NPS, or Net Promoter Score, is a crucial metric every business needs to track. Why? Because it reveals how satisfied and loyal your customers are. But you already know this. Why else would you be here to read the NPS best practices, right?

Well, you have come to the right place. But before jumping into the NPS survey best practices, see how beneficial NPS can be.

Here’s what Bill Macaitis, Slack’s then CMO said about NPS:

“I’m a huge believer in NPS. It provides a north star for everyone in the company to understand how well we’re doing and how many people are actively recommending us. It’s a great gold bar. We’re not satisfied if someone signs up and starts using Slack. We’re not satisfied if they become a customer. We’re not even satisfied if they renew. Our bar is “Are they going to recommend us?”

Since its launch in 2014, Slack has been accumulating users in the millions and is considered the fastest-growing business app in all of history.

Keeping this in mind, let’s have a look at the top NPS survey best practices you should follow in 2024.

Best Practices #1 – Use the Right NPS Survey Software

First things first, it’s always recommended to use NPS software that best suits your business. Why is this top of the NPS best practices? Well, good software can make data collection effortless. And it’s not just that. With the right NPS tool by your side,

• You will get accurate and reliable feedback data
• You can seamlessly integrate with your existing tech stack
• The results will be properly analyzed, offering actionable insights to make sound decisions
• You can keep track of customer satisfaction and loyalty

So, what better tool to consider than SurveySparrow. It offers an easy-to-use and seamless experience compared to the other NPS platforms in the market.

The above NPS survey can be sent via emails in the form of email embeds. You can also use it to send in-app NPS notifications to your customers. SurveySparrow’s vibrant NPS dashboard lets you understand how much your customers and employees love your brand. Here’s a sneak peek into an NPS survey with SurveySparrow.

Product Net Promoter Score (NPS) Template

Preview Template

Use This Template

Best Practice #2 – Frequency of NPS Surveys

Sending out NPS surveys is a tricky part. Though it might seem ok to send out surveys whenever you feel like it, it’s not true. Wondering what can happen when you don’t time your NPS surveys? Here’s a quick overview –

• Irregular frequency in sending out surveys can lead to survey fatigue.
• It could reduce survey participation, ergo resulting in a lower response rate.
• Surveying a customer soon after the purchase can affect the quality of the results.
• Delaying surveys can lead to a missed opportunity to address customer concerns promptly.

So, the next question would be – What’s the NPS best practice to follow here? Here are some NPS survey best practices you can consider to avoid irregular frequency.

• Conduct NPS surveys after specific interactions. For example, you can try sending out NPS surveys after the customer has interacted with the support team.
• Try a periodic approach to NPS surveys, either quarterly or bi-annually. This allows you to track changes over time without causing survey fatigue.

Why regular intervals?

Because the emotions of your customers change based on the experience they are having about your brand. A customer who gave you a paltry score of 1 on the NPS survey might give you an 8 next time if you happen to take care of their issues.

Ensuring that the number keeps increasing will be the aim of most successful companies. When you regularly send NPS surveys at appropriate times and keep improving the experience for your users, your customers will fall in love with your brand. And before you know it, they might even become advocates for your business.

Planning to send NPS surveys to all of your customers in the form of an email blast?

Please DO NOT.

Sending emails in bulk will only make you seem impersonal. The problem with such bulk emails is that you will be sending NPS emails to customers who will be at different stages in their customer journey. Instead, send NPS surveys to your customers who are at similar stages so that there is uniformity. This will give you insights into who is a promoter and what made them one.

If a customer is a detractor, then the business can research what could have possibly gone wrong for them at that particular stage, which made them give a poor NPS score.

Here’s something to help you with converting detractors to promoters.

Best Practice #3 – Close the Feedback Loop

It’s true that NPS surveys can provide valuable insights about the customers. However, if you are unable to close the feedback look, all your efforts will become futile. You will end up wasting everyone’s time. Therefore, this is one of the most crucial NPS best practices you should follow.

Closing the feedback loop is everything when it comes to surveys. It is important even more so when it comes to NPS surveys. Ask any NPS professional, and they will tell you about its importance, too.

Advantages of Closing the Loop

One of the biggest advantages of closing the feedback loop is that you can mend fences with your customer who is not happy about their experience with you.

