NPS - Why Net Promoter Score gets you in front of your customers.
NPS - Net Promoter Score is a great way to quantify how your customers see you. Ask one simple question and you get a nice number that can generally tell you how you are doing. CEOs love numbers, Boards love numbers, Marketing people love number - and if it’s good you should flaunt it! After working with NPS numbers for years I find the true value in the window NPS gives you to customers you wouldn’t otherwise hear from. It breaks the ice to repairing and celebrating your relationships.
What is the question and what is the math?
NPS is simply - How likely are you to recommend this product to your friends & colleagues? With an option to leave a comment.
0-6 - Detractors - These are the people who are not only not actively recommending your product, but they may be telling people that they don’t like it / ready to churn without you knowing.
7 - 8 - Passives - These people took the time to think about their answers and haven’t decided where they stand. They could go either way.
9 - 10 - Promoters - That’s it! Just 9s and 10s - these are the people who you should thank and celebrate so that they actually DO recommend you.
The number ranges from -100 to +100 and takes the % of Promoters - % of Detractors (and omits the passives)
If you have 100 people take your NPS Survey and you have:
35 Promoters
40 Passives
25 Detractors
That’s 35% - 25% - so your NPS = 10
Tools you will need
You can definitely just email people a link to a free survey or ask them to respond to your email to get the number, but there are a number of great services that can help you ask the question and dig into the responses. Some examples are Wootric, Delighted and Pendo.
With these tools you can tag your responses (and make sure those tags match with what your Product and Support teams are using!) and send automatic emails to responders. They also connect to CRMs and Support Managers like Salesforce and Intercom so you can get the complete picture of your customers.
Audience & Timing
Definitely ask the decision makers but don’t forget about the people who are using your product day to day. Make sure to ask all users and then you can separate into user and owner later.
It’s important to know that NPS is an ongoing, ever changing number. Ask the same group quarterly or have a rolling and constantly updating NPS that asks people every 3 or 6 months. I prefer rolling so that you have a constant stream of new feedback.
The most important part of NPS is opening the door to communicate with your customers in a new way!
There are definitely people out there who never call into support or post on social media about your product - NPS is a way to nudge them into a meaningful conversation with your entire team.
How to celebrate your Promoters
When your NPS is good you should tell people! Anything over 50 I’d say share far and wide.
For Example:
The EMBA program I graduated from, Quantic School of Business & Technology has a +67 NPS and they rightly and proudly have it up on their website.
When someone gives you a 9-10 they are saying that they would (and do) talk about the systems that make their life easier. You will want to say thank you / send them something / invite them to participate in groups.
Send an auto message right away saying thank you.
Ask for the physical address to send them swag.
Invite them to be a part of an Evangelist or Promoter program with discounts and referral bonuses.
Invite them to talk to your Product team about what they like.
Ask them to be on a Customer Advisory Board.
Ask them to be on a list to talk to prospective customers in the future.
Ask them to put their quotes / stores in your marketing materials.
Invite them to a select group of customers on Facebook or Slack.
Don’t forget to share any positive comments with your teams!
Create a Slack channel #kudos or #happycustomers and invite the entire company.
Call out when an employee is mentioned by name.
Share how products and changes are helping customers with your Engineers and Product teams - they can feel like they are working in a bubble and any real world validation is great.
How to nudge your Passives
Passives don’t count! It makes you re-think all the 7’s you’ve ever given and REALLY mean it when you give a 7 in the future. It’s easier to nudge a passive into a promoter than to nudge a detractor into a passive - so take the time to understand their issue.
Send an automatic email back to them with some suggestions on how to get the most out of your platform & some recent success stories.
Their comments are incredibly important.
Send personal email to follow up on specific comments.
Schedule phone call to walk through how they are using your product - often it is one or two things that they need to be aware of to improve their experience.
Assure them that you are listening and working on documentation to make the product easier to accomplish their goals (and actually do this).
How to take care of your Detractors
This is the sweet spot that will tell you everything you need to know about your product.
You might know some of your detractors as Support frequent flyers or social media posters, but you’ll be surprised about how many you don’t know. They are the people using it day to day who might know know who to reach out to on your team, or even that they CAN reach out to you for help and support.
Respond individually.
Respond to every detractor, you can use a template for the ones with no comments but make every response that has a comment personal.
If you can, call them right away.
Address their immediate issue but don’t forget to dig into the deeper issue.
Let them know they are heard.
Follow up with more information after your initial call.
If they are willing set them up with your Product team to talk about their needs.
Offer them time with a consultant or a member of your Success team to take a look at their workflows.
Ultimately, people are using your product to make their life easier. If they are frustrated it’s important to listen and react with empathy. If they can’t do their day to day work they probably have a boss who is worried about their performance or they have a customer or supporter that they are letting down. There are always many layers to the story and hearing them out first will leave you better prepared to address their issues.
Other best practices for Detractors
Don’t be afraid to say ‘No’.
It’s extremely frustrating to wait for a feature to change for years, it’s better to be honest with your customers and tell them that the exact thing they want isn’t happening. They can get over it and you can move on to helping them find a way to do their thing with your current product.
Clarify the question.
Inevitably, someone will respond with something like ‘Well I don’t just sit around recommending software to my friends!’ That’s cute, but the truth is that if the product is good they DO. If you make their life easier or make them more money they will 100% mention at a family BBQ that they were able to attend the BBQ because they no longer need to work on weekends. It feels awkward but people talk about work all the time.
Some others will be angry that you are interrupting their day to ask a question - if you are asking IN your application you can use the tools mentioned above to make sure the question doesn’t pop up on sensitive pages like email blasting and billing. You need to ask quarterly or every 6 months and that can definitely feel like a lot.
Be prepared with a response explaining why you are asking & be prepared to take people off your list
X, Thank you for your response. I’m sorry that our survey interrupted you during your day. It’s actually a really important tool for us to hear how our customers are doing and get feedback from people who we haven’t heard from in a while. We want to make sure that you are still getting everything you need from us. I can remove you from receiving the survey in the future but want to make sure that you know you can contact us via email or phone anytime and our team will get back to you. If you would like to send more feedback I’d be happy to schedule a call to talk through how you are using the product and we can go from there! Always here to help, Taylor
Ongoing
Once you start NPS you can’t stop. You need to be asking frequently and when people move up dive into what happened between the last time they took the survey and replicate it. I recommend having a person or a team responsible for the NPS number, they should be measured on its growth but also on churn numbers and number of customers saved. Give the team a platform to share what they are learning and share specific success stories with your entire company.
Everyone can rally around the number but make it clear that it’s the feedback and the connections you make with your customers that are really going to help you grow!
