The popularity of Net Promoter Score is staggering. We see it used constantly in both B2C and B2B surveys. Its utter simplicity is extremely attractive to managers sick of the overly complex reports they are used to getting from the market research industry. But that is fodder for another article. There are also a lot of voices pointing out that it can be dangerous to rely too much on this one metric. That too is for another article.

What I want to talk about is the impact of culture on NPS. I started thinking about it when a long-time client of ours in the Netherlands was acquired by an American company. The American company placed great importance on NPS even basing bonuses on it. The American company was surprised at what a low NPS score the Dutch Company was getting. The score wasn’t low, it was just above 0 which in NPS terms is actually neutral.

Surveys can seem like rather one-way communication to respondents. They give their time and effort to complete a survey and too often don’t receive any feedback about their answers.

Automated alerts give you the opportunity to break that perception and quickly interact with your respondents. Alerts, used correctly, can win back at-risk customers. They allow you to communicate with dissatisfied customers to learn and repair damaged relationships through coordinated follow-up.

For example, you can identify disappointed customers automatically based on an NPS or general satisfaction question and push an e-mail alert to their account manager for immediate follow-up.

What kind of alerts are possible?

• E-mail
  This mail contains a link to the real-time respondent report which includes all respondents answers, contact fields, location, etc.
• An SMS
  You can send an SMS to recipients anywhere in the world. This SMS text message contains your personal message as well as a short URL to the real time respondent report.
• A Twitter message
  This is a private message that does not appear in your public stream. It contains all the information the recipient needs to handle the alert.
• An HTTP request
  These requests are very powerful, because they allow to interact with other systems and APIs. For instance, you could create a support ticket in your helpdesk application, based on answers given by a respondent. You could also send the respondent a follow-up survey automatically if they answer a certain way or use it to update your own CRM.

An example

A company organises a customer satisfaction survey. An account manager will immediately receive a message whenever a customer indicates they are not satisfied. The respondent report gives him a clear view of the needs of the customer. He can immediately contact the customer to address their concerns and win them back.

» Click here to see an example automated alert.

The technological evolution marches on and opens up attractive new possibilities. Mobile research is undoubtedly one of them. The explosive growth of smartphones and tablet PCs like the iPad ensures that almost everyone is online all the time these days. Moreover these mobile devices will become cheaper, faster, more reliable and more ubiquitous. It is time to act and take advantage of the new opportunities mobile research provides.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a simple but powerful tool to measure client satisfaction with one single question, an indication of the growth potential of your company or product. Read further for an overview on the use, application and pitfalls of NPS.

Do you know someone who wants to help build CheckMarket? We continue to grow and are looking for fresh forces. Who do we need?

Front End Web Developer

A talented expert who can further develop our survey tool along with our Development Team. He or she likes working on the client side and has an eye for beautiful and user-friendly interfaces.

Market Research Project Manager

An organizer who can easily and accurately support survey projects for our national and international clients from the proposal phase to the analysis. In addition, he or she takes care of the further expansion of our client base.

Do you have ambition or know someone from the province of Antwerp? Let us know!