NPS is Broken:

6 Strategies for How to Fix It

Improve your company’s NPS experience, targeting, follow

up, and more for a better score and deeper customer loyalty.
| NPS is Broken: 6 Strategies for How to Fix It i
Table of Contents
Use the links to jump ahead

What is Net Promoter Score (NPS)?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

How to Calculate Your Company’s NPS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
What Do You Do with NPS?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
6 Strategies to Make NPS More Meaningful. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1. Allow for Open-ended Feedback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2. Keep It Short. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3. Have a Goal In Mind. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4. Target the Correct Audience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5. Right Place, Right Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
6. Personalize Your Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
How To Act Now. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
| NPS is Broken: 6 Strategies for How to Fix It ii
 What is NPS?

| 6 Actionable Steps to Improve NPS 1

Net Promoter Score, or NPS, is
considered a leading growth
indicator across industries.
It is a measure of customer loyalty that can be benchmarked
across other players in your industry. When NPS was
developed back in 2003, the world of customer experience
and communication looked vastly different. Over the past
two decades, advancement in digital technology and our
understanding of human behavior have changed much about
the corporate approach to sentiment analysis.

| NPS is Broken: 6 Strategies for How to Fix It 2

We know NPS can be a powerful tool
if used correctly, and recognize the
value in having one metric to provide
a holistic pulse on your customer
experience. Unfortunately, the way
it’s used today by many companies
can have flawed results.

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Today’s NPS often:

 Reflects Is confusing Doesn’t map Targets

a small by nature the customer the wrong
data set journey over audience
time

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Today, we think about experiences in
emotions rather than in numbers. When
you ask someone if they liked something,
their first instinct isn’t to give you a ranking
on a scale. NPS strategies from years
ago do not incorporate this mentality
and therefore yield inaccurate feedback
results if they are used as the primary or
solo indicator of customer emotion.

| NPS is Broken: 6 Strategies for How to Fix It 5

 How to Calculate
Your Company’s NPS

| 6 Actionable Steps to Improve NPS 6

To calculate NPS, companies ask
customers how likely they would be to
recommend a product to their colleague
or friend on a scale from zero to ten.
The product is then given a single score based upon the ratio
of “promoters” versus “detractors.” If the score goes up, it’s
presumed that customers are happy and loyal. If the score
goes down, it is presumed that marketing and product work
needs to be done.

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 How likely are you to
recommend this to someone?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Not Very
Likely Likely

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Respondents to an NPS question
are then grouped into three
categories based on their ratings.
To complete your calculation, you then
take your percentage of Promoters
(9’s and 10’s) and subtract the percentage
of Detractors (0’s through 6’s), leaving out
the Passives (7’s and 8’s).
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 Promoters (score 9-10):
Loyal customers who will keep purchasing
and will refer the business to others

Passives (score 7-8):

Satisfied customers, but may be swayed
by competitive offerings

Detractors (score 0-6):

Unhappy customers who can damage
your brand by negative word-of-mouth

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Let’s say you’ve conducted a poll
with the NPS question on the
0-10 scale, and you’ve received
100 customer responses.

What do you do with the results?

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 Enter your responses into an
Excel or Google spreadsheet

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 Categorize the responses by
Detractors, Passives, and Promoters

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 Add up the total responses
from each group

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To find the percentage, take the group
total and divide it by the total number
of survey responses
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 Subtract the percentage total of
Detractors from the percentage total
of Promoters—this is your NPS score
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 What Do You Do
with NPS?

| 6 Actionable Steps to Improve NPS 17

You can measure almost anything
with NPS, including products,
experiences, stores, staff members,
or even employee sentiment.
NPS is just a survey, and as long as it’s managed
with the right best practices, it can reveal valuable
insight into how people feel.

