Starting an NPS program from scratch - Some Thoughts

I've been working with businesses and non-profits for a number of years now, helping them implement Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey processes.  A conclusion I've come to is that, especially early on in a company's evolution with the NPS methodology, simple is best.  I've found this to be particularly true for businesses who've never tried to measure customer feedback in a structured program before.  If I were advising a new client today on starting up a NPS program from scratch, and who never had a customer survey process in place, I think I'd largely recommend a very simple two question NPS survey that would run for maybe six months or a year as a pilot program.

The purpose of the simple approach is to acquire a broad data set that can be differentiated based on transaction point, relationship type, geography, product, or other variable (or set of variables) that allow the definition of loyalty drivers and of processes that allow the client to affect those loyalty drivers.

The two questions I would want to ask:  #1. How likely would you be to recommend company XYZ to colleagues and friends?

Then, depending on the answer to #1, one of three distinct questions.

#2 for 0-6 scores: "What, in your opinion, could we do better?

#2 for 7s and 8s: "What are the three things you like best, and least, about us?

#2 for 9s and 10s: "Please explain your rating"

Businesses new to NPS typically need to learn what their customers really value and dislike most about them. Customers may value transaction efficiency or personal relationships, they may value cost effectiveness or product characteristics.  Or, they may value something else entirely. Generally businesses have an understanding of what their customers value. But often they fail to understand or (more likely) fail to create action processes that mitigate issues affecting their loyalty drivers.  

Given that NPS surveys can be initially simple, with just two questions delivered to each respondent.  The challenge for businesses is ensuring that they understand who their survey respondents are, and what they're reacting to, for each completed survey response.  Collecting NPS data by source or transaction point is therefore important.  And, in the case of invited surveys it's important that each respondent's "background" data (role, geography, product/service owned, etc.) be captured as part of the survey process.  If the business does this, it learns which transactions or relationships generate the most "likely to recommend" responses, and why or why not (through question #2).  After this data has been studied, a second generation NPS survey can be developed that tracks specific "loyalty drivers" for each transaction type, data source or relationship type.

In 3rd generation NPS survey processes, creating action taking processes based on real-time survey data becomes important.  The reason? Only by acting on feedback does a business mitigate or otherwise impact issues affecting loyalty drivers. This is the real pay-off for NPS processes.  Acting on feedback in ways that mitigate loyalty affecting issues has a long track record of improving business success. 

When starting down the NPS path there are many ways to go astray. Taking a simple approach helps avoid unnecessary resource expenditure, while allowing the development of a plan that ultimately lets the business affect loyalty drivers through closed-loop follow up at the right times and in the right places.  It may take a year or so to go from NPS start up to full NPS implementation, but, its a year worth investing in.  Done correctly it doesn't have to cost a lot to get started either.

Stewart Nash
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stewartnash