NPS Best Practices

Tips and Hints On How to Get an NPS Tool That Delivers

Are you planning to invest in an NPS tool to help you monitor and measure customer loyalty? Maybe you want to see your customer’s experience based on their feedback. A research done by the Tempkin Group showed that there’s a strong relationship between customer loyalty and NPS.

The study states that a company with a high NPS will more likely sell more products compared to those with lower NPS. In summary, companies with a high NPS would enjoy the following benefits:

• 5X more likely to buy from you again.
• 7X more likely to forgive your company from mistakes or errors.
• 9X more likely to buy your new products and offerings.

Raring to find out how your company can implement its own NPS tool? Read on, and you will come out of this with a clearer understanding of what to look for in an NPS tool.

What is an NPS Software?

It is a tool or solution to send and gather surveys. It also computes and analyzes the Net Promoter Score as well as establishes conclusions from remarks and feedbacks.

NPS software can automate the whole feedback process and help close the customer feedback loop faster. Monitoring customer feedback can reveal patterns or issues which can influence how your company moves forward.

These elaborations can be invaluable to management and customer-facing employees. For example, Charles Schwab Corporation feeds this information to local branch managers who then engage with concerned customers to discuss their feedback.

Defining who to survey is also a key feature of an NPS tool. India’s Tata Steel Wire Division wanted to understand how their barbed-wire fence product is being utilized by farmers. They need this information to guide their product development initiatives. Instead of sending the survey to end users, they chose to send it to their distributors and retail sellers. The success of the survey shows that the system can work for B2C or B2B campaigns.

Why Do You Need to Adopt or Create an NPS Software

Aside from the business benefits, an NPS tool will help with below scenarios and pain points.

"I don't know what people think about my product"
The NPS tool can show customer satisfaction and reaction to your products and services. You can effectively measure how many of your customers are loyal or fans (Promoters), neutral or lukewarm (Passives), and unsatisfied or angry (Detractors).

"Feedback I get from my audience is very little"
Getting timely feedback from customers is vital for all businesses. Once your customer buys from you, you should be able to monitor their satisfaction or dissatisfaction. This will help you paint a better picture of how your products perform in the market.

"I want my business to work with customers more effectively"
An NPS tool automates the processing and dissemination of customer feedback to concerned groups. If done quickly, closing a feedback loop will enable your company to address customer concerns. Your customer-facing group receives the feedback, identifies the issue and implement changes to address this issue.

"I want to analyze market better to give clients offers they can't stand"

Customer feedback shows buyer reactions to a new product or a new service offering. The NPS tool will process the data and extract information. This will provide answers to questions such as how your product is being used, which feature is loved or hated, and how many are happy or irate with their purchase.

"All solutions on the market don't meet my needs (or do it partly)"

It's a great idea to develop NPS tool if none of the solutions present on the market can fully cover your business needs. The price, functionality, customer support - if some of these don't fit you then it's better to come up with custom software.

Make an NPS Tool: The 5 Product Features You Can't Go Without

Below are the basic features that should come with any commercial NPS Software. These are indispensable and must be present in your NPS survey tool. You can use this as a template when building your own NPS System.

1. Survey Customization

NPS systems should have the ability to edit the design of a survey according to your branding and target customers.

You should be able to change the survey name, use any URL or domain, and let users change survey text to any language. You can change the visual theme and edit colors according to your branding.

The tool should allow editing of survey questions and provision for custom scenarios or events. For simplicity, you should be able to assign any survey as the default.

The Thank You page is another important part of the сustomized system. It’s the same concept as sending a customer to a Thank You page once they opt-in to an offer.

This time, after they complete the survey, the customer is taken to a specialized Thank You page with a personalized greeting. This is an opportunity to place Call to Action buttons or next step actions. One option is to place the Feedback Question on the Thank You page.