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Like any customer feedback
activity, the goal of NPS is to turn
customers into loyal fans who
become brand evangelists by
listening to—and most importantly,
acting on—their feedback.

| NPS is Broken: 6 Strategies for How to Fix It 19

But remember, NPS is just an indicator.
NPS does not help companies understand
customer emotion in real time, nor does it
give insight into how emotions shift through
customer journeys. NPS is one data point
in a sea of important metrics that help
companies holistically understand what’s
driving their customer experience and how
they can have a bigger impact.

| NPS is Broken: 6 Strategies for How to Fix It 20

 6 Strategies to Make
NPS More Meaningful

| 6 Actionable Steps to Improve NPS 21

NPS isn’t going away any time soon.
Too many companies rely on this metric, and we
acknowledge that for many of you reading this right now,
your performance is often measured on NPS. We absolutely
think there’s value in having one metric that gives you a
pulse on your entire customer experience. But the problem
is that the world is different today than it was when NPS
began, and most companies only hear from less than one
percent of their customer base, which can be dangerous.

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Today, everyone has their mobile
phone on them at all times, and
people are more accessible than
ever. You have a unique opportunity
to gather much more valuable and
actionable customer feedback if
you evolve your NPS strategy.

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 Here are six
strategies you can
use immediately.

| 6 Actionable Steps to Improve NPS 24

 ONE

Allow for open-ended

feedback
You may have an idea of what
customers like or don’t like in your
mobile experience; however, allow
them to leave open-ended feedback
to key you in on some positives or
negatives that you may have missed.
We call this NPS+.
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NPS+ is the simple solution we devised to meet our
customers’ needs while still sticking to our beliefs
about actionable customer feedback. By simply asking
customers, “Why did you choose this score?” after the
traditional rating question and allowing customers
to provide unstructured feedback, we have helped
companies to contextualize the NPS score and to
understand where their customers think they’re doing
well and where they need to improve—and made the
survey valuable and relevant for the end customer.

| NPS is Broken: 6 Strategies for How to Fix It 27

 TWO

Keep it short
Screen real estate is very
limited on a mobile device.
Limiting a survey to 4-6 relevant questions is
the best way to prevent survey fatigue and
ensure a high response rate. No one wants
to complete a thirty-question survey on a
smartphone.

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Ask yourself, “Is this question
absolutely necessary?” and, “Is this the
only way to capture this information?”
If the answer is no to either, remove
the question. Try to gather as much
information as you can through analytics
or metadata attached to the survey.

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 THREE

Have a goal
in mind
Since you’re committed to limiting
the number of questions you present,
make sure that each question is
focused on a single feature or event.
If your questions don’t align with the specific goal you’ve
set, remove them from the survey and ask them at a
different time.

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 FOUR

Target the
correct audience
Utilize targeting tools to
ensure you’re asking relevant
questions to people who have
the right experience with your
product or application to provide
meaningful feedback.

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Tools like Apptentive allow you to
serve surveys to specific, targeted
groups of customers based upon
actions they’ve taken within the app
or personal information, such as
account type, location, or amount
spent within the app.

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 FIVE

Right place,
right time
Ensure you ask customers for their
feedback at a time and place that
won’t prevent them from using the
app for its intended purpose.
This may mean waiting for feedback, but responses
will more accurately reflect consumer experiences.

| NPS is Broken: 6 Strategies for How to Fix It 37

For example, instead of asking
people to complete a survey right
when they launch the app, ask them
about their purchase experience
after they’ve completed the
buying cycle and are closing their
purchase confirmation.

| NPS is Broken: 6 Strategies for How to Fix It 38

 SIX

Personalize
your message
Talk to your customers as
though they are individuals.
Beginning with phrases like, “What do
you think…” and, “How do you feel…”
lets customers know you’re interested
in understanding them and their
experience personally.

| NPS is Broken: 6 Strategies for How to Fix It 40

 How to
Act Now

| 6 Actionable Steps to Improve NPS 41

By changing their focus
from NPS to NPS+,
along with a focus on personalized marketing,
our customers have had tremendous success in
accurately gauging and predicting their customers’
loyalty. They’re now able to act quickly to provide
the best experience possible. This approach gives
a voice to every customer and provides value to
customers and community members alike.

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The next time you survey your customers,
consider whether or not the questions
you asked will give you actionable
feedback. Will the survey provide value
to your customers? Are you reaching your
customers at the right place and time?
Have you optimized your survey for the
mobile experience?

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Ready to set up a more
meaningful survey, like NPS+?
If you’re already an Apptentive customer,
reach out to your customer success manager
and we’ll get the ball rolling for you!

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 Join these customer-centric
companies in Being Apptentive.

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