According to this survey, 88% of businesses use Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a customer success metric, but there is so much conflicting information surrounding the scoring system. It can be difficult to know if it’ll continue to stay relevant as a measurement of customer satisfaction.
In this article, you’ll get an overview into its position as a success metric in today’s business.
Is Net Promoter Score still a relevant success metric?
Yes, the Net Promoter Score is still a relevant success metric because you can use it to gauge and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. When your NPS has more promoters than detractors, you can channel efforts into growing revenue from referrals and upselling.
You can also use the feedback gathered from detractors to gain insights on how you can improve customer experience and reduce chances for possible churn. Net promoter score is generally an opportunity to give customers a more positive experience.
Why are people doubting the effectiveness of NPS surveys?
While NPS surveys are quick and effortless for customers to fill out, can it accurately serve as a representation of customer satisfaction? Or does it need to be supplemented with other metrics? This is where the doubt emerges.
People dispute the reliability of net promoter scores as a primary metric. They believe that numerical values can’t give you an accurate measurement of customer satisfaction.
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This is because NPS surveys don’t provide deep insights into customer behaviour. With an NPS survey, you can only ask one question- “How likely are customers to recommend your brand?”
And this is not enough to understand why customers gave you positive or negative feedback. If you really want to know how customers feel about your product or service, you need to combine NPS with various surveys, i.e, customer feedback surveys, and follow-up questions to gather different data points to boost your customer satisfaction and overall customer retention.
How can you use NPS successfully in your business?
Even though metric scores are difficult to provide a deep understanding of how your customers value your product, the alternative is to ask more questions or text-based questions. The first question to ask yourself is are you customers willing to spend that time to answer these questions? If not, what’s the next best option? NPS scores! They are better than nothing and a simple and easy way to get the pulse of your customers. A good time to use NPS is after an event like post onboarding, renewal, or after a major action that the customer has performed on your product.
Alternatives to the Net Promoter Score
While we cannot dismiss the effectiveness of NPS, here are other types of customer success surveys you can use to gain insights into customer satisfaction and experience.
1. Customer Satisfaction Score.
The Customer Satisfaction score (CSAT) is an effective and straightforward way to measure customers’ satisfaction levels and experience with a product, purchase, or interaction. CSAT is obtained by asking a single question — “How satisfied were customers with a certain experience?” And it’s followed by a survey scale which can be 1-5 or 1-10.
You can use the insights gathered from the survey to improve your customer experience. And If you continue to meet their expectations, you’ll be able to improve your overall customer retention. CSAT is therefore an important factor in a customer success strategy.
2. Customer Efforts Score.
Customer Efforts Score (CES) is a customer success metric that measures how much effort a customer puts into interacting with your business. This could be how much effort it takes to use a product feature or get a problem solved.
In a CES survey, you’ll ask a single question, i.e, “How easy was it for a customer to interact with a certain process or product?” on a scale of “1-5” or “very easy” to “very difficult.”
Customer Efforts Score (CES) is highly specific and actionable. It boosts customer satisfaction by giving you insights into areas of your business that need optimization. It’s also a strong predictor of future purchase behavior and customer loyalty.
Conclusion
Customer satisfaction doesn’t depend on the numbers on the survey scale, but on what those numbers represent. You should interpret and understand customers’ sentiments and expectations. This will give you an idea of how to improve your services to boost customer experience.
Overall, NPS is still a relevant customer success metric, but it’s most effective when paired with follow-up questions.
As a customer success manager, you should optimally utilize the feedback from NPS surveys to drive positive results for your organization. Learn more on how to increase customer satisfaction from Churn360’s customer success blog.
