The Value of Identifying Detractors and What to Do Once You’ve Found Them

September 16, 2025

In the world of SaaS, customer loyalty is everything. A strong product and clever marketing may attract users, but it’s loyalty that sustains recurring revenue. That’s why metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) are so widely used: they provide a clear signal of how customers feel about your product. But the real power of NPS lies not in the promoters—it lies in identifying and acting on your detractors.

Detractors, the customers who rate your product 0–6 on the NPS scale, are more than just unhappy users. They represent early warning signs of churn, potential damage to your brand reputation, and lost revenue opportunities. This article explores why identifying detractors is so valuable for SaaS companies and outlines practical steps you can take once you’ve found them.

What Are NPS Detractors?

Net Promoter Score categorizes respondents into three groups:

• Promoters (9–10): Loyal enthusiasts who are likely to recommend your product.

• Passives (7–8): Satisfied but indifferent customers who could switch to a competitor.

• Detractors (0–6): Unhappy customers who are at risk of churn and may share negative experiences.

Detractors are particularly important to SaaS businesses because their dissatisfaction directly impacts retention and growth. While promoters help spread the word and drive expansion, detractors silently erode your revenue base.

Why Identifying Detractors Is Valuable

1. Early Warning of Churn

Churn is the number one growth killer for SaaS companies. By identifying detractors, you gain an early signal of which accounts are at risk of leaving. Acting quickly gives you a chance to save the relationship before it’s too late.

2. Honest Feedback for Product Improvement

Detractors are often brutally honest about what isn’t working. Their comments highlight gaps in your onboarding, usability, pricing, or support. These pain points may be uncomfortable to hear, but they are essential to long-term improvement.

3. Opportunity to Win Back Trust

Reaching out to detractors demonstrates that you care. Even if their issue can’t be fixed immediately, the act of listening and responding can rebuild trust. Some detractors can even become promoters if their concerns are addressed quickly and effectively.

4. Protecting Brand Reputation

Unhappy customers talk. They leave negative reviews, post complaints on social media, and warn peers in their industry. By spotting detractors early, you can manage reputational risk and prevent issues from snowballing.

5. Driving Cultural Alignment

When you surface detractor feedback across your company, it aligns teams around a common goal: improving the customer experience. Engineers, product managers, marketers, and executives all see the same unfiltered voice of the customer.

Actions to Take Once Detractors Are Identified

Simply knowing who your detractors are isn’t enough. You need a structured approach to turn insights into action. Here’s how SaaS companies can respond effectively:

1. Close the Loop with Detractors

Follow up directly with detractors to acknowledge their feedback. This can be as simple as an email or a call from a customer success manager. The goal is to show that their voice matters and to dig deeper into the root cause of their dissatisfaction.

• Thank them for their feedback, even if it’s negative.

• Ask clarifying questions to understand the issue.

• Communicate what steps you will take to address it.

Closing the loop transforms the survey from a one-way data collection exercise into a meaningful conversation.

2. Segment and Prioritize Issues

Not all detractors have the same concerns. Segment their feedback by theme—onboarding, feature gaps, support delays, pricing confusion—and prioritize based on frequency and impact. This ensures that your team focuses on solving the problems that matter most to customers.

• Offer personal onboarding help to frustrated users.

• Provide early access to requested features.

• Involve them in customer advisory boards.

• Following up to show how their feedback drove product improvements.

3. Empower Customer Success Teams

Give your customer success team real-time visibility into detractor responses. With this knowledge, they can proactively reach out, provide additional training, or offer tailored solutions to keep customers engaged. A well-timed intervention can mean the difference between churn and renewal.

4. Feed Insights to Product Management

Product teams need to hear the voice of the detractor. Their feedback often reveals usability issues, missing functionality, or poor feature adoption. By sharing detractor insights directly with product managers, you ensure that roadmap decisions are guided by real customer needs.

5. Train Support and Sales Teams

Detractor feedback can highlight training gaps for customer-facing teams. If customers are consistently frustrated by onboarding or feature explanations, your support and sales enablement materials may need revision.

6. Measure Recovery Success

Track whether detractors you’ve engaged with improve over time. Do they move into the passive or promoter category after interventions? Measuring recovery success helps refine your approach and demonstrates the ROI of proactive engagement.

Practical Examples of Acting on Detractor Feedback

Consider a few scenarios common in SaaS businesses:

• Onboarding Issues: Detractors complain about confusion during setup. The solution may be clearer tutorials, interactive guides, or dedicated onboarding support.

• Feature Gaps: Customers rate low because a competitor offers a missing capability. The product team can use this feedback to prioritize development.

• Poor Support Response Times: Detractors express frustration at delayed responses. Investing in support staffing or automation tools can address this pain.

• Pricing Concerns: Some customers feel the value doesn’t justify the cost. This may require clearer communication of ROI or adjustments to packaging.

In each case, detractor insights act as a roadmap for meaningful change.

Turning Detractors into Promoters

While it may sound ambitious, many companies successfully transform detractors into promoters. The key is swift action and genuine care. When customers see that their voice leads to improvements, they often become more loyal than those who never had issues in the first place.

Some strategies include:

• Offering personal onboarding help to frustrated users.

• Providing early access to requested features.

• Involving them in customer advisory boards.

• Following up to show how their feedback drove product improvements.

These actions turn negative experiences into positive stories customers are eager to share.

Common Mistakes to Avoid with Detractors

While engaging with detractors can be powerful, there are pitfalls to avoid:

• Ignoring the feedback: Asking for input but failing to respond damages trust.

• Being defensive: Customers don’t want excuses; they want solutions.

• Over-automating responses: Generic replies feel impersonal. Balance automation with genuine human follow-up.

• Failing to share insights internally: If detractor feedback stays siloed, systemic issues persist.

The Strategic Value of Detractors

It’s tempting to focus only on promoters, but detractors provide unmatched strategic value. They expose weaknesses you might otherwise overlook, they give you a chance to prevent churn, and they push your organization to continuously improve. For SaaS companies competing in crowded markets, detractors are not just critics—they are guides to building a stronger product and customer experience.

Conclusion

Identifying detractors through NPS isn’t about tracking a score. It’s about understanding who is unhappy, why they feel that way, and what you can do to fix it. By treating detractors as opportunities rather than threats, SaaS companies can reduce churn, improve product-market fit, and even create some of their strongest advocates.

Don’t let detractor feedback sit in a dashboard. Take action, close the loop, and use those insights to build the kind of SaaS product customers love to recommend.

Want to spot detractors in real time and act before they churn? Sensaro — the easiest way for SaaS teams to collect NPS feedback, identify detractors, and turn customer insights into growth.