It's time to celebrate: your NPS has increased! But what does this mean exactly???
All SaaS companies aim to increase their NPS. But the first question is: do you need it?
Let’s look at some key facts about NPS.
1) To create and send NPS surveys is a lot of work. Even more so, to collect and analyze all the answers. So make sure you follow up on that. Otherwise stop wasting time and money.
It took our Customer Success (CS) Operations weeks to prepare the questions and all the logistics around NPS. When they got all the answers, they had to analyze the results and create some infographics. Finally they shared those with the whole organizations. Yet all this effort is only valuable if we follow up on the customers' feedback.
How are we integrating what we learned into the way our teams execute? How are we planning to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t?
The answers to these questions need to be clear and visible to the whole team. This is the only way to create an impact out of your NPS surveys.
2) If you don’t understand what works, you can’t replicate it.
Some customers wrote in the NPS survey that they were especially happy with the service that I and some other colleagues of mine provided. Our operations team shared those comments on our intranet and I was of course very pleased about it.
But then nothing more happened. Nobody asked us to explore what exactly made our service so valuable to our customers. In a recent Success Hacker Roundtable, Shari Srebnick said: - "Customer sentiment is not about the product, it is about the experience".
So it is key to identify what behaviors, processes, actions create a positive experience for your customers. This is the only way you can replicate it and create a great experience for more customers.
3) Integrate NPS with other customer feedback sources.
NPS surveys often reach only part of your customer organization. For example if you have it in-app, you don’t reach executive sponsors if they are not there. Only end-users. If you send out the survey only to the contacts in your CRM, the opposite might be true.
Integrate the information on these surveys with other feedback. Look at feature requests, insights from your Customer Success team and online reviews. Once you have the full picture, ask yourself: "What is the root cause for what your customers love or hate about your product?".
In a recent CS roundtable Alex Bakula-Davis said: - “It is important to understand what customers expect but also where customer expectations are coming from. Are they coming from sales, product, marketing?” Align customer expectations to your offer. This creates a solid and positive customer experience.
NPS goes beyond the score. To get real value out of it, we need to look at it as part of a larger system. I like the suggestion of Steve Bernstein to think about a Net Promoter System rather than Score.
My conclusion is that NPS surveys can be a powerful tool if we:
are transparent on how we want to follow up on what we learned. Take action!
explore, identify and understand what makes a great customer experience.
integrate this with other feedback sources. Go to the root cause of what customers expect from our service and product.
Need support with your CS organization? Get in touch!
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