Another option is to place a sharing option via social media. Place the top two or three relevant social media platforms, which usually are Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We recommend limiting the sharing option for those who answered in the Detractor, and maybe even the Passive, range. It won’t look good if Detractors can share their low score and feedback.

Lastly, you could elect to give some form of reward to those who complete the survey. The reward can even be different for a Promoter, Passive or Detractor.

2. Multiple NPS Campaigns

The Net Promoter Score tool should be robust enough to run multiple campaigns with each having different agendas. This gives you the ability to benchmark products, services, buyer types, and other marketing initiatives.

For example, an online store can launch a program or campaign targeting only buyers of a particular product branch (e.g., Men’s running shoes), and a second campaign will focus on a specific model (e.g., Nike Free RN Flyknit). Splitting the campaigns can allow you to analyze which products are more scalable if the pricing is correct and if your marketing campaign is working.

You can also set multiple campaigns based on channels. You can run surveys simultaneously on email, social media, SMS, In-App and Web.

Another scenario is running multiple campaigns to get inputs from a client in different points of the customer journey. You can launch a campaign for recent and previous buyers. The recent buyers could help identify initial product reactions, while previous ones could give you a better overview on what experience of using your product they have. It will be interesting to see the sentiments of these buyers if any had a change of heart or are still passionate fans.

3. Triggers

The NPS survey software establishes your line of communication with customers. Your very first survey reaches out to the customer and invites them to have a say in your business.

The software should have the ability to trigger the survey depending on "Where is the user now" or "What is he doing". It should be able to schedule or place triggers anywhere on the customer’s journey. For example, running a survey when they bought a product or when they are on your site for 30 seconds.

The result of the survey is heavily influenced by the timing when the measurements were taken. If for example, you trigger NPS survey immediately after the purchase, what would be reflected in the analysis is customer's excitement over the purchase.

However, if you set the survey to be triggered a few weeks after the purchase date, what you would be measuring is the customer’s satisfaction. This would also reflect their opinion on your product and services.

Triggers can also work for automated notifications. They will give you an opportunity to interact with respondents in real time. Set conditions on how customers will answer your survey. When the conditions are met, it will trigger the notification to alert you or your team.

4. Results Interpretation and Calculations

The software should have the ability to interpret and analyze received data. The output should not only determine the number of Promoters, Passives, and Detractors. There should be a way to derive conclusions from the qualitative or open-ended questions.

The main NPS survey is easy enough to analyze and compute for the NPS Score. These are just numbers and can be processed manually by a simple spreadsheet. But, when the feedbacks are coming in through different campaigns, this sorting process will become laborious and prone to mistakes (if done manually).

The NPS survey tool should be able to read and interpret the open-ended feedbacks. This data is in a text-based format thus a text-analytics software is needed. The keyboard inputted human language must be translated to a language readable by the NPS system.

5. Integration and Synchronization

The basic NPS software should be able to integrate with other system providers via API. This building block approach gives you the flexibility to add (even subtract) systems to make the NPS software as effective as possible.

For example, you want senior executives or the help desk people to receive messages when specific scenarios are triggered. This can be via integration with collaboration tools (e.g., Slack) or email (Gmail). Other possible integrations could be for Social Media (e.g., Facebook) to enable sharing and e-Commerce (e.g., Shopify) to help merchants monitor customer happiness.

The software should also have the ability to synchronize customer's feedback with your CRM (e.g., Salesforce). The user surveys are best kept inside the CRM as part of the customer contacts. You can set up the system to keep track of new surveys then automatically feed this to the CRM. Customer responses from old campaigns or unique contacts residing in the NPS software should be easy to migrate to the CRM once integration is done.

5 Simple Tips to Build a Net Promoter Score Software That Will Deliver

1. Decide on How Much Modules You Need NPS Software to Have

Plan what modules will be included in the NPS survey tool. Crucial modules that should be included are:

• Survey engine that is capable of multiple and simultaneous campaigns.
• Notifications management for an effective feedback loop.
• Email sending tool.
• NPS calculation tool that can analyze and compute in real time.
• Text analysis for text-based feedbacks.

