Customer loyalty measures the level of trust and satisfaction your customers have with your brand. And what’s more, it fosters a sense of community and belonging, which leads to long-term relationships AND long-term growth. And that – my friends – makes the use of customer loyalty as a metric a huge game changer. By actively monitoring loyalty levels with Net Promoter Score (NPS) with NPS surveys, organisations can keep a pulse on customer sentiment and take the appropriate actions when things aren’t going smoothly.
Despite their popularity, however, NPS surveys are – quite often – used ineffectively in certain situations, causing organisations to miss out on their full potential.
So what goes into making an effective NPS survey? Let’s dive in.
In this post, we will address the following:
- What is an NPS survey?
- The benefits of using an NPS survey
- When to send NPS surveys
- NPS survey questions and templates
- NPS survey software
What is an NPS survey?
An NPS Survey is a type of online survey that is widely used by organisations to measure the likelihood of a customer recommending a company, product or service to others, whether that’s family members, friends or colleagues. The survey itself typically consists of a question along the lines of “How likely are you to recommend us to…” presented in a scale from 0 to 10. Depending on their answer, the customers are categorised into one of three groups: Promoters (score of 9 or 10), Passive (score of 7 or 8) or Detractors (score between 0 and 6).
From these scores, an NPS score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters, which results in a score that ranges from -100 to +100. This metric provides a clear indication of customer satisfaction and loyalty, enabling businesses to identify areas for improvement and drive strategies to enhance customer experience.
Benefits of using NPS surveys
That being said, the use of NPS surveys offers up a lot of benefits for organisations seeking to understand and boost customer satisfaction and loyalty. Here are a few of the most noteworthy:
- Enables you to quickly assess customer sentiment. Thanks to the rating, you can quickly and easily measure your current loyalty levels, as well as rises and drops in sentiment over time.
- Makes it easy to measure loyalty over time. Your NPS rating will fluctuate and if you use software with a good dashboarding solution, you can easily monitor how this score fluctuates and determine loyalty levels over time.
- Allows for benchmarking against industry standards. Because NPS is widely used, you can easily benchmark your NPS industry standards and competitors.
- Helps drive strategic decisions and improvements. By monitoring your NPS and deep diving into the why behind the rise and fall of your NPS, you can make more data-driven and strategic decisions that benefit the online experience.
- Enhances customer retention. Listening to the feedback of your most loyal customers will not only nurture their loyalty, but also provide you with the data-driven insights you’ll need to provide your new customers with a smooth online experience.
- Outperform your competitors. Yep, you read that right. According to a study by Bain & Company, “companies with high NPS scores tend to experience double-digit growth rates, outperforming their competitors”.
When to send NPS surveys
From a practical perspective, however, not all NPS-loving organisations are clear on when to gather this feedback. Let me put it this way, slapping an NPS survey on just about every page of your website will likely do more harm than good.
The timing of NPS surveys is therefore a critical factor in obtaining accurate and valuable feedback from your customers. Putting an NPS survey on your homepage, for example, would serve little to no value as your homepage is a place of discovery and navigation. There is no experience to give loyalty feedback on just yet. See what I mean?
That being said, there are a number of different tactics organisations must use to get the most out of their NPS surveys. Here are a few do’s and don’ts:
Do:
- Send your surveys shortly after a significant interaction. This way the interaction is still fresh in the customer’s mind, enabling them to give you accurate and action-specific feedback. This timing also ensures a higher response rate. Bonus!
- Send NPS surveys at regular intervals. NPS is an emotional metric, so it’s important to gauge how your customer’s emotions fluctuate overtime. By measuring NPS regularly, you can quickly gauge when your scores are dropping or rising and take action accordingly.
- Send NPS surveys to customers in similar stages (for uniformity). This will give you sharper insights into who your detractors are and what made them one in that particular stage. With that information you can improve that stage of the funnel if needed.
Don’t:
- Send NPS surveys too frequently. Ever heard of survey fatigue? None of your customers want to be spammed with frequent surveys, especially when there hasn’t been enough time for their sentiment towards your brand to change.
- Send your survey as soon as someone becomes a customer. It’s too soon for a new customer to have developed any strong emotions towards your brand, so why grill them with questions about how loyal they are?
- Send NPS to your customer base in an email blast. Email blasts are a tricky subject. Sending NPS surveys to your customers in bulk means that you cannot tailor your surveys to customers depending on the stage of the customer journey they’re in.
What this illustrates is that there is a fine line between when it’s the right time to send a survey and when you’re better off just waiting. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the structure of your NPS surveys by laying out some sample NPS survey questions.
NPS survey questions and templates
When it comes to Net Promoter Score, there are two types of surveys you can use: Relational NPS and Transactional NPS.
Relational NPS
As you might guess from the name, relational NPS gathers data on the overall relationship between your customer and your brand. In other words, this type of NPS survey gives you a general overview of customer satisfaction. Relational NPS is typically monitored regularly (either annually, bi-annually or quarterly) in order to measure progress overtime.
