If you've been using NPS for a while, you may be making these Net Promoter Score mistakes without even knowing about it. Many companies do, so once you get over the initial shock horror, get on to devising a strategy for success.
1. Asking too many questions
Imagine you’re having a busy day at work, and you’re sent an email with a questionnaire of 10 or even 20 questions. It may be from a company that you like and have a relationship with, but how likely are you to fill it out? Now imagine the same scenario but with only 2 or 3 questions.
The more questions you add, the less likely it is that you will get a high response rate. The solution? Keep it short. The “would you recommend” NPS question is all you need in addition to a simple follow-up question such as: “what’s your reason for giving that score”. Thereafter you can categorise your answers to seek out the highs and lows.
Related content: Increase your Net Promoter Score℠ survey response rate [checklist]
2. Not having a strategy
This is a common one. Sending out an NPS survey but not having a strategy behind it, is often the biggest mistake people make. You need a plan for each kind of response.
The easiest way to do this is to have pre-created basic templates on all 11 possible NPS scores. These should include the potential for customisation, such as name and something about their score. This makes following up on your NPS survey much more manageable. Just make sure that you follow through in good time. This actually saves you time and ensures that your investment in NPS is effective.
Related content: 3 advanced Net Promoter Score strategies you need to know now
3. Sending surveys to all your customers at once
If you "survey-bomb" all of your customers with a survey, it only gives you a view of only a single point in time. If you add new features to your product, it could be up to half a year before you see how it affects your score. Worse, you’re left with a mountain of feedback, which can a while to analyse and respond. In this scenario, you run the risk of customer issues piling up. By the time you get around to responding to the feedback, it’s out-dated and your customers might feel that you’re not listening to them.
The best solution to prevent this is to space out your surveys more and running them with subsets of your audience every month or so. This will give you a far more holistic perspective on your product over time. You'll also have more time to react and respond to the survey feedback. If you have the right tools, you can send your surveys out automatically at random, or send them out after a certain interaction such as a purchase. Thereafter, you can manage your input weekly.
Importantly, you also want to measure how long it actually takes you to respond to a customer issue so that you can account for this in your planning.
Related content: Using the Net Promoter Score to analyse customer comments and feedback surveys
4. Not making NPS a team effort
To fully leverage NPS it needs to be a company-wide initiative. Understandably, everyone's busy but creating NPS as a task for someone to manage when they have the time won't work as that time is likely never to come around. Additionally, putting just one person in charge of NPS can also backfire.
NPS is not just about simple logistics. Sure, actually putting one person in charge of sending out the surveys and closing the loop can be a one-person job. But subsequently using the insights from the surveys to improve the company’s customer experience throughout the business needs to be a company-wide initiative. Everyone needs to be on board with your NPS programme.
Be open and honest about the feedback that transpires and empower frontline staff to fix customer issues. Your ultimate goal by using NPS is (or should be) to make your company customer focused. The only way to do this is to make sure the whole company is on board. Involve more employees in the project, and create a few NPS "champions" in each team. Creating a cross-functional team and reporting back on the learnings a clever way to go about it.
Read more: Download the latest NPS Industry Benchmarks for New Zealand
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