18 Sep
Note: If you already have NPS setup and running and just want to know how to turn NPS responses into good product reviews, go ahead and skip to the the last section.
What is NPS
NPS (Net Promoter Score) is a type of survey that many companies use to gauge the overall satisfaction of their customers. It is broken down into three categories: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors.
Promoters as you could guess is someone who overall has a good experience with your product and is denoted by a quantitative score of (9 or 10). Passives (7 or 8) are people who are on the fence. Detractors (0-6) are people who are not having a good experience with your product.
The good news is, they are at least letting you know they aren’t happy! The worst case scenario usually lies in the realm of silent customers — who aren’t even engaged enough to let you know they are not happy and thus do not give you the opportunity to improve things.
The score itself is calculated using the following formula:
Number of Promoters minus Number of Detractors, divided by Total Number of Responses, multiplied by 100 = Your NPS Score!
How to Setup an NPS Survey
There are many great solutions for running a net promoter score survey ranging from DIY to 3rd-party software solutions. For the sake of ease, I’ll cut to the chase and say a good one that sits in the middle for businesses of most sizes would be Delighted.
They do a great job of offering a very simple, yet robust solution at a reasonable price point and with (in my experience) really great customer service. They were acquired by Qualtrics, who was acquired by SAP, for those of you already using Qualtrics (though at the time of this writing still being treated externally as distinct products). I hope they remain distinct because Delighted is in my opinion a superior product when it comes to pure NPS. Though Qualtrics is also an awesome company with a robust product of its own.
I’m not going through all the details here but basically, go to Delighted.com sign up and they’ll help you set it up or else just Google how to run NPS.
NPS Survey Enrollment Criteria
The one thing I will go into is this: make sure you pick a good enrollment criteria for the survey to be sent. NPS surveys should be sent on a set cadence once the automation “enrollment” criteria has been met.
Some companies will choose poor enrollment criteria such as: “trigger the first survey when they enter credit card details” or they’ll try and bias it by only asking after someone has had a positive interaction. That’s, in my humble opinion, trash.
NPS is not a vanity metric. Think of it as a fuel gauge. You don’t want it to tell you your car’s gas tank is full, unless the tank is actually full. Save your back patting for when you run initiatives that organically improve the NPS through customer experience improvement and not through data skew. That is where the real results are. You can do it!
If you’re trying to figure out what to choose for your NPS survey enrollment criteria I recommend setting the net as wide as possible — you can always pull segmented reports later.
The question I pose to companies when trying to figure out what to set it as enrollment criteria is typically this…
Whatever is the first, most fundamental unit of core value delivered to your users by your product (that is universally valued by all user segments)… that’s what should be set as enrollment criteria.
An example would be:
Say you have a “to do list” app. And at the core, you decide that the most basic form of value you offer is the creation of tasks… or take it a step further, your most basic form of value is helping people accomplish their tasks. So you decide that the enrollment (or trigger) criteria for your NPS survey will be: the first time they complete a single task that they’ve created.
Maybe something else. But you get the idea. Boil it down to the simplest value element you can for all users. Later you can split them up into cohorts for further analysis.
How to Turn NPS Survey Responses into Good Reviews for Your Product
Now the best part. Literally turning your NPS Survey responses into good product reviews.
For Delighted users it’s even easier because they have productized this process. No this is not a promoted post, though maybe it should be… This is said completely of my own desire to share a product I’ve had a good experience with! The “manual” way is below.
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The Steps
1) Filter your NPS survey results by Promoters who also left a comment (opt. recency)
2) Export their comment data
3) This is optional, but recommended. Locate the ones that don’t have an: “I love everything about y’all… Except…” sentiment.
4) Load those “comments” back into your email marketing automation tool as a customization token — basically a custom contact property, i.e. “NPS Happy Comment” or whatever you want.
5) Send an email campaign that includes that token in the email used in the following format:
Hey [First Name],
I was so happy to see the great feedback you left us on our product in the recent survey we sent out. We love what you said so much, we were hoping you’d share what you said with the rest of the world.
Would you do me a solid and copy/paste the comment you left us (below) into this review site?
[NPS Happy Comment – Customization Token]
To leave a review all you have to do is follow these steps: [list steps or link to them].
Thank you so much! Your feedback means the world to us.
-Your Name or Your Team Name or W/E
Note: You should make a list of prioritized review site listings because some are worth more than others. Focus most of your resources on the most important 1-3. You’ll only have so many to draw from at a time so direct them to the right places where you need it! Monitor your reputation on those review sites and if it dips, you can do an infusion from the new Promoters.
Thanks for reading! I hope this campaign helps you grow your reviews and your brand. 🙂
