How often should you survey customers for NPS?

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a valuable metric that helps businesses measure customer loyalty and gauge their overall satisfaction. The right NPS survey timing is necessary

survey customers

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a valuable metric that helps businesses measure customer loyalty and gauge their overall satisfaction. The right NPS survey timing is necessary to get the rawest feedback and avoid survey fatigue.

Sending it too early gets you less quality feedback because your customers haven’t experienced much of your offerings. On the other hand, delaying the survey collection distorts the process as your customers may have faded memories of the experience. In any case, you could lose all of the crucial information that may have helped you improve your business.

When to send NPS Survey: Factors to Consider

Customer Lifecycle: Customers may have different perceptions and needs based on where they are in their journey with your company. Tailoring survey frequency to specific stages of the customer journey can help you gauge valuable insights at critical touchpoints.

Industry and Product/Service: The frequency of surveys for different industries and product/service offerings varies along with their complexity. For instance, industries with fast-changing trends like the IT industry, may require more frequent surveys to capture evolving customer preferences. On the flip side, industries with more stable offerings may need less frequent surveys.

The complexity of a product or service is directly proportional to the time required for customers to learn, adopt, and become familiar with the offering. Allowing sufficient usage experience, support interactions, and considering updates and enhancements can ensure that NPS surveys are conducted at the right time to capture accurate and meaningful feedback.

Customer Touch Points: While 8 is an average touchpoint number to convert a customer, the actual number can vary for different businesses. Identify the key touchpoints for your business and focus surveys around those to gather targeted feedback and address specific pain points.

Resource Availability: Surveys require planning, implementation, data analysis, and action-taking. Ensure that you have the necessary resources and bandwidth to administer, analyze, and act on the feedback you receive.

Resource Availability: Surveys require planning, implementation, data analysis, and action-taking. Ensure that you have the necessary resources and bandwidth to administer, analyze, and act on the feedback you receive.

Recommendations for Survey Frequency

Balance Timing and Value: Aim to survey customers at intervals that get you critical insights without overwhelming them. It is recommended to spread out the net promoter survey survey over the year. An ideal schedule could be

30 Days after onboarding
75 Days in to check progress or concerns
6 months into the purchase
A month before the subscription expires(so you can make a retaining effort)
A little while after subscription expiration (in both cases: if they have decided to renew or not)

Source: customergauge.com

Event-driven Surveys: Consider conducting surveys based on specific events or milestones, such as after a major product update or service enhancement. While keeping the frequency reasonable, these surveys can collect immediate feedback.

Additionally, you can send surveys one to two weeks in advance of a business review so you can discuss the responses then.

Continuous Listening: Having an always-open feedback channel can help you get real-time information without bombarding customers with frequent surveys. See how Hotjar does it!

Start with a reasonable frequency and monitor customer response rates and feedback quality. Be open to experimenting to find the optimal survey cadence for your business.

NPS Survey Timing for B2B

The buying cycle is typically longer for B2B businesses than for B2C. Therefore, plan your surveys according to the customer journey.
- After completing the initial onboarding phase, customers can be asked for feedback.
- In the ongoing phase, you can request feedback at specific intervals, such as every quarter, every six months, or every twelve months.

Final Thoughts

By considering the above factors, you can develop a survey strategy to keep things in equilibrium. Remember to continuously evaluate and refine your approach to ensure that NPS customer surveys remain a valuable tool for understanding customer sentiment and driving improvements within your organization.