Benefits of NPS

On the surface, NPS might seem like any other CSAT survey. However, look closely, and you will soon discover that NPS is completely different.

For once, NPS surveys lead to a standardized NPS score. Such a metric, allows for comparison between industry thresholds.

On the other hand and most importantly, NPS tracks user loyalty. As explained below, knowing the chances a user has to turn into a brand ambassador, you can see what are the actions that they do that render in a higher NPS rate and which not. Also, triggering an NPS survey at the correct time, can help in making the user feel appreciated, also putting them on the path of heightened loyalty.

Getting Started

The NPS feature is enabled by default in Countly Enterprise, and you can find it in the Main Menu >Feedback. If you still don’t see it, go to the Sidebar > Management > Feature Management and enable the Surveys toggle.

NPS Overview

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).

Using NPS

Upon accessing this View, you will see a list of NPS surveys and a general report showing the results for the NPS surveys, as well as:

1. Selector for the metrics panel. Choose between metrics reflecting All NPS surveys (regardless of whether they are currently active or inactive), or only the Active or Stopped NPS surveys.
2. 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.
3. Response Rate - Percentage of the Number of Responses over Total Shown.
4. Average NPS Score - Number of the Average Net Promoter Score® for all running NPS surveys using the calculation method covered above.
5. NPS survey list - Each NPS survey in the list can be quickly activated or deactivated using its respective toggle button. Clicking a NPS survey name will take you to that NPS's detailed view.
6. Individual NPS survey menu - Because NPS surveys can be used periodically, you can quickly duplicate an existing NPS survey or delete old ones.
7. + New Survey button - Opens the drawer to create a new NPS survey.

Creating an NPS Survey

Upon clicking the + New NPS Survey button in the main NPS View, a creation drawer will appear.

Creating a NPS survey widget on Countly has 3 simple and easy steps:

1. Determine the NPS survey settings and questions
2. Customize the NPS appearance
3. Choose which users and/or devices will be targeted

NPS Widget settings

This first step contains the inputs necessary for creating the NPS survey and includes:

1. Internal Name - Name for internal purposes; it will not be displayed to the end-user.
2. NPS Survey Name - Name for external purposes; it will be displayed to the end-user.
3. Main Question - Even when it is customizable, remember that the logic of an NPS survey needs to stay somewhat aligned with the typical NPS question.
4. Follow-up Question - It can be customized depending on the score-based Promoters, Passives, and Detractors categories. This customization option (Use and customize Follow-up Question) 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.
5. Add user consent - You can enable user consent for collecting any data related to a user. You will have to add the terms and conditions, policies, and any other link related to user consent once you click here. To know more, click here.
6. Thank-you message - Will be displayed to the end user upon a successful NPS submission. 

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.

❗ Tip: Make your NPS survey name identifiable, short, and simple. Avoid using special characters or names longer than 255 characters.

NPS 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.

Always visible - The NPS widget will remain visible to the end user at all times.

In this step, you can customize how the widget looks, including:

1. the main widget color and style, which is applicable to both the score and the Submit button appearance.
2. customizing your NPS by adding your Company logo.
3. the text in the Submit button.
4. the label for each end of your 0 to 10 scale.

Your choices will be reflected and shown in the preview on the left side.

NPS targeting

The NPS feature 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 Account Type. 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. You can also associate custom tags to it. However, please note that this will be shown as an empty dropdown where you can add your tags. It won't have a predefined list to choose from.

By default, NPS survey widgets are enabled. If you want to disable them, just uncheck the Set NPS widget to active checkbox. You can also edit the survey widget after it has been created.

And now your NPS survey is ready to go public.

NPS Use Case

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.

NPS Detailed View

Further details about each particular NPS survey can be accessed by clicking on the survey name.

Upon accessing the details of an individual NPS survey you will see:

1. General information, such as status and details.
2. Box detailing the targeting selected for the surveys.
3. Results summary box covering similar details found in the general NPS View.
   You can filter the results by Platform or App Version on the top-left corner and select a particular time frame with the calendar menu on the top-right corner. These filters will affect both the Summary results and the table with Scores/Comments underneath.
4. Graph depicting results by scores and time series.
5. Results tabs: Scores (selected by default) and Comments, both displayed on the table underneath.
6. NPS survey controls, that allow you to stop, edit, duplicate, or delete the NPS survey.

NPS Scores Tab

This tab shows the results of each NPS, broken down by individual score selected.

NPS Comments Tab

This tab shows the responses of each individual NPS survey, displaying the responses by each user. You can filter responses by questions.

Also, you can learn more about the respondent by clicking on the View User button. This will lead you to their user profile.

FAQ 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.

What is the difference between Net Promoter Score® and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) Survey?

Both tools are essential to understanding your customer or user better. However, CSAT tends to be a more short-term metric as it tracks satisfaction on a transactional basis, while NPS is normally a longer-term metric because it measures overall loyalty. In Countly, NPS can be approached using the NPS plugin, while CSAT can be analyzed using the Surveys and the Ratings plugins.