Relational NPS Survey Questions:
- On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our company/product/service overall?
- How long have you been a customer/user of our product/service?
- What are the main reasons you continue to choose our company/product/service?
- Can you share any specific experiences or interactions that have stood out to you during your time with us?
- Are there any areas where you feel we could improve our overall service or offerings?
- How likely are you to explore other products/services we offer in the future?
Transactional NPS
Transactional NPS, on the other hand, measures satisfaction on a more granular level. This type of NPS takes a closer look at specific interactions your customer has had with your brand. For example, making a purchase or contact with your support team.
Transactional NPS Survey Questions:
- On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our company/product/service based on your recent interaction?
- What was the most significant factor that influenced your score?
- Was there a specific team member who assisted you during this interaction? If so, please mention their name.
- Did our product/service meet your expectations for this transaction?
- Is there anything specific we could have done differently to improve your experience?
Learn more about the differences between Relational vs Transactional NPS surveys here.
Think you’re better off using Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) as a metric? Check out our post including the best CSAT survey questions.
NPS survey software
So where to start? First things first. If you don’t already have survey software in place, you’ll want to set that up. There are a number of great survey software that offer NPS templates and triggering options that are great for asking for NPS. Here are few of our favourites:
Mopinion
Mopinion is a feedback software for website, email and mobile apps that not only offers solutions for creating online surveys such as NPS, but also provides its users with in-depth analysis opportunities. With real-time data visualisation in customisable dashboards and charts, users are able to quickly and efficiently digest large sums of (NPS) feedback data on all their digital channels including website, mobile apps and email. The solution also offers a number of ready-to-use survey templates for gathering NPS (among other scores).
Standout features:
- Easy-to-use interface
- Build customisable forms with drag-and-drop functionality
- Conversational, chat-like feedback forms (a.k.a. conversational feedback)
- Visual Feedback
- More complex surveys that include question routing
- In-depth analysis, including text analytics, sentiment analysis, smart labelling, etc.
- Advanced data visualisation with in-chart filtering and customisable dashboards
- Seamless data exploration
- Integrates seamlessly with applications such as Slack, Google Analytics, Jira, HubSpot, Salesforce, etc.
- Advanced action management
Interested? Start your free trial today or request a demo.
AskNicely
AskNicely is an NPS software that collects feedback on a daily basis using one-off survey blasts. The ‘leaderboards’ allow users to segment and categorise different channels, employees and products to assess performance. It can be integrated with your CRM or homegrown support software, from which you can respond directly.
Standout features:
- Easy set up
- Intuitive interface
- Responses are easy to track
Website: www.asknicely.com
Qualtrics
Qualtrics – which recently acquired Clarabridge – is an experience management software with solutions available for customer experience and employee experience. With this solution, users can create and customise their own NPS surveys or choose from a library of 100+ question types. This AI-powered solution offers a lot of listening insights and is able to detect both emotion and intent.
Standout features:
- Text and sentiment analytics
- AI-fueled insights
- Linguistic categorisation
- Emotion and intent detection
- Summarises data from all digital platforms
Website: www.qualtrics.com
Qualaroo
Qualaroo is a VoC tool that mainly collects feedback data via (micro)surveys. These surveys are quite easy to build and design using Qualaroo’s library of questions and various customisation options. Users also have the ability to target particular audiences, make use of intelligent question branching, and review the results in an easy-to-handle dashboard.
The main focus is on collecting the data. There is no focus on analysing it, but Qualaroo does offer an integration with IBM Watson for analysis. However, that comes at a cost.
Standout features:
- Advanced targeting functionality
- Vast question library
- Automatic language translation
Website: www.qualaroo.com
SurveySparrow
SurveySparrow’s voice of customer software helps users build and implement a great VoC program. The tool has multiple user interfaces such as chat-like surveys and conversational forms. Users can quickly make surveys, and are able to choose from different question models. Using different survey themes, you can easily design and customise the look of your Voice of Customer survey to reflect your brand’s personality.
Standout features:
- Conversational surveys
- Mobile-first surveys
- Recurring survey feature
Website: www.surveysparrow.com
Measure NPS when and where it matters
And there you have it. No matter which software you choose, NPS surveys are an important tool for measuring and monitoring customer loyalty levels on your digital channels. By actively measuring and prioritising customer loyalty, your organisation can garner invaluable insights into your strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement.
Ready to give your NPS a boost? With Mopinion you can get your Net Promoter Score surveys up and running in no-time. Our user-friendly software guides you through the process of designing custom surveys that are sure to reel in the insights you need for an improved experience. Once that data is collected, you and your team can easily monitor the results in detail in our built-in dashboard and reporting solutions. Everything you need all in one place!
Ready to see Mopinion in action?
Want to learn more about Mopinion’s all-in-1 user feedback platform? Don’t be shy and take our software for a spin! Do you prefer it a bit more personal? Just book a demo. One of our feedback pro’s will guide you through the software and answer any questions you may have.
