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In our Net Promoter Score articles, we talk about ways to use NPS surveys to improve the customer lifecycle and increase the accuracy of survey results.
A common mistake that is made in relation to NPS surveys is to pay attention purely to the statistical evaluation, but not to take a closer look at the results and further feedback.
In addition to the survey result itself, there are some important factors to consider.
Adjust the timing to the situation
For example, if the survey of new trial customers is only carried out as part of the quarterly customer satisfaction survey. In most cases, the feedback is only given by the customers who had already decided to stick with it anyway.
In other words, the customers who tried the product or service and, for one reason or another, decided not to continue, were long gone.
Feedback from lost customers is just as important to a business' growth as feedback left by active customers. In fact, in some ways, critical feedback is even more important for companies looking to improve their products and services.
It is therefore very important to adapt the customer survey to the respective touchpoint in order to make it possible to listen to every customer, not just the promoters.
Know the target group
Another example is the frequently asked question: "Which customers should we survey?", or "How many customers should we survey?".
In short: all.
While it is very important to segment customers according to their rating after the survey, directing the survey itself only to a specific group of customers leads to a distorted NPS value in most cases.
It is always a good idea to survey all customers, visitors and prospects in order to achieve maximum results.
Why EVERY customer counts
The Net Promoter survey differs from a traditional survey in that it is not an exercise in statistical analysis. This is a fact that is often overlooked and can have a major negative impact on your results.
Within the Net Promoter system, ALL customers count.
Of course, especially with a large customer base, the thought may arise that it is sufficient to survey a certain percentage of customers. This part would provide sufficient results and can then simply be considered a representative result due to the large number of respondents.
Of course, with a larger number of respondents, you also get more feedback and are likely to be able to draw specific conclusions from the answers, but interviewing only a subset of customers would skew the value obtained since you cannot see in advance which of your customers are the promoters and which is the critics, and thus have no opportunity to survey a balanced set of customers.
Unless you're only interested in your NPS score, it's just a bad idea not to survey all customers.
NPS isn't about high-level aggregated statistics, it's about your customer's personal choice to tell you what you're doing right or wrong from their individual perspective.
There is no decreasing value scale for additional responses like traditional surveys, on the contrary. The more customers you survey with NPS, the more results you get, the more valuable the survey increases. Simply put, more feedback means more personalized responses to receive and implement.
With NPS there is no "too much feedback" even if it is 10x more than you think is necessary. There has never been a company that failed because of too much meaningful customer input.
This needn't worry those who focus on statistical results, the added benefit of running your NPS campaign correctly is that it creates statistical relevance by itself.
Of course, there are always understandable concerns, such as when your customer base consists of less active, non-paying, and active paying customers, and you don't want to skew the results by mixing the two together.
It would be wrong not to ask trial customers, because surprisingly, it is precisely these customers who provide you with the important information on how and where you need to carry out optimizations. Finding out why these customers are inactive can multiply your sales. Therefore, segment your customers into various groups and simply create separate campaigns for each group that run parallel to each other.
Other concerns are understandable when it comes to further processing of the feedback and the fear of not being able to process this feedback. Responding to each customer personally can indeed take a lot of time. However, this is an effort that should be high on the priority list because it will pay off.
A survey based on NPS is also viewed critically because it is unclear how the mass of customer feedback can be properly viewed and evaluated in order to actually show valuable information for improvements.
Here it is advisable to categorize the answers using keywords.
Tagging feedback trends is as simple as identifying what your customer is talking about (e.g. customer service, price, product, etc.) and assigning a sentiment (positive, neutral, negative). Your tagging efforts will all pay off, allowing you to narrow the feedback down to the most critical insights and start implementing efficiently.
If used correctly, the NPS will be your most important tool for efficiently and successfully increasing customer lifespan, avoiding churn and making your company even more attractive to many new customers.