Why is the Net Promoter Score (NPS) useless for good products?
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I measure NPS in all projects I'm working with. Moreover, I'm extending NPS and asking about the product, the company, people, partners, processes, etc. Basically, you can (should?) ask NPS everywhere you meet customers. Some unusual NPS I've seen is, for example, the measurement of how effectively you spend time.
If you have 20 sec, I would appreciate it if you can leave NPS score for Paul’s Growth Insights:
Let me share with you some tips on how to improve NPS methodology quickly.
Tips on how to effectively measure NPS
The most significant advantage of the NPS is that it's hard to lie about it.
(Image: Dall-E expression of lying person)
Humans want to appear better than they are. That's why, in customer development methodology, it's pointless to ask about the future - because people tend to respond from the standpoint of an imaginary 'better' self.
NPS is one of the few future-related questions you can ask, mainly because the responses it elicits are minimally distorted.
'On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our product to your friends or colleagues?'
It's hard to imagine a scenario where an unsatisfied customer gives a 10 or a satisfied one scores it 0. If that happens, it's a solid signal to engage with the user and explore the reasons for this dissonance.
Tip: To improve my understanding of customer responses, I ask a second question:" Do you have any comments about our product? The CEO reads all responses." This question helps customers express their concerns so I can address them earlier. Quite often, they also share positive feedback in comments, which I can use as social proof or as a basis for my marketing communications.
Pro tip: To enhance the quality of NPS data, I specify the meanings of 0 and 10.
0 means 'would never recommend', and 10 means 'I have already recommended it to my friends.'
This helps marketing build an additional channel for attracting highly targeted traffic - through the product itself."
How to apply NPS in your company
It's obvious what to do with bad NPS. You just need to do a lot of customer development, find what drives people away from your product, and improve and measure NPS again. If it grows, you are on the right track. Keep improving until your NPS is acceptable.
I've been working with products with negative NPS, and by using this methodology, we were able to flip the product towards positive NPS.
But the real issue is when your NPS is good already. What should you do with the product if it's already good but still needs to grow?
I faced this problem in Progkids.com - the online coding school for kids. Progkids has an incredibly high NPS of 78. Kids love school (primarily because it teaches them coding by using Minecraft and Roblox), and parents love that kids love it. But what next? How can we improve the product further?
In such a scenario, you need to switch from general product NPS to product feature NPS. Instead of asking, "Would you recommend Progkids.com?" our following action is to ask more specific questions: "Would you recommend this course?"; "Would you recommend this teacher?" and so on.
Another challenge is how to connect NPS to the growth of the company. The core idea that companies with good NPS are growing faster is not 100% true. It's more like companies with bad NPS can only grow ineffectively. But good NPS itself is not enough for a stick growth. In this case, you need to think about your growth factors and what growth factors you have in the product. Develop those features, launch and ask NPS about particular growth factor features.
Please do not forget to give me your NPS score: