A single unhappy customer can damage your business’s reputation far faster than a dozen satisfied ones can build it up. Dissatisfied customers tell between nine and 15 people about their poor experience; today, one social media post can instantly reach hundreds or thousands. But, there’s an upside: When businesses listen closely to detractors, they often uncover the insights needed to transform weaknesses into strengths.
As Jake Miller, founder of Fellow, a specialty brand for coffee and tea gear, noted on the Shopify Masters podcast: “I’ve never written a thousand-word complaint about a toaster, but we’ve received thousand-word complaints about our grinder.” That level of passion, while challenging, highlights why detractor feedback is so revealing and valuable, offering some of the most valuable feedback a business can receive.
Not every customer will love your company, but what matters is how you respond—and what you take away. Read on to learn how to identify detractors, understand their influence, and leverage their feedback as one of your most essential assets in driving customer loyalty.
What are detractors?
In the world of customer experience, a detractor is someone who reports being dissatisfied with your business. These unhappy customers are at risk of leaving, sharing negative reviews, or discouraging others from buying. Put simply, detractors are customers who give you critical customer feedback that signals gaps in customer satisfaction.
Businesses can detect detractors in several ways: behavioral signals like churn rates and declining engagement, social listening to monitor brand mentions on social platforms, and proactive outreach like triggered surveys after returns or cancellations. However, one of the primary ways you can reveal them is through Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys, where customers rate how likely they are to recommend a brand based on a 0–10 scale. Responses fall into three categories:
- Promoters (9-10). Highly satisfied and eager to recommend
- Passives (7-8). Neutral—neither enthusiastic nor unhappy
- Detractors (0-6). Dissatisfied and least likely to recommend
Why NPS matters
Companies typically calculate NPS as the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors. It can help your business identify at-risk customers, see what shoppers think about a particular product or service, and note how you stack up against competitors.
A low NPS isn’t necessarily a disaster—it’s a signal and an opportunity. “Customer reviews are pure gold,” Jake says. “Every entrepreneur and any employee should obsess over what feedback you’re getting from your customers.”
Detractor feedback is especially useful because it’s often raw and unfiltered, highlighting recurrent pain points and opportunities to improve the customer experience. Rather than seeing low scores as a sign of failure, businesses can view them as an essential stream of valuable feedback.
Types of detractors
Not all detractors are the same. Understanding the different kinds of dissatisfied customers can help you respond more effectively:
- Quiet detractors. Customers who leave low ratings in NPS surveys, but provide little or no feedback about their negative experiences. They lower your NPS without providing significant actionable value.
- Vocal detractors. Customers who actively share their dissent and negative feedback in surveys and other public forums (e.g., social media). This group often cites instances of poor customer service, which can quickly spread and influence others.
- Disengaged detractors. Users who have grown indifferent to your company or product. Their low engagement may result in low NPS ratings or interaction.
- Situational detractors. Customers who complain due to specific concerns or a one-time issue (e.g., a late shipment or billing error). If addressed quickly, they may become satisfied again.
- Expectation-gap detractors. Customers whose experience didn’t meet their expectations, whether from unclear marketing, feature gaps, or service promises.
- Influential detractors. Customers with large platforms or strong networks—for example, industry bloggers or social media personalities. A subset of vocal detractors, their negative feedback carries outsized weight and can impact reputation far beyond a single transaction.
Not all detractors should receive the same level of attention. Situational and expectation-gap detractors, for example, may be easily reassured with a minor change or error acknowledgement, while vocal and influential detractors may warrant more careful handling and proactive communication. That said, some detractors are simply venting without offering anything actionable. In those cases, it’s often best to acknowledge their concern politely, but avoid over-investing resources in feedback that won’t help the business improve.
How to turn detractors into promoters
- Encourage feedback and make it accessible
- Develop comprehensive case management
- Invest in a customer support team and tools
- Close the customer feedback loop
- Learn from your detractors
- Show your appreciation
Detractors are a regular part of business. However, with the right approach, you can turn detractors into passives and even promoters—loyal company advocates who are passionate, and vocal, about your products and brand experience.
As Raz Romanescu, cofounder of ecommerce beauty brand Underlining, says on Shopify Masters: “An unhappy customer may be louder, but if you invest in retention, that’s where all the margin is. It’s way cheaper to keep a customer than it is to acquire new ones.”
Here’s how to turn detractors into promoters:
Encourage feedback and make it accessible
To identify detractors, you first need to hear from them. Make sure you’re encouraging feedback and that it’s easy to share across multiple channels, whether by email, social media platforms, or directly on your ecommerce site. An omnichannel strategy creates a wider funnel for collecting valuable insights at every touchpoint.
Develop comprehensive case management
Once a detractor has surfaced, follow up individually to gather more information about their negative experiences and take steps to resolve them. A case management system can help you track real-time feedback, ensuring customers feel supported and preventing problems from being repeated.
Invest in a customer support team and tools
Listening and responding to a customer’s frustration is important, but resolution requires a robust infrastructure, including a customer relationship management (CRM) team and customer support software and tools.
Close the customer feedback loop
After you resolve a problem, continue the conversation. Let customers know about changes you’ve made as a result of their feedback and share updates when improvements roll out. Closing the loop will help customers feel that their input mattered.
Learn from your detractors
Negative feedback isn’t just something to fix in the moment—it can guide long-term improvement. Make it a habit to review detractor comments regularly and feed them into product development, service processes, and customer experience initiatives.
“As a company, we read the feedback that we get weekly, both the good stuff and the bad stuff,” says Jake. “Then our product team translates the bad stuff into product improvements. So we’re seeing our NPS scores improve over time because we’re constantly trying to make our stuff better.”
Show your appreciation
Acknowledging detractors’ efforts to share feedback can go a long way. Discounts, gift cards, and free services can demonstrate goodwill and tip the balance from detractor to promoter. It may even turn them into happy and loyal customers someday.
What are detractors FAQ
How do you identify detractors?
The easiest way to clearly identify detractors is through NPS surveys that ask existing customers to rank how likely they’d be to recommend a brand to a friend on a scale of 0–10. Every rating from 0–6 indicates a detractor, 7–8 shows passives, and those ranking 9–10 are promoters. But you don’t always need to conduct a formal NPS survey to identify detractors; you can also find them speaking out in social media posts or leaving negative reviews with your customer service team.
How do you calculate the influence of detractors?
The thing about detractors is that they tend to be quite vocal. Their vocal dissent can dissuade others from using your products or interacting with your brand, potentially harming your reputation, customer retention, and revenue. While there’s no precise formula to measure the ripple effect, you can track indicators such as negative review volume, social media reach, or churn rates after complaints. Together, these signals provide a practical way to gauge just how much weight detractor feedback carries.
How do you turn detractors into promoters?
With the right strategy, you can successfully turn detractors into promoters. To do so, you’ll need to solicit feedback and make it accessible, develop case management programs, invest in customer service tools and teams, close the loop to ensure efforts are in place to mitigate negative feedback, show your appreciation through discounts and free services, and learn from their customer feedback to improve your business over time.
What is an example of a detractor?
Detractors can take many forms. For instance, a customer who receives a late shipment and vents with a one-star review is a situational detractor—frustrated by a specific incident that might be resolved with a quick fix. Another example is an expectation-gap detractor, such as a shopper who assumed free shipping was included with their order and felt misled when it wasn’t. In other cases, detractors may be highly influential, like a blogger or social media personality who shares their poor service experience with a wide audience, amplifying the negative impact far beyond a single transaction.
