Nick Allen

Your Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a great tool.
Don’t screw it up.
It can be a great way to keep tabs on your overall customer health, see how you are comparing to your industry peers, and understand whether you have product market fit in the early days.

But if you’re going to do it, do it well.
Here’s my dos and don’ts.

𝗗𝗼 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗽𝗽 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴
Emails are often ignored, so to ensure high response rates consider a multi mode cascading campaign. That last sentence sounds like a bit much but it just means: use an in-app modal to survey them, then an email for those that don’t respond or visit the app that week. Once they’ve responded to the email, remove the alert and prompt from within your app or product.

𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗮𝘀𝗸 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
If you have customers that have an open support ticket or just recently resolved and issue, don’t fire off that NPS survey. As it will skew their opinion.

𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗡𝗣𝗦
In a previous role, all teams were measured on post interaction NPS scores. You can imagine how difficult it was for the customer success team who polled customers straight after a complaint to compete with the sponsorship team who would polled customers straight after attending a rugby match, concert or some fantastic live event. Use other metrics here like issue resolution score.

𝗗𝗼 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝗴𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆
Lock in a quarterly survey for 25% of your customer base, 6 months after they start. Send regularly so that you can see quarter on quarter change.

𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
Don’t colour your survey like this 🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🟠🟠🟢🟢.
👎
Or, label each end with “1, unlikely, you’re terrible, I hate you” and “10, highly likely, I love your product”.
👎

𝗗𝗼 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁
Ask the question: “ How likely are you to recommend [Company Name] to a friend or colleague?
Then label the ends: “0 being not at all likely” and “10 extremely likely”.

𝗗𝗼 𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝘂𝗽
Set automation to route non promoters straight to your customer success experts for follow up. Route promoters to give you a star rating on Google.

𝗗𝗼 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀 𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿
Share across your organisation and if you are in an industry that is not incredibly small, compare your results to industry standards.

𝗗𝗼 𝗿𝘂𝗻 𝗲𝗡𝗣𝗦 𝘁𝗼𝗼
With the same emphasis, polling your employees each quarter can show symptoms of deeper problems or become a great promotional metric for recruiting.

𝗗𝗼 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗮 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀
If you’re after some cool tech that can do this for you well. Check out our home grown option in New Zealand, AskNicely. Or Customer.io who have this and some great multimodal functionality for messaging customers throughout their journey.