One of the foremost metrics to assess business health, Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of customer loyalty. It’s a simple, numerical score that companies can use to track how likely their customers are to recommend their product or service to others.
Developed by Bain & Co. in 2003, NPS is comprised of two important questions:
The first question is specific and should not be altered. It asks customers to rate their experience on a scale of 0-10. Based on their selection, the customer will fall into 1 of 3 buckets:
To calculate your final NPS, tally up all of the scores and subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. For example, if 70% of respondents are promoters, 10% are detractors, and 20% are passives, your NPS would be 70-10=60.
The higher your score, the better your NPS. The better your NPS, the more loyal your customers.
The open-ended question is perhaps more important than the score itself, as it gives customers an opportunity to share feedback in their own words. It goes beyond a simple “Yes/No” response and lets users provide more detail about their experience.
When asking the open-ended question, we suggest dynamically altering the question based on the user’s score. For example:
Promoters:
Passives:
Detractors:
It’s important to seek out feedback from your customers on a regular basis so you can learn how they’re using your product. It also helps you uncover issues quickly and rapidly iterate to meet your customers’ demands.
How often you ask for feedback will depend on your business. Some companies may request feedback after every interaction with a customer, while others might do so less frequently (once a quarter, once a year, etc.).
Asking for feedback does not always need to be in the form of an NPS survey. Maybe you only want to send a formal NPS survey once per customer, or once per year. If that’s the case, you can still collect feedback in informal ways throughout the customer’s lifecycle. You might do this during your customer support interactions, through an in-app feedback button, or through a dedicated email.
The NPS flow consists of two emails:
After you finish the feedback collection process, consider closing the loop with any customers who answered the open-ended question. Remember that they took time to share their thoughts in an effort to help your company improve, so you owe it to them to respond to any remaining questions or actionable feedback.