When you close the feedback loop, you are essentially solving the problem that they had with you. This means that now they will end up having a better experience and might even recommend you to their friends and family.

Believe it or not, customers are not used to a lot of companies solving the problems that they would have complained about in the survey. So you would end up delighting your customer if you ever happen to close the feedback loop. It shows that you care about the customer and are ready to change things if you mess up.

When you close the feedback loop, you can use it as an opportunity to improve your relationship with your complaining customers. When you quickly act on the feedback and provide an amicable solution for your customers, you are more than likely to convert them from a detractor to a promoter. 

Best Practice #4 – NPS Surveys In-App and Transactional Emails

Send NPS surveys to your customers when they have completed a transaction. Your brand would be fresh on their minds and it is the perfect opportunity for the business to gauge your customer’s experience with a particular action.

You can also send NPS surveys in-app when there is a transaction happening, it doesn’t have to be only through emails.

In fact, it is much easier to make a user respond to NPS surveys on the app itself after they take action. In-app surveys get higher engagement because users have the right context and it is fresh in their minds.

If the customer doesn’t respond on that day, fret not. You can send the NPS survey email the next day itself. Email surveys have a lower response rate but customers don’t mind them usually as emails are not that intrusive. Conversely, with in-app surveys, you are hampering the flow of the customer – email requests for NPS surveys don’t have the same effect.

So, what are the NPS best practices in this situation? Send the in-app survey as soon as the user makes the transaction. If they don’t reply, then send the email survey the next day.

Take a look at our guide if you want to know how and when to send out NPS emails that enable actions from the customers.

Best Practice #5 – Share the NPS Survey With the Whole Team & the Respondents

A piece of well-oiled machinery works best. The same should work for your business as well, where everyone from each department knows what’s happening across the business so that there is a sense of teamwork and unity for everyone.

Before you share your NPS score with the whole team, you should explain to them the importance of NPS to your business. Your team members should know how and why NPS matters, and understand the benchmarking that is important, not only against the competitors but also against your own score.

So, have regular NPS reviews with your team. Use the NPS score to motivate them. Compare your NPS score against your industry’s as well as your competitor’s. SurveySparrow has a free NPS benchmarking tool to check the score.

OK, we checked the score. Now what?

Once you work on the issues that your customers raised in the NPS survey, the next step is to assure them that you have solved their problems.

This can be a huge boost for your customers when they know that the problem they had with your business isn’t something that should bother them anymore.

When customers realize that you make it a point to solve any queries they have, they will not hesitate to open up the next time you would like a review or complete another survey. Why? Because they know that you mean business and are more than happy to give their time to you.

Best Practices #6 – Regularly Communicate With Your Customers

Even your staunchest critics know that any company, no matter how big it is, can make mistakes. No business wants to be in that position, but it happens. It is all right. But how do you handle such a situation? That’s the question.

Do you not tell your customers about it or assume that they will not figure it out? Or do you apologize to them and assure them that you would not repeat it again? The answer to the above question will determine your longevity in the business world.

Communication is everything, no matter what kind of relationship you are in. Most companies do not have a communication strategy in place, and that’s a big mistake. Are you a business that communicates with the customer at regular intervals or only when you want them to complete an NPS survey or when you want something from them?

Here’s the answer: Customers would like to be in the know when it comes to matters that pertain to them. Not only should you communicate to your customers about how you are solving their issues based on the survey feedback, especially NPS, but you should also have a strategy for internal communications.

That way, you let your employees know that you are listening to customers. This helps with boosting the morale of your employees as well as developing a sense of purpose in them. 

Best Practice #7 – Benchmark Your NPS Score

You should know that NPS scores across industries are different. A telecom company would have a terrible score when compared with a company in the online entertainment industry.

For example, Satmetrix’s calculations for the average NPS score across various sectors in the US show numbers that deviate a lot. The NPS score for the Health Insurance industry is 14, while it is 52 for tablet computers.

The NPS scores obviously differ between companies. Just to give you an idea, here are some numbers that will interest you:

JetBlue has an NPS score of 71, while Allstate has 40. You might think that Allstate has a poor score when compared with JetBlue because their service is bad.

Wrong.

JetBlue’s NPS score is the highest in the airline industry, while Allstate’s score is the highest in the life insurance category.

