The NPS or Net Promoter Score survey is a method of measuring your customers’ overall satisfaction with your company’s product or service and a proxy for brand loyalty.
The survey itself is simple. Customers are asked one single question, “On a scale of 0–10, how likely are you to recommend this company’s product or service to a friend or colleague?” Based on their rating, the customers are classified into one of three categories; Detractors, Passives and Promoters.
Promoters answered 9 or 10 and are the repeat buyers and evangelists who recommend your products and services. Passives give a score of 7 or8. They probably wouldn’t spread any negative word of mouth, but also aren’t enthusiastic enough to promote. The Detractors answered a score lower to or equal to 6. They most likely won’t purchase again from your company and could potentially damage your reputation through negative word of mouth.
When should you send users an NPS survey?
Since NPS is a measure of overall satisfaction, it is best sent after the customer has achieved a meaningful milestone with your product. Ideally after their first “aha” moment in your product. Many B2B companies send NPS just after the customer has completed the on-boarding process. Sending before that won’t give you any meaningful feedback as they haven’t really been exposed to your product or service.
It’s important to survey users at the key moments in their journey with your product, from onboarding all the way through adoption and expanding into new features. Learn more in our ebook, Best Practices for Effective Product Experiences.
How often should you send an NPS survey?
This is one of those “it depends” types scenarios. Some advocate for no more than every 6 months, some recommend quarterly. The right answer comes down to how frequently do you introduce new products or services that will truly impact a customers perception and what is the time it takes for those customers to realize value from those products? To provide your customers with the best experience and you with the most actionable feedback, we recommend sending NPS surveys on a user by user basis as a result of them using your product. This is in contrast to a more static approach where you send an NPS on a fixed cadence such as quarterly, or semi-annually to all customers.
What do I do with NPS?
NPS is a signal and should be measured over-time. The fact that it’s a high level company indication, the score alone should be used as a flag to raise triggering further investigation. The more important learnings come the qualitative feedback your customers provide as well as speaking directly with a sample of customers from the promoter and detractor groups. For organizations that serve multiple customer segments and/or have multiple user personas, it’s important to analyze and understand how each of those groups respond.
NPS is but one of many in-app engagement tools available within Gainsight PX.
