How To Install A Net Promoter Score System

Categories: Analytics, How To, Implementation, | Tue, 28 Apr 2020 17:00:00 GMT
Blogs > https://www.sociallyconstructed.online/blogs/how-to-install-a-net-promoter-score-system

This 3-Step Guide Will Install an NPS System In Your Community.

Part 2 of a 3 part series on community surveys.
The Net Promoter Score, or the NPS, is a very unique 2-question survey borne out of the customer service industries of Amazon, Netflix, and other internet giants.

​The NPS asks for your target audience to describe how they feel about you.  But it asks them at several intervals of their customer value journey, and then each time it asks, it offers a completely optional and unassuming (but hugely rewarding) comment box below it. 

It may seem simple, but the Net Promoter Score is almost single-handedly responsible for measuring essential quantitative data in the biggest companies, and as we covered in part 1 of this blog series, it’s no exaggeration to say that it saved Comcast’s reputation.  ​

​This blog will guide you through planning, designing, and implementing the Net Promoter Score for your community, brand, and/or team in 5 steps. 

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What Implementing The NPS Will Take:

We expect that executing these steps to will take 1-2 weeks of fairly light work. 

Preparing to implement the NPS is mostly about getting all of the stakeholders into one room to decide where the survey should be placed, and how it will be supported.

Once the system is set up, you can likely expect it to take about 1 hour per week to analyze what comes out of it.  

Note: This blog won’t cover the contents of the survey. Review part 1 of this blog series for that.

1. Where Does the Target Audience Meet You?

As with all new analytics systems, planning is your first step.

List all the direct points of contact you have with your community, customers, or target audience. This is where your people are talking to them. Regular emails? Support tickets? Over the phone? Where are your touch-points on social media?

Then list all the indirect points of contact your target audience has with your brand. This means they’ve found your brand and your project, but they’re not interacting with your people. Examples of indirect contact include landing pages, websites, FAQ pages, YouTube how-to videos, and so on.

Next, consider who the people supporting these channels may be. They could be support representatives, lead posters on a forum, volunteers, and employees, but also contractors, admins, community members, and the like. Now you know who you’ll need to have a discussion with to implement an NPS system across your organization.

So set up a meeting with those who are involved in running each of these channels. Reach out to them to discuss what your goals are before you set up an NPS system. Share this blog with them to get them to buy in, and get some feedback on how they would prefer to receive the NPS survey from those filling it out.

By the end of Step 1’s meeting, you should have an idea of how and where you should implement the NPS survey most effectively. This implementation will probably look different for each of the channels you target, but since it’s just a question and a comment box, it’s usually pretty low effort. 

Net Promoter Score Kiosk at a McDonalds in Denver International Airport

For example…
Take an email going out to those that directly interact with you, like a weekly newsletter. You can embed the survey directly into the bottom of the email and each of the numbered faces would lead to a different landing page where you take their comment.

If that isn’t going to be particularly helpful because you don’t rely on emails to communicate within your community, you can put the NPS at the bottom of a Support landing page, or it could be a pop-up on a thank-you page once they’ve completed a specific action.

It could even be a podium, as with this McDonald’s Kiosk. Regardless, it should be implemented in the easiest way possible for people to provide their responses.


2. Implement and Prepare To Score the Data

The next step is to put the NPS in the places you’ve just isolated. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to go!

Well… almost ready to go. Now you have to figure out how to support it. Don’t worry, we can help!

When the reports come rolling in, don’t consider this a one-and-done survey situation. If you don’t use it to discover community member pitfalls and figure out ways to fix them, installing the NPS was useless. 

People are not leaving comments to blow off steam. This is a social contract. When they write a comment, they are doing that with the expectation that you will read and consider what they have to say. Especially if they aren’t the only person giving that type of feedback.

NPS is an around-the-clock system. Keep it going and add it to your analytics meeting every week.  Score the data according to the following chart.  Then discuss it with your project team.

Scoring chart for the Net Promoter Score

How scoring works…
Promoters are the only people who really count for NPS. The weight puts the score in your audiences’ favor. These are the people who are giving you the social reputation you need to really progress your company. Most people will probably be either dissatisfied or kind of “meh” about your product. Put them in a group labelled “needs improvement.”  

Subtract the percentage of your promoters from your general detractors and voila: You’ll get a number that your CEO should be happy with, when compared to others

3. Leverage NPS Results to Improve the Score

NPS is a powerful tool that introduces a treasure trove of insights that qualitative data can provide if utilized properly.

By tracking your NPS score over time and then using the trends you find to make changes in your business, you’ll find that you can make a change on Monday and see a tangible increase or decrease in your NPS score as soon as the next Friday. Over time, you can challenge your teams to hit goals based on the feedback you recieve. 

In truth, NPS is pretty low-hanging but very juicy fruit among qualitative analysts. There’s tons of insights left on the table for you to pick up as you get better.

As Chris Mercer at MeasurementMarketing says; 

“First get good. Then get better.”

​So, if you’re ready to see what NPS can do for your company, implement it! 

but….

The limits of the Net Promoter Score

The problem with the NPS is that it is limited to those who are willing to speak and to listen. It’s impact hinges on whether you take action to fix it. So Do not reduce the NPS to a simple set of numbers, or you’re doing it wrong.

One of the most important concepts we at SC.O push is called the rule of generalization:
A Concept Applies to B population only so far as C limitation.
​To truly leverage the Net Promoter Score, you need a plan for understanding the qualitative data these comments give you objectively and at scale.

​It’s one thing to read the comments you receive and act on them when they impact your team. It’s quite another thing to recognize trends in the comments are limited by a few harsh realities for any survey you ever use:

Because this is a survey that relies on an action, 70% of your audience is not actively telling you what they think, just like a regular sales funnel.  

So, in part 3 of this series on surveys, we’re going to cover what those limitations are, and what you can do to get around them.  Stay tuned for next week!

Let us know if you need help getting started, find hang-ups, or have any questions. I’ll watch the comments below and you can email me at Samantha@SociallyConstructed.Online.

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Venia Logan

I’ve spent the past 9 years learning the diverse skills necessary to create strong stable online communities that put your brand’s services at their center. ​​I started my own YouTube channel in 2010, and RESCQU.NET in 2013. I worked for Constant Contact, and returned to college for a specialization in online community management. Then I attained all 12 certifications from DigitalMarketer and helped dozens of communities. Spend fewer resources advertising to cold contacts or buying paid media and get back to focusing on what you love by growing a community that is financially and socially rewarding for you.