NPS® or Net Promoter Score® is a plugin that helps collect, store, analyze, and track customer loyalty and overall sentiments about your product, service, or company from web and mobile applications through a single, basic question: “Do you recommend us?” All you need to do is create an NPS survey on Countly, which will pop up as a widget, and ask your users/customers for a score.
Availability
The NPS plugin is available in the Enterprise Edition.
What is NPS?
NPS is a standard metric that was created in 2003 by Bain & Company. It is generally used to measure and analyze customer loyalty and sentiments about your product, company, or service. It is different from other surveys or customer experience-based research because of its standardized, simple question and metrics, which make it easily trackable and quantified over time. Unlike CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score), NPS measures the number of advocates your brand has—not the number of happy customers.
An NPS survey consists of only one question that typically looks like this:
"How likely are you to recommend this product/company to a friend or colleague on a scale from 0 to 10?"
Participants rate their opinion on a 0-10 scale, with 0 being very unlikely and 10 being extremely likely. After rating, participants are asked to share their additional feedback, if any, in an open-ended follow-up question. This follow-up question might be customized based on the score category. NPS has 3 standardized categories based on the given score:
- Promoters, who respond with a score of 9 or 10: are typically loyal and enthusiastic customers.
- Passives, who respond with a score of 7 or 8: are satisfied customers but not happy enough to be considered promoters.
- Detractors, who respond with a score of 0 to 6: are unhappy customers who are unlikely to buy from you again, and may even discourage others from buying from you.
At first, NPS may seem like a basic survey that provides insight based on scores. But if it is well-planned and used strategically, it's so much more. Let’s learn more about it.
How to calculate NPS
NPS has a simple calculation formula:
NPS = %Promoters - %Detractors
For example,
Promoters = 70% of respondents
Passives = 20%
Detractors = 10%
NPS = 70-10 = 60
So, the NPS will range between the absolute majority of Promoters (i.e. NPS = 100) to the absolute majority of Detractors (i.e. NPS = -100).
NPS Types
There are 2 types of NPS surveys based on user/customer targeting:
Relational: is used to measure the customer’s overall feeling about a product or organization.
Transactional: is used to address customer satisfaction at a more granular level, such as direct feedback about a particular issue or step (e.g. after a first transaction).
How to run NPS surveys and analyze them on Countly
1. Enable the NPS plugin
The NPS plugin is enabled by default in Enterprise Edition and you can find it on the left main navigation menu: Reach>Feedback>NPS. If you don’t see it, please enable it from Settings/Plugin on the top right corner. If you don’t have access to these settings, please contact your account admin.
2. Creating an NPS Survey
On the left main navigation menu, in the Reach section, click Feedback link to access the sub-menu and choose the NPS (Net Promoter Scores) plugin.
You will see a blank NPS dashboard, so start by creating your first NPS survey. Click the green button “New NPS Survey” on the top right corner to start.
Creating an NPS survey on Countly has 3 simple and easy steps:
- NPS Widget Settings
- Customize Appearance
- Devices & Targeting
2.1 NPS Widget Settings
This first step contains the inputs necessary for creating the NPS survey and includes:
- NPS Survey Name - for internal purposes. It will not be displayed publicly.
- Main Question - customizable.
- Follow-up Question - customizable based on the score category.
- Thank-you message - customizable.
If you only complete the “NPS Survey Name” field and leave the other inputs empty, their values are set by default and you will be able to move on to the next step. If you leave the “NPS Survey Name” field empty, the Next Step button will not be active until you enter a name for your survey.
On the left side of the screen, you will see a preview of your NPS, its follow-up question, and thank-you message. The follow-up question can be customized depending on the score-based Promoters, Passives, and Detractors categories. This customization option is set by default but you can change it and set one unique question for all scores by selecting the second option, Use one Follow-up Question. If you choose one of these two options, these questions will be mandatory for all responses. Alternatively, it is possible to not use a follow-up question by selecting the first option, Don’t use Follow-up Question.
❗ Tip: Make your NPS survey name identifiable, short, and simple. Avoid using special characters or names longer than 255 characters.
2.2 Customize Appearance
In this step, 2 display options are provided for the survey widget:
- Until they submit a score: This is the default option. The NPS widget will be shown until the user responds on every new session based on targeting parameters.
- Until they close the widget: The NPS widget will be shown until the user closes the widget based on targeting parameters. If the user closes it, the same NPS widget will not be shown again and it counts for the Total Shown metric but will not be considered in the NPS calculation.
You can customize the main widget color and style which is applicable to both score and the Submit button appearance. Your choices will be reflected and shown in the preview on the left side.
