The Perfect Net Promoter® Survey Design

“The one number you need to grow”: who’d have thought that such a simple statement would cause such a fuss.

Some people actually believe that you only need one question in your Net Promoter® Survey. But of course that doesn’t work: so let’s review the anatomy of a perfect Net Promoter Survey.

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Agenda

• Your Survey Design Goals• The Net Promoter Survey• The Pick List of Perfect Surveys• Summary and Review

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Your Survey Design Goals

These should the design goals be for your Net Promoter Survey?

1. Short: – You want the survey as short as possible to drive up the response

rate and lower the impact on your customers. This also allows you to run it in transactional survey mode which is very useful.

2. Consistent: – The factors that can skew the response on a Net Promoter Score®

are many and varied. To reduce the changes in these factors as much as possible you want to ensure that the survey is consistent from one customer to the next and one wave or transaction to the next. Resist the urge to re-order questions, add new ones, change the wording of existing questions, etc.

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Your Survey Design Goals

3. Enable driver identification: – Asking one question, as some NPS® surveys do, is pretty much a

waste of time unless you have an extraordinarily deep and wide customer behaviour dataset and the tools to do some very sophisticated data analysis. For most organisations you will need to add questions to understand what drives the score.

4. Understand how to improve: – You know what drives the score but you also need to know how to

move the score.

5. Collect NPS: – You need, of course, to collect the NPS.

That’s it. No more, no less.

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The Net Promoter Question

• Starting with the “Would Recommend” question seems like a pretty good idea, and it is. Putting this question at the start of the survey is generally considered best practice.

• The easiest approach is to just use the question as designed:

”How likely is it that you would recommend [your company] to a friend or colleague? Where 0 is not likely at all and 10

is very likely.”

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The Net Promoter Question

Can we change the response scale?

• No. Why would you? Okay maybe that’s a bit harsh but it’s close to the truth.

• Typically people ask:– “Our Market Research/Customer Insights/Analytics Department has

standardised on the 0-5/1-7/Alpha-Omega, response scale and we need to conform to their requirements.”

• If you change the question– All of the analysis and published literature based on the 0-10

response scale so all of that data is worthless

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The Net Promoter Question

Can we change the wording?

• As long as you are consistent it is generally agreed that you can change the wording a minor way. This works quite well for transactional surveys. For instance:

“Based on your recent branch visit, how likely would you be to recommend Megabank to

a friend or colleague.”

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The Qualitative Question(s)

• Provides the how to match the what we discover later.

• This is an open response question that, if the survey is well designed, will receive a 40-60% completion rate.

“Please tell us why you gave that score.”

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Enabling Driver Identification

• You need to know:– how to drive change.– what drives the NPS.

• Four main approaches– Tagging Free Text– Manual Tagging – Automated Text Analytics (Passive Tagging)– Customer Tagging (Active Tagging)

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Enabling Driver Identification: Tagging Free Text

• Tagging Free Text:– A generic method for driver analysis – Tag each of the free text comments with a theme or themes – Use these tags to analyse the data and identify the most important

tags

• This requires you to tag the data and there are several ways to achieve that task.

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Tagging Free Text: Manual Tagging

• Useful for small numbers of responses– Up to 200

• Limit the number of tags to just 10 or 20.

• Quite subjective – Try to have the same person do the tagging to keep it consistent.

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Tagging Free Text: Automated Text Analytics

• Software to take the text and parse it to provide a context and tag the response.

• Advantages– Can be effective for large numbers of responses.

• Caveats– There are a variety of platforms to do this– These tools are not as point and shoot as they seem, or as

advertised. – Require training, technical skills and ongoing management to match

them to your business.– Can be expensive

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Tagging Free Text: Customer Tagging

• Have the customer tag there response– Add one more question to the survey with a series of check-boxes or

radio buttons to allow the customer to tell you what was their biggest issue or what they liked the most.

• Advantages– Works very well – No need to manage text analytics tools– Never wrong: by definition, a customer can’t tag their data

incorrectly.

Enabling Driver Identification: Attribute Questions

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• Use a series of attribute questions to score each of the attributes of your product or service.

• Advantages– Clear cut to implement – Statistical analysis is quite straightforward

• Caveats– The attribute list needs to be complete.– Increases the length of the survey (remember our goals)– only include the attributes that are really essential

”How responsive were we when you called, from 1 to 7, where 1 is very unresponsive and 7 is very

responsive.”

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The Pick List of Perfect Surveys

• NPS Question + Free Text Response + Manual Tagging:– Companies with small numbers of customers can benefit from this

configuration.

• NPS Question + Free Text Response + Automated Text Analytics:– Suitable for larger B2C and B2B organisations with high volumes of

responses and the technical resources to support and manage the text analytics engine.

• NPS Question + Free Text Response + Customer Tagging:– Suitable for all organisations with more than a couple of hundred

responses. The customer tagging aspect is easy to implement and manage. It requires no specific technical skills.

• NPS Question + Free Text Response + Attribute Questions:– Again suitable for all organisations. The statistical analysis is

relatively easy which makes it accessible to many organisations.

Want more information?

Here are some links to Net Promoter information that you may find useful:

• Do I need to pay to use Net Promoter®?

• [Video] What is a Good Net Promoter Score®?

• 7 Steps to Best Practice Net Promoter Score® Implementation

• Net Promoter Score® Success Stories and Case Studies

• Transactional Net Promoter Score®: Which is the best way to collect data?

• Transactional Vs Relationship Customer feedback: Are you using the right one?

• 6 Net Promoter® Best Practices You Can Use Today

• 5 More Best Practices for Net Promoter® Implementation

• Net Promoter Score®: How Much Can You Improve – Real Company Data

• How to Set Net Promoter® Targets for Your Organisation and Staff

• How To Drive Customer Experience Innovation Using Transactional NPS®

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About Genroe

• Headquartered in Sydney, Australia, Genroe has been a driving force in helping companies better understand and generate higher value from their existing customers since 2002. Banks, insurance companies, IT companies and others used Genroe’s wide customer management services and tools to maximize customer profitability and revenue potential.

Our core deliverables are in the area of customer feedback management and customer experience management.

• Our Customer Experience Management Services– Customer Experience Management implementation– Customer Retention consulting– Product and service bundling– Customer Loyalty Program Health check– Creating a customer centric culture

• Our Customer Feedback Management services– Customer feedback Services– Net Promoter Score Practice– B2B Customer Feedback– Lost sale feedback and action plan

• Customer TestimonialsTo hear first-hand what our customers value most in our services you can review our extensive list of customer testimonials.

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Contact Genroe

• We run projects across Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia. Below are our contact details. Please feel free to contact us at any time.

Phone: 02 9191 4700+61 2 9191 4700

Email: info@genroe.com.au

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