Once upon a time, in the faraway land of the eComm & Retail Kingdon, the Knights and Princesses of the land sat down to track a mighty beast: the Voice of the Customer.
You see, in that Kingdom, the ruler was the Customer, and its happiness was what kept the Kingdom alive.
Thus emerged an unlikely hero: the Net Promoter Score metric.
And so, the Knights and Princesses from the House of Marketing summoned and used the NPS survey, hoping to unlock its secrets and use its magic to grow their business.
In this post, we’ll explore the many shapes and forms an NPS survey can take and discover the wonders it can work. Use the tips and tricks in the article to gather important customer feedback and drive business growth.
What Is a Net Promoter Score Template?
A Net Promoter Score survey template represents a definite set of questions that allows you to create an NPS survey quick and easily.
The Net Promoter Score is sent to your target audience and calculates customer satisfaction & loyalty through responses to an initial question. It looks like this:
“How likely are you to recommend [your brand] to a friend or colleague?”
The answer is graded on a scale of 0-10, where 0 means “not at all likely” and 10 means “extremely likely.”
The score is the percentage of respondents who answered 9 or 10 (Promoters) minus the percentage who answered between 0 and 6 (Detractors). Of course, you can use an NPS calculator to identify your precise NPS score.
An NPS survey template will help you create and adapt the questions so that when you send out your customer satisfaction survey, every customer gets asked it in precisely the same way.
While the survey template might seem simplistic (a close-ended question with a simple rating), the magic of NPS happens when you get qualitative feedback through open-ended questions.
The open-ended question (where customers justify their ratings) reveals their true feelings about your brand.
A great NPS survey template will catch the customers’ voices using their own vocabulary and pinpoint opportunities for improvement and areas where you lack performance.
The Net Promoter Score survey template also lets you track your data in time, so you can follow each new customer cluster and compare how organizational changes affect your customers.
We recommend you use an NPS software to store your data, congregate it a single place and have all information available at a glance.
> Check out Omniconvert’s Reveal! The first CRM platform built with Customer Value Optimisation in mind, Reveal gives you crystal clear insights into your customer data and showcases the processes you need to set in motion, in order to grow your business like never before!
NPS Survey Structure
An NPS survey typically starts with a single question asking customers to rate their likelihood of recommending your company to their peers on a scale of 0 to 10.
This is a close-ended question – a type of survey question requiring respondents to choose from a limited set of predetermined responses.
This first question helps you collect structured data that you can quickly analyze and compare in time. However, on its own, it will give you less in-depth information than you might have hoped for.
To get even more insights and understand the customers better, a great NPS Survey Template will follow up with at least another question – asking respondents to explain their rating, thus providing additional feedback.
The follow-up question is open-ended: a survey question that allows respondents to give an unstructured answer.
Since there are no predefined answers to the following question, your customers can express their own experiences, feelings, and opinions in their own words.
The second question helps you uncover the reasons behind a customer’s rating and identify areas of improvement.
You can use two types of NPS survey templates:
- Relationship surveys
- Transactional surveys
Relationship surveys interrogate customers’ loyalty and satisfaction from a holistic POV – users get an NPS survey question asking them to rate the overall experience with your brand.
Relationship surveys are great for new customers, giving you insights into the foundation for building a relationship with these consumers.
Transactional surveys look at the experience of a specific touchpoint or milestone in the customer journey. T
hey are designed to understand customer satisfaction with a particular business process. For example, you could use a transactional customer feedback survey to identify customers’ feelings towards a specific department, service, or even a product.
NPS Survey Structure Example
- Q1
On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [Brand] to your peers? Keep in mind that 0 is not at all likely, and 10 is extremely likely,
- Q2 (optional but recommended – pun intended):
Can you please explain your rating?
Like what you're reading?
Join the informed eCommerce crowd!
We will never bug you with irrelevant info.
By clicking the Button, you confirm that you agree with our Terms and Conditions.
NPS Question Templates
In life and business alike, the secret is knowing how to ask the right questions.
You must choose your questions carefully since the answers will uncover in-depth insights about your brand from the POV of the most important stakeholder: the customer.
Moreover, remember that customers aren’t patient, and you don’t want to waste their time with long surveys or demand essay-like answers.
Keeping it short and sweet while asking the right questions will showcase any potential issues with your brand while arming you with the right insights to create better customer experiences.
This being said, here’s a list of NPS questions you can include in your survey template.
1. What is the main reason behind your rating?
This is a direct question asking for a straight answer. It’s a straightforward question that shouldn’t overwhelm the customer, demanding long answers.
2. From our side, what’s the one thing we could’ve done to provide a better experience?
This is an excellent question for Detractors (those who scored between 0 and 6) and Passives (those who rated 7 or 8).
The question proves you care about the customer experience and customer process. It shows you’re willing to improve and open to receiving constructive feedback. Evidently, you’d want to track and act on the feedback from this question.
3. What could we do to make things easier for you?
While you may not get as many answers to this question (since it’s not as straightforward), the answers could uncover details you have missed.
With this question, you understand what matters most to your customers and provide them with it.
4. Which products do you use the most often from our selection?
As a retail/eCommerce business, you offer an extensive product assortment. With this question, you can identify the products/ brands used by your customers and prioritize them in your marketing campaigns.
Bonus – when you combine the NPS surveys with the RFM analysis, you can identify the performance of your products among your best customers.
Since your safest bet is in retention, you’d want to understand who brings you the most revenue (and why), then use this information for your acquisition strategy.
5. What do you appreciate the most about [brand]?
The answers to this question will showcase what works best inside your company. It may be your quick delivery, reasonable prices, or the effectiveness of your customer service.
No matter the answer, you should take the insights from this question and double down on them. In simpler words, keep doing more of what you do great.
