14 Net Promoter Score^℠ Touch Points and How To Use Them

A company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS^®) is a reliable measure of customer loyalty and satisfaction as well as an indicator of future sales and income growth. How you use your NPS will partially depend on how you collect it. Choosing the right Net Promoter Score touch points to collect survey information can help to improve response rates and give you the information that you need.

14 Net Promoter Score Touch Points and How to Use Them

Why NPS?

As you probably already know, NPS is a measure of customer loyalty. By surveying customers with one question—“how likely is it that you would recommend our company?”—and subtracting the proportion of unhappy customers from happy customers, business leaders can gauge customer loyalty and satisfaction. NPS is also important to the overall health of the company. The creators of the NPS system, Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company, Inc., and Satmetrix Systems, Inc., have shown that NPS is strongly related to business growth. Businesses with higher NPS tend to do better than their competitors.

Relationship vs Transactional NPS

Though the NPS uses a relatively simple question and process, how you collect this metric and the people you survey will impact how you can use it. The two most-used  types of NPS are relationships and transactional. Relationship NPS measures a customer’s overall feeling about the brand. This survey should be taken at regular intervals and assessed in similar ways each time. A transactional survey measures customers’ satisfaction with a particular experience, such as the purchase process or customer service. Depending on which type of NPS you wish to measure, you may need different Net Promoter Score touch points to measure NPS accurately.

Transactional Net Promoter Score Touch Points

1. After-Purchase Email

If you want to measure customers’ satisfaction with your purchasing experience online, use the NPS question in your follow-up email.

2. Sales Survey

For some companies, the relationships between the customer and the salesperson are very important. When your salesperson makes a sale, give the customer a comment card or follow-up in an email to ask about the transaction and the salesperson.

3. After-Purchase Prompt

After an online purchase, you probably give customers a confirmation message telling them that you’ve received their order. Using this screen as a Net Promoter Score touch point will give you the customer’s immediate reaction after using your online purchasing process. This will also allow you to skip the NPS email, which might end up in your customer’s trash folder.

4. After Customer Service Prompt

The effectiveness of your customer service team has a serious impact on customer loyalty. Some businesses use chatbots to answer quick questions and point customers in the right direction. After a customer makes an inquiry to customer service chatbot, follow-up with quick pop-up to ask the NPS question. This will gauge their satisfaction with your online customer service.

5. After Customer Service Email

You might also have an in-person customer service team, which might include phone calls, custom emails, video chats, and more. If a customer works with your customer service team, send a follow-up email to see how they did. This NPS touch point will help you gauge the problem-solving skills of your team, which is an important part of customer loyalty.

6. Pop-Up Message

If your website and online user experience are an important part of your business, it might be helpful to add an NPS survey as a pop-up message for your web visitors. You can use tracking on this Net Promoter Score touch point to target new visitors, returning visitors, leads, or customers.

7. Comment Card

Not all customers regularly get your emails or visit your website, so gathering your NPS this way might create biased results. Remember, customers who have elected to be on your mailing list are probably more loyal customers to begin with. In this case, use your store as an Net Promoter Score touch point. Place comments cards with the NPS question conspicuously around your store to survey a wider array of customers.

8. Reward Email

If you’re finding it difficult to gather NPS survey responses, offering a reward can help. Give your customers a discount or a free item if they provide their honest opinion. Keep in mind that offering a reward can generate responses that are overly positive.

9. Kiosk in Store

Store comments cards are an easy Net Promoter Score touch point to gauge all customers, but this requires tallying responses by hand. If you use a tablet fixed to one app, you can collect customer responses in your store electronically.

Relationship Net Promoter Score Touch Points

10. Annual Survey

An annual NPS survey is one of the most reliable ways to measure your relationship NPS score. To eliminate extraneous factors that might influence your results, conduct the survey at the same time in roughly the same way every year.

11. Survey In-App

Those who have signed up for your newsletter might not be the customers you want to measure for your NPS survey. A survey pop-up in your application or program can help to get the honest opinions of only current customers.

12. Mailing

If you regularly send mail to your customers, whether it’s for billing, a holiday card, or something else, your customers might respond best to a paper mail survey. Send a pre-addressed envelope so your customers can mail their responses back, or use a QR code to collect responses electronically.

13. Event Comment Card

Do you regularly hold a special event with good attendance? This can be another valuable Net Promoter Score touch point. When your guests arrive, give them a brief NPS survey, so you can collect responses right away in person.

14. Giveaway

If you hold a regular raffle or giveaway, this can also be a chance to conduct an NPS survey. In order to enter the giveaway, require a response to the NPS question. Remember that the chance of winning a special item can influence results.

By using the right Net Promoter Score touch points, you can reach your customers at the right time and get the information that you’re looking for. Think carefully about what your Net Promoter Score is telling you about your customers’ experience and what questions you would like answered. Consider how you are asking, as well as who you are asking, so you can get the right data.