CSMs widely use Net Promoter Score (NPS) to access customer satisfaction. In addition to giving you a fair idea of how satisfied the customers are, NPS is also a great way to know how loyal the customers are and their willingness to be brand advocates.

Internally, NPS reveals a lot about a company’s performance and helps CRMs improve their product, process, and customer experience.

As a CRM, you already know about NPS and how important it is to uplift your company’s brand. But effective implementation of NPS can be challenging. Now, one important thing that all CRMs need to know is that there is no one good way to increase the response rate of the survey and get better customer feedback.

Though we already know a lot about NPS, as a CSM representing a company, you will have to keep improving it a bit (according to your brand and offering) to make it more effective.

To help you better, we will present to you some of the top 10 NPS survey best practices for customer success managers.

For starters, let us start with a brief introduction to NPS

What is NPS?

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a metric for determining a company’s customer satisfaction, loyalty, and enthusiasm. Customers are asked to provide a rating-based response to a survey.

For instance, the question could be –

“On a scale of 0 to 10, how would you recommend the product to a friend?”

Once the customers answer the questions, the scores are aggregated to analyze customer satisfaction and identify areas of improvement.

Click here to know everything about NPS.

Good NPS

Considering the available range from -100 to +100, any score that is above 0 is read as a ‘good’ one. The reason for this is that a score above 0 indicates that the company has more promoters as compared to the detractors.

Tier A companies usually have an NPS of 70. The score can go above 70 as well. However, reaching that score needs a lot of effort from the company. Some of the biggest companies, like Apple and Netflix, had an NPS score of 49 and 64, respectively.  This was a while ago, but the companies have made the right efforts to ensure that they have grown and enhanced their NPS scores.

Bad NPS

We have already discussed that an NPS score above 0 indicates that the company has more promoters than detractors. On the other hand, an NPS score below 0 highlights the fact that the business has more detractors as compared to promoters.

According to CRM experts, an NPS score of -3 is deemed bad. A negative highlights the fact that the business needs to get serious and work towards improving its product as well as the overall service, as it has more unhappy customers.

Net Promoter Score Calculation

The score is based on the following NPS question:

“On a scale of 0 to 10, how happy are you with the new feature added to the product?”

Based on their scores, they are called –

0–6: Detractors

Passives (numbers 7–8)

Promoters, ages 9-10

NPS calculation formula = (Number of Promoters — Number of Detractors) / (Number of Respondents) x 100

If this is difficult for you, there are a number of online tools to calculate it for you.

Top 10 NPS Survey Best Practices for Customer Success Managers

So, how do you change the bad scores to good ones, and how to increase your response rates to the NPS survey?  Let us find that out through the NPS Survey best practices for CSMs.

1. Make it a point to trigger the NPS survey with some in-app experience

You must send your NPS at the right time in the user journey. Asking them to take the survey while they are still on the app/ portal is considered to be most effective. You could trigger the action right after the customer is on board and has activated your features. This also gives it a personalized approach and thus boosts response rates.

2. Customize the color, size, and font sizes of your NPS survey in accordance with your product

Make sure that the survey is readable! Readability is key; without that, your customers would not mind leaving. Use readable fonts, colors, and text sizes in the survey. At the same time, make sure that it is all aligned with your offering and brand name.

If you are triggering the survey within your digital platform, make sure to choose a contrasting color, so the survey stands out and is not ignored.

3. Send the NPS survey at the right time to the right number of customers

You must follow proper timing before sending the survey to your customers. Now, the right time to send the survey will depend on the use case. For instance, if you want to gather feedback on the onboarding process, you could prompt your NPS survey right after the process. Similarly, if you want to know whether the customer is satisfied with their query resolution, you could prompt the survey right after their interaction.

Based on the type of feedback you are expecting, you can schedule the NPS survey timing. Similarly, sending the survey to the right number of customers is also quite important. Having a more decent number of responses adds value to the data gathered so it can be analyzed to derive valuable insights from it.

4. Segment your customers to get better NPS data

As a CRM for a B2B SaaS company, you need to understand that the end-users of your product may not always be the decision-makers. Read the sentence twice. It means that there could be multiple users coming from one account. Considering this difference, you need to segment your users and send in the survey specific to their use case. For instance, if you are sending out an NPS survey to find out about a particular product feature, you should be targeting end-users.

5. Never send your NPS survey before testing

You may have spent a decent amount of time planning the survey. You may have also allocated high-value resources to do the brainstorming and designing. But then, you need someone on whom you can test! Before sending out the survey, it is very important that you send it to a selected few as a test to see what is working and what is not.

You can experiment with the headlines or change the questions or try different timings to see what works best for you. We recommend you conduct A/B testing to know the efficiency of your NPS survey.

6. Attach an incentive for the customers to participate in the NPS survey

One of the best ways to boost your NPS survey response rates is by incentivizing your customers for their responses. When planning the incentive, ensure that it justifies the time and effort they put into responding to the survey. The best thing about NPS surveys is that they are quite short, so they don’t need a lot of time and effort. Considering this, you can incentivize in the form of coupons, customer loyalty points, etc.

7. Accumulate and measure NPS data on a regular basis

Collecting and analyzing NPS data should be a recurring task. As CRM of a B2B SaaS company, you might have a fair idea about the changing behaviors of your customers. And this change is usually triggered by differences in your product/ service or changes in their expectations or needs. You can access these behavioral changes by collecting and analyzing NPS data from time to time. This will help you make timely improvements in your product, process, and customer service.

When analyzing the NPS data, make sure that you analyze it for each customer segment. Doing it for an individual customer segment helps identify the types of customers more loyal to your brand and the types that need additional service.

8. Give close attention to the patterns in customer data

The data from the NPS survey is extremely valuable; however, you can access it better only if you follow the right process. You must look for the patterns in the customer data obtained from the survey. Try to make out the patterns in the data based on the responses towards product features and attributes.

This will give you a fair idea of what is working and what is not and the areas for improvement.

9. Automate your NPS survey follow-up

Not only should you conduct the NPS survey regularly, but you should also follow up on the surveys. This way, you will be able to get more information about the motivation behind the customers’ replies. By sending out follow-ups for your NPS survey, you will be making further attempts to know what the customers feel about your product or brand and their overall experience.

Further, automating your follow-up emails and ensuring that you personalize them for individual customers gives them an edge. Automating your follow-up emails helps nurture leads and strengthen bonds with the customers.

10. Share the feedback you receive from the NPS survey to your entire CS team

Lastly, you must involve your entire CS team when analyzing the NPS data. Make sure that they all have access to the data. This is important as the entire team’s contribution is important to make improvements at each touchpoint. Access to the feedback helps them to be more proactive when designing the strategy.

Conclusion

To wrap it up, it can be said that careful analysis of the NPS data helps improve not just the product but also your customer approach strategy. Considering the importance, investing in NPS is one of the key decisions that a CRM has to make. Doing it right can prove to be extremely beneficial for the holistic improvement of the organization. After deciding to invest in an NPS survey, your next task is to start planning in preparing an NPS survey that will give you the best possible results. For this, it is important for you to follow the best practices.

The best practices we have discussed in the blog will help you come up with the best NPS survey strategy. Following them will also help you boost customer response rates. 

Use them to come up with the best surveys and turn the customer feedback you receive into valuable insights that can drive your B2B SaaS organization to the pinnacle.

Good luck!

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