Measure & Improve Customer Satisfaction with Net Promoter Score

What is NPS?

The Net Promoter Score is based on customer responses to the following question:

“How likely is it that you would recommend [your company or product] to a friend or colleague?”

Respondents choose their likelihood on a scale of 0 to 10 with 0 being not at all likely to refer and 10 being highly likely to refer.

• Users who answer a 0 to 6 on the Net Promoter Score scale are called “Detractors” and are unlikely to refer to your business or will actively go out of their way to not recommend or dissuade a friend or associate from using the product.
• Users who answer a 7 or 8 on the Net Promoter Score scale are called “Passives” and are not likely to refer you to a friend when the opportunity arises. They have a neutral opinion when a friend asks about their experience.
• Users who answer 9 and 10 are called “Promoters”. They are brand loyalists and ambassadors who will go out of their way to refer a friend or associate to a product or service.

How do I calculate my NPS?

The Net Promoter Score is calculated by taking the percentage of promoters (the 9s and 10s) and subtracting it from the percentage of detractors. The final score is based on 100.

NPS = Percentage of Promoters (i.e., scores 9-10) - Percentage of Detractors (i.e., score 1-6)

*Scores 7-8 are considered neutral.

What is a good NPS?

A good NPS is any score above 0. It is because it indicates that at least some of your customers are loyal.

Any score above 20 is considered a ‘favorable score’, a score above 50 is seen as ‘very good’, and any score above 80 is deemed ‘Excellent.’

Should I Use a Net Promoter Score for My Business?

Some people argue that Net Promoter Score is inaccurate or not detailed enough to capture true customer sentiment. Despite these arguments, many companies make Net Promoter Score a part of their customer satisfaction assessment.

Whether you ask additional questions to get more detailed insights into brand loyalty is up to you, but at a minimum, calculating your Net Promoter Score is a good way to assess your business and find areas to improve it.

One other benefit of asking the Net Promoter Score is that you are able to compare yourself against industry NPS benchmarks and scores of the most popular companies in the world.

Who Should I Ask to Take the Net Promoter Score Survey?

The Net Promoter Score is often asked via an email, mail or phone survey to existing customers. But with Qualaroo, you can also ask the website visitors while on the site.

NPS requires you to have customers' email addresses and permission to email them. This often represents a very small subset of the total number of people that come to your website, meaning you will be unable to gauge your brand perception with the larger audience of people visiting and using your website or product.

Qualaroo helps companies get a broader view of their Net Promoter Score by asking website visitors via a WEBSITE SURVEY. You can conduct NPS on any page or from any traffic source or other attribute.

For example, using Qualaroo’s geo-targeting capability, you can access the Net Promoter Score across different countries and with Mobile Surveys, you could assess the difference in Net Promoter Score for mobile visitors versus their desktop customers.

How Often Should I Survey for Net Promoter Score?

Net Promoter Score is worth surveying for NPS on a time basis as well as on a lifecycle basis. For a time basis, asking your customer base every quarter is a good way to gauge how your product and brand is performing over time.

To ascertain NPS in the customer lifecycle, you’ll want to identify the most critical points in the buyer journey and ask the NPS question at those points. For example, asking NPS immediately after trial, after purchase, 30-days post purchase, six months post purchase, etc. will help you identify the ups and downs of the customer lifecycle and identify areas to improve their satisfaction.