Every company strives to grow. Most leaders want customers to be happy, which is a sure-shot way of ensuring profitable organic growth. But, the challenge is knowing exactly what customers are thinking and what they’re experiencing with our brand or product.
Some years ago, Fred Reichheld and a Bain team launched a research project to determine whether a radically simple approach would prove more fruitful. Working with data supplied by Satmetrix, they tested a variety of questions to see how well the answers correlated with customer behavior. As it turned out, one question worked best for most mature, competitive industries:
“How likely are you to recommend Company X to a friend or colleague?”
And since approximately 20 years, NPS has been a fantastic metric to assess customer loyalty, gauge how a company satisfies customers’ needs, and how likely they are to recommend it to others.
A mere 5, 7, or 10 yardstick helps understand how well a company is doing. That said, businesses strive to improve the experience for their customers. So beyond the overarching question, they look for actionable insight.
TIP: If you’re new to evaluating Net Promoter Score (NPS) and would like to learn more about it first, we recommend you read these:
Don’t worry, though, because this new year, we come bearing gifts! We’ve curated 40 question examples for every scenario, so you don’t have to spend time researching questions while building an NPS survey.
Let’s begin.
The most general question used in an NPS survey is:
“How likely are you to recommend our brand to your friends and family?”
This default question is widely used by organizations in determining the user base’s sentiment toward any product, service, or brand. This template helps identify unhappy customers and evaluate their feelings about the product/service.
However, you can also modify it depending on what you want to assess. Let’s take a look at some variations.
Rating Your Business
This template will help you understand how users generally feel about your brand or business, rather than just the product. This question can also be used to measure overall customer satisfaction. You can use it right after signup to evaluate your sales experience and how easy the process is for the customer. You can trigger the NPS survey after a person’s interaction with your customer service team to identify if any improvement is needed
Rating Your Product
“On a scale from 0-10, how likely are you to recommend (name of your product) to your friends or colleagues?”
This NPS question will offer insight into a customer’s experience with your product or service.
Rating Customer Service
This NPS question can help determine how satisfied customers are with your customer service team.
Rating Customer’s Transaction or Interaction
These questions can be used to rate a recent engagement with a specific customer touchpoint, such as post-service, post-purchase, or post-onboarding interactions. It enables you to identify and improve any problem with a particular consumer experience.
Rating Your Company as a Workplace
You can also use employee NPS (eNPS) survey questions to measure your employees’ loyalty to your company. It will also enable companies to prevent employees from leaving by resolving their issues.
Open-ended questions help us understand why customers give a company/brand/product/service certain ratings. It helps collect qualitative feedback from customers.
Using open-ended questions, customers can clearly communicate their thoughts on a particular subject instead of giving bland answers. They can insert their detailed feedback in the text box of open-ended questions to understand what they like and what needs improvement.
Let’s discuss some sample open-ended survey questions. Don’t hesitate to add your creative spin to these questions while creating your NPS survey.
What is the main reason for your score?
Questions like this help organizations focus on the root cause of why customers become detractors, passives, or promoters. Understanding the reason behind the score from detractors can help you to discover the weaknesses of your products and services. It will also help you close the feedback loop quickly.
Which features of our product do you like the best?
This question is great for promoters. You can understand the strength of your company and obtain in-depth insight into your most valuable features. At the same time, you could also use the answer to this question for testimonial purposes.
Which features of our product/service do you like the least?
If you want to determine what is not working for your customers, this is a perfect question. By analyzing the customer’s responses to this question, you can find certain features or aspects of your product/service that just aren’t working for your customers.
How can we improve our services?
The best gesture while collecting feedback is to show sincerity. With this question, you can gather suggestions on what you can do to improve your customer experience.
How does our product/service meet your needs?”
Another great question for promoters, this will help determine whether your product or service is a good fit for your valued clientele. The NPS feedback will help you adjust your focus and efforts on relevant features.
Close-ended questions require respondents to select from a specific set of pre-defined options, such as “yes/no” or from a set of multiple-choice questions. These are excellent for gathering quantitative data from the target audience, to understand why a certain score was given, or which features are performing well, etc.
All NPS rating questions are typically close-ended NPS questions. Organizations can use these to gather feedback about the customers’ total interaction with the brand. Following a close-ended question with a few open-ended, flexible questions is the best way to gather insightful responses.
Companies pay the most attention to their rating question. But it’s the follow-up that can make or break your NPS survey. Why? Because follow-up questions help you gain deeper insights into why someone scored you the way they did.
NPS software like Freshsurvey allows you to incorporate skip logic or branching to ensure that the right respondents are asked the right follow-up questions.
Win with promoters
Promoters are the happiest customers you have. Make the most of your fans’ potential with questions like
We’re thrilled and curious! What is it that you like most about us?
We're so happy to have you as a client! Can you help us spread the word and write a short review?
Fantastic! Thanks for the score!What else can we do to improve your experience further? (Do you have any questions about any other products we offer?)
Uphold your detractors
Keep your promoters close and detractors closer ;) A detractor’s negative feedback may be a blessing in disguise (in most cases). Appreciate what they say and see what can be improved.
We're sorry to hear that. In an ideal world, how would you like things to work?
We're sorry to see your score. What should we change?
That's not the highest score :( Help us improve.What should we learn to do better, and why?
Engage with passives
Passives are neutral to your brand. They may seem harmless. But their lack of connection with your brand makes it easier for them to churn.
Thanks for your response! We want to do better. Is there anything we can do to improve?
Thank you for your response. Is there anyhow we can help you with the product /service?
Whatever you choose, make sure the communication has a personal touch.
Here are some more examples of follow-up questions. You can use them directly or modify them as per your research objectives.
Is there anything that we are missing that could enhance your experience?
What is the one thing that is missing in our product?
How can we make your experience more delightful?
If you could add or change anything about our product/services, what would it be?
Which features do you use the most and why?
How will you describe your overall experience with our brand in a few words?
A simple ‘Thank You’ note or a small message conveying your appreciation for your customers is like the cherry on the cake. This helps create a positive, genuine image of your brand while your customers feel valued, seen, and heard.
Here are a few ‘Thank You’ examples you can share with all your respondents - promoters, passives, and detractors.
Promoters – Thank you message
“Thank you for your feedback. Seeing that you love our brand’s products and services is fantastic. Your feedback will assist us in identifying new ways to improve our services and provide you with the greatest possible experience each time you pick us.”
Passives – Thank you message
“Thank you for your feedback. Our brand aims to create the best product that helps you with your daily life. Your input will be invaluable in assisting us in identifying ways to improve our services.”
Detractors – Thank you message
“We appreciate your feedback. We value both good and negative feedback from our customers. Our customer service will contact you to learn more about how we can enhance our services to better serve you in the future. We’d love to hear your thoughts on exceeding your expectations.”
An NPS survey sent to employees collects data to help businesses become better employers and improve employee retention. Here are some of the best eNPS survey questions to get the most accurate ratings from your employees:
On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend our company as a workplace to your friends?
How will you describe your overall experience with the company till now?
As an employer, what can we do better to improve your experience?
What is one thing that you like best about this company?
What do you dislike about this company?
Why will you not refer our company to your friends as a workplace?
What is missing in your work experience with us?
What is the one thing we could do to make you a more satisfied employee?
Though pretty basic, NPS questions are a powerful means to feel the pulse of your customer's loyalty and the strength of your brand. When paired with other customer success metrics, they help improve NPS and ensure steady growth of the customer/user base.
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