2.3 Devices & Targeting
The NPS plugin of Countly provides you enhanced options for both page-based, behavioral (i.e. based on user cohort) and event/action-based targeting. It is mainly a 2-part segmentation mechanism: user property segmentation and user behavior segmentation. The slight but important difference between them is that user property segmentation is not dependent on an event.
User property segmentation: helps you narrow your target group of users down using user properties. For instance, you may want to only show iOS users and individual customers defined by a custom user property named accountType. To do that, you can use the query builder in the "USER PROPERTY SEGMENTATION" panel as shown in the image below. You can always extend your query to make your target set even more specific. If you don't want to specify any user properties, you can skip this stage.
User behavior segmentation: They can be added once you are done with User Properties. First, you must select the users who have performed/not performed a certain event or session. Then, set the frequency and time range. When you complete entering these criteria, add property will become enabled.
You can add filters such as country of a user, last entry time, input method, etc. and you can group similar users. The more filters you use, the more granular and deeper your data will be.
You can keep adding conditions by using the + Add Condition button.
Use case example:
If you need to run an NPS survey for your new product or recently launched new product feature, you would need to target users who used this product or feature. So in this case, you can use behavioral segmentation: select at least one event which shows that the user experienced a new product or feature and use it for better targeting your NPS survey.
❗ Tip: This targeting logic is the same as that of a Cohort. So, you can create a Cohort with the same condition to check your targeting and filter users who will trigger your NPS survey.
By default, NPS survey widgets are enabled. If you want to disable them, just uncheck the Set NPS widget active checkbox. You can also edit the survey widget after it has been created.
Now your NPS survey is ready to go public.
3. Overview NPS surveys
After you have created at least one NPS survey, you will see a list of NPS surveys - active or inactive - and a general report showing the overall results for the running NPS surveys.
Running NPS Surveys: Total number of active NPS surveys which are shown with a green toggle on the table above.
Total Responses: Total number of the ratings given by each individual user who responded to the active NPS survey. If a user responds to more than one NPS survey (i.e. gives scores 2 times for 2 active NPS surveys) this is counted as 2 instances on Total Responses.
Response Rate: Percentage of the Number of Responses over Total Shown
Average NPS: Number of the Average Net Promoter Score for all running NPS surveys using the calculation method covered above.
❗ Tip: Difference between the NPS, Surveys, and Ratings plugins: they are all Feedback plugins, but they address different customer experience aspects:
- NPS is triggered when users/customers perform an event and has a very standardized calculation method.
- Surveys run based on behavioral or property segmentation, providing flexibility to customize up to 5 questions and to customize target segmentation.
- Ratings can be added to any page and incorporate a scale of emojis to answer a very straightforward customer satisfaction question. Their segmentation is based on the user’s device and the page they view.
FAQs and Troubleshooting
What is a good NPS response rate?
A higher response rate indicates that the Average NPS will give you a clear picture of your audience. However, the response rate will vary greatly depending on the target audience, industry, market, and product or service. Generally speaking, a response rate of over 40% is ideal, but remember to keep your expectations realistic and to track response rates over time in your NPS Dashboard.
How do I increase my NPS response rate?
There are many strategies you can use but again, they will depend on the nature of your product or service, your industry, and your market. But you can start by considering the following:
- Time the NPS survey appropriately: a customer can’t be loyal to a brand immediately after conversion. Instead, give them the time to make up their mind.
- Don’t overwhelm your respondents: if you have users that repeatedly trigger an event, don’t send them an NPS survey after each one. Instead, use Cohorts to segment the recipients of the survey better.
- Keep the content of the NPS survey short and to the point but convey personalization: Use the segmentation of your choice for your own benefit and customize the elements of the survey to sound more personalized depending on the user score-based category.
What is a good Average NPS?
Like any other survey measuring customer loyalty, Average NPS results vary depending on each industry and market. Of course, the closer the average is to 100, the better because it means that all customers/users are actively promoting your service or product and each lead has a high conversion chance. This is clearly highly utopian, but tracking the improvement of your Average NPS over time will enable you to see if you are on the right track. That said, the general rule of thumb is that the Average NPS should be above 0, and leaning toward 30.
Can I use NPS independent of a user opt-in for analytics?
If your NPS widget is configured for pre-defined conditions like user profile or user events, the users who did not accept cookies/tracking options will not see your NPS and Survey widgets. You can track these permissions via the Compliance Hub.
On the other hand, if your NPS is not triggered by pre-defined conditions (e.g., selecting all visitors to a website), all users will visualize the widgets regardless of whether they accept or decline your compliance agreements.
For more information please refer to the Feedback FAQ.