Although NPS is a very valuable metric, remember it doesn’t show the full picture.
Imagine that the % of detractors is suddenly increasing. The first thing that may come to mind might be what are we doing wrong: Is it customer support? Is it the product, does it have the necessary features? Is it the pricing?
For this reason, you need to treat NPS as a starting point in your conversation with your customers. Always have a follow-up question as part of your plan. Whether your NPS score is good or bad, without context you won’t be able to understand what is working and what is not working with respect to your product.
Segment Your NPS Survey
Just like you are not offering the same services to all your customers, their experience with your product is not the same - different types of customers have different needs.
Segmenting your NPS based on the type of user and their definition of success will allow you to understand how those users experience your product. By analyzing the NPS of your different cohorts, you will be able to determine if there are any key drivers or deterrents in terms of satisfaction between the different types of customers.
With that knowledge in hand, you will have the ability to improve your product and offer an equally great experience for your entire customer base, which will definitely be noticeable in your retention numbers.
Engage With Your Passive Customers To Convert Them Into Promoters
Waiting for your detractors and passive customers to magically turn into promoters of your brand, won’t cut it. You need to engage with those users to improve their experience and their NPS score.
One way to better engage your customers is to establish cadences of behavioral emails for those users who have given you less than a 9 or 10 NPS score. Depending on how close to being a promoter they are, the sequences should be different - passives with a score of 7 or 8 won’t need as much attention as those who have a score of less than a 5.
Another great tip is to educate your users with in-app messages so they will see more value in your product, and reach their next milestone. By helping them reach every possible “aha” moment, you will improve their day-to-day experience with your product, and ideally convert them into brand advocates.
Timing Is Everything
While NPS surveys are very simple to answer and not very intrusive, you do not want to bug your customers with surveys every other week.
When establishing a recurrence for your NPS it is important to match it with your roadmap. If you haven’t made any big changes to your product, you should run the survey every 60-90 days to obtain reliable measurements.
Are there any big updates happening, any new features or redesigns launching soon? If so, run your survey at least 5 days after the launch to analyze its impact on your customers’ satisfaction.
If you are a SaaS offering a free trial, run an NPS survey for users who haven’t converted to paying customers so you can better understand why they haven’t upgraded. Set yourself up for success by sending the survey a week after your users have finished their trial would be ideal.
For the customers who upgraded to the paid version, asking them about their likelihood of recommending your product can give you a lot of insight into at-risk customers and help you prevent any possible churn. Give your new paying customers at least 30 days to try the paid version before running the NPS.
Remember to always follow up the survey with a secondary question to understand where these answers are coming from!
Measure your NPS Over Time
Tracking your NPS over a time period for the different segments of customers can give you tons of insight on what customers are more likely to become evangelists of your brand, which will also help your marketing and sales team understand who they should consider as AAA prospects.
Don’t forget it’s extremely important to understand the impact of your strategy. Analyzing your NPS over time can help you determine how successful your efforts in terms of product improvements and updates have been. And also, understand if your methods of converting detractors and passive users into promoters have paid off.