Some good-to-have modules are:

• Store management for the gathering of information from branches or remote offices.
• SMS sending tool.
• Social media sharing/posting.

2. Come Up With a Robust Survey Engine

The NPS software platform should have the ability to scale in capacity and to evolve together with your company’s growth. API Integration with other business tools is a key, growing the platform’s capability. Instances like onboarding of a new CRM should be accommodated with little or no problem in the migration of contacts.

It should also be able to send surveys through the major or common channels - email, in-app, web. The surveys should be easily configurable with reliable and clear algorithms on how to send, whom to send to and when to send.

3. Make Sure to Implement Flexible Survey Patterns

NPS surveys usually ask two questions. The first is the NPS rating “How likely” question and the second question is a follow-up to the “How likely” question. This is often an open-ended question asking the reason for the given score.

Both questions follow a standard format, but these can be tailored according to your business goals.

The follow-up question branches out depending on the results of previous questions. Using Skip logic approach program selects which question or page to display depending on the response of your customer. Skip logic requires setting up conditional branches or logic to create an engaging survey. If properly used, it will guide your customers to relevant questions based on rules that you defined.

For example, a detractor will receive feedback asking the customer to “identify where we can improve” instead of receiving an inquiry about possible future purchases.

4. Incorporate Real-Time Dashboard and Analytic Tools

The NPS shows the current standing of your company or product with regards to customer loyalty. But, when combined with feedback, the NPS provides a clearer picture of what works and what needs improvement.

An easy to use dashboard should contain this information in real time. This dashboard should reflect all critical data such as;

• Current NPS Score.
• % increase or decrease of NPS compared to previous measurements.
• Number of promoters and what endeared them to your company.
• Number of detractors and the main reason for their dissatisfaction.
• A list of recommendations to implement in your product or service.

If possible, all important information should be seen in one page or panel. This reporting function is key to a fast resolution of problems before they become irreparable.

5. Test on Different Screens

The survey and review questions should be visible with any screen. It is now the standard process to check visuals of a website, app or system on different platforms. Testing should be done of big and small screen cell phones, computers and tablets. The color scheme should not be too dark, and text should be readable even from the smallest screens. A comparison on all screens should yield almost the same level of user experience.

NPS System Development: Case Study

Well, as you see, that’s a ton of useful information on how you should develop your own. Now we want to shed some light on our team’s in-depth knowledge of everything about NPS. It comes from our experience in developing and implementing NPS survey tools that deliver.

To better appreciate the real world benefits of an NPS Tool here is a case study of an NPS tool deployment for Tire Pros - an Automotive Tire Service (ATD) Company.

The main task of this NPS survey tool was to check and measure customer service quality for each branch. The survey was done by email which is one of the least intrusive channels to use. Before software development, the list of emails was gathered by branches and manually inputted to the NPS system. This poses risks of misspelling and wrong data entry. Having a system to digitally capture the customer’s contact numbers should be a priority moving forward.

A series of similarly graded questions followed the NPS survey. These are a mix of transactional based (Provided great value and Needed Services/Warranties Explained) and experience based (Greeted promptly and Hassle free experience) survey questions.

The branch offices now can view their respective NPS scores and how this compares to industry standards. The branch managers are given alerts if there are negative customer feedbacks.

The survey tool is successful in doing the task, for which it was created. Being a service-oriented company, this level of quality check and monitoring will help maintain the positive level of customer experience.

Final Thoughts

There are many ways to develop an NPS survey tool. The multitude of vendors and systems that can be integrated with the tool creates many possible iterations. It is up to the user to customize the NPS tool to fit their requirements better.

If you have any questions regarding this subject or want us to develop a custom NPS solution for your business feel free to contact us by filling a form or simply call!