6. What do you dislike the most about [brand]?
On the opposite side of the last question, this highlights what isn’t working with your company. Your Achilles heel, if you will.
Look for patterns with this question and identify potential hiccups or friction points inside the customer journey.
While you may not have been aware of your weak points, these answers help spot the issues causing customer churn. They will give you a place to start providing better customer experiences.
7. Was there anything your experience lacked?
The answers to this question are insanely helpful – even if you need a thick skin to go through them.
To fix a customer journey, you must first uncover what’s been missing from it. You can only know what your customers need if they tell you so. Once they do, upgrading the journey with the missing links is much easier.
8. We want to make you say “WOW” – what can we do?
This question is for truly customer-centric companies. Those who understand that the customer is your company’s King, Queen, and Vizier.
Customers might come up with ludicrous suggestions that seem impossible. However, the insights will inspire and surprise you, giving you great ideas.
The genius of this question is that it revolves around the customer – people love talking about themselves, so the answers should be satisfying and valuable enough for you.
9. What did you enjoy about the experience?
While this question might seem like a rephrasing of one of the previous questions, it’s great to ask your Promoters (those who scored 9 and 10).
It highlights your solid points and shows you what you need to keep doing to keep your promoters happy and maintain high retention rates.
BONUS Question for Promoters: What’s the ONE THING you can’t lose from your experience?
This question shines a light on your strongest suit, which makes your company unique and generates customer loyalty.
When migrating to another company is such an easy feat, you must understand what makes a customer stick with you in sickness and health.
We advise you to include this question as a third one in your NPS survey templates.
How to Use Your NPS Survey Results
There are specific ways you can drive business growth through your survey responses. Here are a few examples to start you off:
- Analyze the results
Go deeper with your analysis to understand the patterns and reasonings behind the Net Promoter Score and the overall survey results.
Identify trends in the feedback from the qualitative question (the open-ended one) and take action based on what you learn.
- Prioritize the improvement initiatives
Based on the analysis from the first step, prioritize your efforts for the next quarter (or even for the fiscal year).
Combine the NPS surveys with RFM analysis to identify your starting points: areas that are most important to your high-valued customers and that drive the most significant impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Implement the feedback and shake things up inside the business
You already identified your weak points and are more aware of red flags inside your organization. They were revealed by your survey data. Now it’s time to get to the action and address the issues identified in your NPS survey.
This process may involve leveling up your customer service, changing the product assortment, rethinking your onboarding processes, or even updating how you communicate with your customers.
- Close the feedback loop.
Reach out to your repeat customers and follow up to see if the changes and improvements significantly impacted their satisfaction and loyalty.
Stay in contact by sending other NPS surveys after a specific period to track your progress and gather even more priceless insights from your customer base.
> did you know you can find an entire course on NPS inside the CVO Academy? Learn how to put your customers’ feedback to good use and see visible improvements inside your business – and your profits!
Check out the CVO Academy here!
NPS Survey Best Practices
Mainly you’d want to achieve two things with your Net Promoter surveys.
The first one is a satisfying response rate. You want to determine as many customers as possible to answer your surveys so the answers are statistically significant.
The second one is actionable feedback you can act on – praises are great for the ego. Still, they won’t necessarily move your business forward.
Here’s a list of ideas to help you achieve these two purposes.
- Keep it short and sweet.
The ideal number of questions to include in your NPS Survey template is three. The maximum number of questions is six – even so, you’re stretching it.
Even if you want to interrogate customers about every segment of your company, remember that the NPS survey mainly gauges customers’ loyalty and the main factors that affect it.
Long surveys tend to backfire, alienate customers, lower response rates, or even provide inaccurate information.
- Use friendly language
We’re no longer addressing starched, stiff, white collars. Our language doesn’t need to be formal and impersonal.
Instead, use friendly and approachable language and encourage customers to provide helpful feedback.
Be honest and show your appreciation for the customers. Let them know how important the feedback is and how much you value the customer’s input.
- Be mindful of how the survey looks.
Believe it or not, customers care about the design. They may get discouraged by an anesthetic survey or a poorly worded question.
Be mindful of colors, font, and layout when creating the survey, and test different variations to see what works best.
Wrap-up
It’s time we concluded this journey through NPS surveys, questions, and templates.
Now it’s your turn to use and apply all knowledge you gained reading this post and go after that valuable feedback that will make or break your company.
Collect all the customer feedback you need to make fundamental, actionable changes inside the company.
Just remember to keep your NPS surveys friendly, focused, and sweet.
Happy surveying!
Frequently Asked Questions about NPS Survey Templates
What should be included in an NPS survey?
An NPS Survey should include a minimum of two questions. The first one is a close-ended question, asking customers to rate the likelihood of them recommending you to their friends on a scale from 0 to 10. The second question is an open-ended one, asking respondents to justify their rating.
How do I frame an NPS question?
Your NPS questions should be short, straightforward and in an approachable language. Refrain from using technical terms or convoluted phrasing and make sure the customer understands how much you value their opinion.
What is NPS format?
The standard format for an NPS question looks like this: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [brand] to a friend?”.
What does an NPS survey look like?
An NPS Survey has the main question, gauging at customers’ satisfaction and referral probability. This question is close-ended, the customer having the option of rating the likelihood of recommendation on a scale of 0 to 10. This question ca be followed by an open-ended one, asking for the reason behind the scoring.
How many questions should a NPS survey have?
The recommended number is at least two questions, although some brands see better results with three questions. On the other side, the maximum number of questions recommended is six.
How do I create a NPS survey?
First, choose your Survey Tool, then decide on the distribution channel. Add your questions and their logic, pick the customer segments that will receive the survey, then distribute it. Survey software are highly intuitive, so you shouldn’t encounter many problems on the technical side.