Here’s what you should do:

• Find what is a good NPS score for you.
• Measure your NPS score against companies that are in the same industry.
• Measure your NPS score against yourself – this will help you see how you are progressing.

Why is Benchmarking a Crucial NPS Best Practice?

There are many reasons why you should consider this best practice. However, the following are some key reasons why.

• Understand how well your business is performing with respect to your competitors.
• Identify the areas that need improvement compared to others in your industry.
• Establish achievable NPS targets for your team.
• Track how the changes you make impact customer satisfaction and loyalty.

You can also consider insights from benchmarking to improve your customer experience and loyalty.

Best Practice #8 – Customize Your NPS Surveys

We’re including this in the NPS best practices because if you are not customizing your surveys based on your customers, are you even doing anything? Understand your customers to such an extent that you would be able to personalize the surveys after segmenting them based on their characteristics.

Remember that there is no single type of NPS survey template that you have to send. You can employ NPS software for this purpose.

NOTE: If you are still looking for NPS software, here are the 11 best NPS tools available in the market.

The NPS survey that you send should be in alignment with your company’s branding. After the end of the NPS question, you can add “Why are you willing to share?” based on their answers.

Customize your NPS surveys with different subject lines and use the ones that perform the best. Ensure that the subject you use is intriguing enough for the customer to open the email and respond to the questions. We have already talked about this, it is called segmentation. Divide your customers based on it and run A/B tests for the same segment of customers by using different subject lines and follow-up questions.

Best Practice #9 – Ask Open-ended Questions

Have you noticed that open-ended questions allow the recipient to pour their hearts out? Ask open-ended follow-up questions based on the customer’s score. This will make them send honest answers you would not have expected.

If the score is anything between 0 and 6, you can ask:

“What made you give us such a low score?”

“How can we help in improving the score?”

If the score is 7 or 8, you can ask:

“How can we improve your experience with us?”

“Is there any way we could improve our services?”

If the score is 9 or 19, you can ask:

“We are happy that you are enjoying your experience with us. What do you think is the best thing about us?”

“If we could improve one thing about our customer service or the product, what would it be? If there is more than one, please don’t hesitate to tell us about it?”

Suggested Read: 20+ Best NPS Survey Questions and Templates

Best Practice #10 – Send an NPS Survey to Your Employees

Customers should be your priority, and your employees should feel like that, too. Keeping your customers satisfied can have a dramatic effect on your company. If you take your employees lightly, it will have an equally dramatic effect on your business, but for the wrong reasons.

Only your employees can make sure that your customers feel satisfied and happy all along. Sending eNPS (employee NPS) will allow you to understand the employees who are most satisfied with your company. You can also apply this process to potential candidates.

Related: Candidate NPS demystified

While it is good to feel validated, you should make it a point to find the Detractors and Passives. The Detractors are the ones who are a flight risk because you can expect them to leave the company as soon as they are dissatisfied.

Your promoters are the ones who will recommend your company to others, will be proactive, act as team players, fill out surveys, participate in your events, etc. Sending employee NPS will give you ideas on how to improve employee satisfaction and increase employee happiness.

Best Practice #11 – Leverage Your Promoters

This takes us to the last of our NPS best practices: collaborating with NPS promoters.

While deeply worrying about detractors, many companies forget the fact that you have promoters who are happy to do so much for you. But the burning question is, are you doing things to leverage their presence?

Your promoters are happy to recommend your business to their friends and family, Utilize them for your campaigns, get testimonial videos done, use them for your LinkedIn posts, etc.

To Conclude, 

That completes our roundup of the NPS best practices. If you got a kick out of reading this and are on the verge of sending out NPS surveys, first, engage them in every place possible, from social media to usage of customer loyalty programs.

Ask them the all-important -” How likely are you to recommend our brand to a friend, on a scale of 0 to 10?” Ensure that there is space for your customers to add comments so that you can get more information that you can use to close the feedback loop for them.

If you implement NPS surveys well, it has the power to completely change the way you run your business. It will change the way you communicate, train your employees, the way you operate, and create experiences for your customers. It has the necessary horsepower to change your company upside down in a good way. 

Mathew Maniyamkott

Guest Blogger at SurveySparrow

Regular contributor to various magazines. Passionate about entrepreneurship, startups, marketing, and productivity.