Many organisations use Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) as a tool that can be used to help them gauge the loyalty of their customer relationships. As a metric it has been widely adopted by organisations since its introduction in 2003 in the Harvard Business Review article "One Number You Need to Grow" by Fred Reichheld.

In this blog we'll give you some quick tips to get NPS right in your organisation.

Timing is important

Whilst you want the feedback make sure that you don’t send the survey too early. Customers will need chance to experience your product or brand to form a meaningful opinion. Think about the actions your customers have taken in engaging with your product or service and schedule your survey to be sent accordingly.

Don't forget frequency

The frequency with which you survey your customers will also have an impact on your NPS score. Measuring frequently is important as a customer score might change through their customer journey. Measuring too frequently can give you too many data points and at worst annoy your customers. There is no right answer on frequency but whatever works for your business, try to find some consistency in your approach.

Use different channels

Most NPS surveys tend to get sent out by email, by text message or within a app used for the interaction. Bear in mind that the channel may vary depending on where your customers are in their journey. You may also need to follow up with customers who have not responded in one channel by making contact with them through another.

Ensure a meaningful sample

Think about whether you have adequate representation from the customer segments that matter to your business? Make sure that your data represents a representative sample size of customers that experience the particular touch point that you are looking to survey. Also remember that sending out 'batch' surveys will reach your customers at many different stages of their engagement lifecycle. Instead be guided by the touchpoints based on the customer lifecycle stage.

Link to your customer journey

It can be tempting to send out the NPS survey to your customers and hope for the best. How and when you ask for feedback shouldn't be an isolated process but part of your customer journey (s). Use the information you gain from customer surveys to help you evidence and understand how you perform during "moments that matter" along the customer journey. Then work on that feedback to improve.

Think about your results

It can be tempting to focus solely on your negative results - your detractors, but forget about your promoters. Your promoters are technically the most enthusiastic about your product or service and in answering the NPS survey have show they are willing to recommend you to others based on that transaction. There may be examples where you can leverage their advocacy to recommend your brand or products to others.

Be careful with benchmarking

Probably the most meaningful analysis is to review your historical NPS scores over time to see how they are improving. You may need to conduct deeper analysis or other types of customer research to understand why. NPS and other customer survey metrics can be benchmarked with other organisations but you will need to carefully consider the other conditions used by benchmark companies when surveying their customers as no one approach is the same.

Please note

Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

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