for how to engage passives. Focus your plan on strategies that will build an emotional connection with them. Give thoughts to the role your front line customer service contact, your content and touch points, and your channels need to play in your plan. Set performance targets for your plan, with the primary focus on converting some percentage of passive to advocates.

Monitor whether your plan to determine which efforts have the greatest impact. Dig deeper to determine if some efforts are more effective by persona. To be effective be clear about how you are going to measure advocacy. Will you only be using the change in your NPS score or other measures and indicators?

FAQ:

(written by Penn of Sintra.ai)

Q1: What is NPS trying to measure?
A: NPS is commonly used to gauge how likely customers are to recommend and repurchase.

Q2: Who are “passives” in NPS—and why is the label misleading?
A: Passives are customers who score 7–8. They’re often treated as neutral, but research shows they can be less loyal, more price sensitive, and capable of spreading negative (or at least lukewarm) word of mouth.

Q3: Why can passives be as damaging as detractors?
A: A “7 out of 10” recommendation from someone you trust rarely drives confidence. Ambivalent sharing can suppress referrals and slow growth even when customers aren’t overtly complaining.

Q4: What business risks are associated with passives?
A: Passives are often 10–20% less likely to remain loyal or intend to repurchase, may be higher cost to serve, and can represent meaningful churn risk—especially because they often make up a large portion of the base.

Q5: How large is the passive segment typically?
A: Passives often represent 25–30% of the customer base—making them one of the biggest “hidden” opportunities to improve advocacy.

Q6: Why are passives a high-upside opportunity?
A: Because they typically haven’t had severe problems, they can often be moved to advocacy with relatively low effort—if you understand what’s missing emotionally or experientially.

Q7: What are three steps to convert passives into advocates?
A: (1) Change your point of view—treat passives as a strategic segment and research them. (2) Size and structure—quantify the segment, build personas, and estimate incremental revenue/referral value if converted. (3) Take action—create an engagement plan focused on building emotional connection across service, content, touchpoints, and channels, with clear performance targets.

Q8: How should you measure whether your passive-to-advocate plan is working?
A: Monitor impact by tactic and persona. Be explicit about how you will measure advocacy—don’t rely solely on NPS movement; use supporting indicators tied to loyalty and referral behavior.

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