Best practices for Net Promoter Score (NPS) questions

NPS Placement 

NPS is often a key data point to understand relative performance across a set of competitors. As such, we should ask NPS-related questions very early in the survey. Typically, this means we will have the Screener >> Awareness funnel >> NPS loop >> Key Performance Criteria (KPC) ranking >> all other questions.

NPS Brand selection 

Although the goal is to build a robust dataset and extract as much possible valuable data from each respondent, we must seriously consider the valuable aspect of that statement. It can be tempting to ask NPS about as many brands as possible, but generally, we should only be asking about brands that have been purchased. In some contexts, it may make sense to show a wider scope of brands (ones the respondent is aware of), but you should ask yourself “Is a person that has only (purchased, considered, heard of) truly qualified to give me relevant NPS information?” 

Another aspect of brand selection is which brand(s) we will choose for this loop. We will typically be choosing a sample of a larger set, so we often add prioritization logic to this loop. In practice, this means giving your client/target the highest priority, followed by key competitors, and finally, all other brands. There is significant flexibility in how this logic is written, so be sure to consult your Survey Director to help facilitate this logic.

NPS Content 

The NPS loop can include a variety of different questions, but the core elements are the score, the why question, and the KPC evaluation. Although we typically show one question per page, the NPS score and the follow-up why are often delivered on the same page. If we are not showing it on the same page, we should instead give the respondent the additional context of the score they gave and whom we are referring to. The last core element is the KPC evaluation. In this question, we should be asking about all KPCs, not just the ones they ranked/selected. 

Mitigating Survey Fatigue 

A key part of facilitating valuable data collection is by mitigating opportunities of survey fatigue.  

Here are some fatigue mitigation strategies: 

• Limit the NPS loop to 3-5 brands.
• Remember that your KPC evaluation matrix will contain all KPCs, so we should limit our KPC list to 10-15 items.