The rating system in an NPS Survey
Detractors, Passives and Promoters
How to choose your NPS Survey type
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a survey tool to understand customer satisfaction and loyalty. A business can unearth customer perception of their product or service by employing two main questions.
The first question qualifies the customers to best value or rates the product or service's performance. While the second question explores why the customer has selected the performance rating, looking for feedback or justification for the response.
Two main questions are used within the standard NPS survey, and the first you can see in an Upflowy flow below:
How likely are you to recommend X business to a friend or colleague?
Depending on the response chosen and painting a clearer picture of the customer’s perception, a secondary question is asked:
What is the main reason for your score?
NPS Surveys use a standard 0 to 10 rating system.
The responses to the first question will qualify your audience into one of three categories:
Detractors, Passives and Promoters.
Detractors have responded to the survey with responses 0 - 6.
Detractors are not satisfied with the quality of your product or service. This category requires outreach to better understand where you failed them and potentially minimise damage to the brand through social sharing and review sites.
Passives responded to your survey with 7 or 8.
Passives are on the fence about your product but could be warmed up to your product. The group are susceptible to competitive offerings, discounts and incentives.
Passives require a personal touch, and companies should prioritise a feedback call. These customers can answer why they’re not promoters and could influence your product roadmap, feature lists, payment plans and more! You can turn a passive into a promoter!
Promoters responded with 9 or 10. Great stuff!
Promoters love your product or service. They are loyal and would be very likely to re-up with you again. A Promoter has excellent potential to be an advocate customer, whether through word of mouth, software listings sites, or general reviews.
Promoters may share their story with your product or service as a case study, or even share their experience on their own social media service.
The NPS score is calculated with an equation. The responses from the customers are collected and then input into the following equation:
Total percentage of detractors minus the total percentage of promoters.
% of Detractors - % Promoters
An NPS score can range between 100 to -100, a spectrum of 200. A high NPS score is good, but a high NPS score accompanied by high customer retention is even better. The score by itself is not enough to go on. There are more data points and metrics that tell more of a story.
A score is only as good as the context that it sits in. When you are able to calculate your NPS score from the equation above, you can compare it to previous NPS scores you’ve received about your business or specific products, but it’s helpful to compare against competitors.
Within the industry of software, according to delighted.com:
There are two types of NPS Surveys, relational and transactional.
A relational NPS Survey is done regularly (quarterly or annually) to understand the trends of customer perceptions. These surveys are often benchmarked against previous scores. For companies that offer an ongoing service that is subscription based, a relationship survey is a better option to map trends and perceptions of your customer base.
A transactional NPS survey is done immediately after a customer has interacted with the company. The goal is to understand the customer satisfaction of a specific context or topic. This could be the release of a new product or a campaign around a discount. A transactional NPS service is best utilized with a one-off service.
The best way to calculate NPS is by using one of these three methods:
Website Survey
You can use a website survey to get regular customer feedback if you have an online presence. This allows you to quickly gather customer feedback regularly.
Email Survey
An email survey to your current customers can also be an effective delivery method. Remember that you may not get as many responses as you would from a website survey.
If you want to know how satisfied your current customers are with your product or service, an NPS survey will be helpful. You might also want to conduct surveys to find out more about your customers, such as their demographics, buying habits, and preferences regarding your product or service.
You’ll need to conduct regular relational surveys to track the trends over time. If you want to work towards increasing your customer retention, you might also want to conduct surveys that ask your customers what they like and dislike about your business.
To go one step further, your survey could include follow-up questions that take minimal effort to answer and leaves room for open-ended responses. Understanding more about your customer’s opinions can help business decisions and strategies. Within the Upflowy NPS template, follow-up questions have been included.
An NPS survey can do more than just find out how satisfied your customers are. It can help you to:
- Find out what customers like about your business
- Find out what customers don’t like about your business
- Find out how well-informed your customers are about your product or service
- Find out how satisfied your customers are with your customer support
- Find out how well your product or service meets their needs
- Find out where you can improve your marketing strategy
This does depend on the type of NPS Survey that is being sent. If the survey is relational, the NPS survey at least once every quarter (three months). This will allow you to track your progress and see which areas need improvement. Alternatively, you can send an NPS survey with each new purchase with the transactional survey. This means that you’ll have a higher response rate.
It’s essential to send your surveys at the right time. To maximize your survey results, it’s best to send the survey when your customers have just made a purchase. You’ll also want to ensure that your customers know they are taking an NPS survey. It’s also important to let your customers know that you appreciate their feedback.
After conducting an NPS survey, you must follow up on your customers to let them know you’re grateful for their feedback. You can also use your customers’ feedback to improve your business. Making changes from the feedback can help turn that promoter respondent into an advocate customer, helping develop word-of-mouth marketing efforts.
If you’re looking to turn a promoter respondent into a brand evangelist or ambassador, we’ve got an article in the pipeline covering just that!
NPS is a simple but insightful metric that will help you to understand how likely your customers are to recommend your company to others. It’s essential to track your NPS over time to see how effective your efforts are towards increasing your NPS.
An NPS survey will help determine how satisfied your customers are with your product or service. It can also help you discover what customers like about your business and what they don’t like.
Are you interested in trying an Upflowy NPS Survey template today?