That’s something we think about a lot. After all, answering this question well leads to acquiring new business, while responding poorly sends potential customers fleeing for whichever competitor they’re comparing us to.

Comparing Retently to the competition is quite a challenge. Retently is a Customer Experience Management Platform – covering NPS, CSAT, CES surveys and customer feedback – and, as such, there are just too many things to consider. So, instead of filling out those classic “us VS them” comparison tables, we decided to go for something different and showcase some of Retently’s unique features and functionalities.

If you’re wondering why we’ve listed only 16 points, it’s not because we have just 16 unique features. This article covers features that only Retently has at the time of writing. We also wanted to keep this post fairly short, so we only focused on major things rather than exploring every minor detail.

This article covers a list of unique features offered by Retently, compared to other established competitors in the SMB and mid-market, such as InMoment Wootric, Delighted, AskNicely, and SatisMeter. There are more services, new products, and companies launching every month we might not be aware of.

SIDENOTE.

There’s a good chance that competing services will try to catch up, so all statements in this article are unlikely to hold true forever. But we’ll make sure to update it accordingly should anything change.

1. Everything is Linked to Survey Campaigns

Retently’s campaign is a unique feature. With most competitor tools, you can only set up the surveys and send them out either once or on a recurring basis. 

Retently, on the other hand, allows you to set up one-time, recurring regular and transactional campaigns, where a predefined set of surveys is sent to a specific customer segment.

This lets you run independent survey campaigns per product, service, or customer segment (group customers by various criteria – revenue, geography, lifecycle, etc.) and get an NPS, CSAT, or CES score. 

Each campaign comes with its own options for:

Survey Template

All you have to do is create, clone, or adjust an existing template for each campaign and use it when needed.

Audience

Each campaign comes with a preset filter that targets all customers in your Retently account, but you can apply additional filters to narrow your audience.

Schedule

Your surveys will be sent automatically according to the schedule. Choose whether you want your customers to receive the survey on business days only or any weekday. Set a timeframe limit for your surveys.

Next, set a schedule for new customers to be automatically surveyed, as well as the regularity of recurring surveys. You can also disable the recurring surveys option.

Another handy feature is the daily survey limit, which allows you to split your customer list and send a limited number of surveys daily, giving you enough time to engage with your respondents.

Optionally, you can have your CX survey resent to people who did not open the last survey or opened but did not respond. You can choose the same survey template or select a different one.

Alerts

When creating a new alert, you will be asked to choose one or more event types you want to be notified about, the notification frequency (immediately, daily, or weekly digest), and the channel (email or Slack).

Autoreplies

You can create a set of email auto-replies meant to engage with customers who did not leave any text feedback, left a Detractor score, or simply ask your Promoters for a review on Trustpilot and spread word-of-mouth.

Read more about Campaigns in our dedicated knowledge base section.

2. Advanced Survey Template Editor

Retently allows you to customize pretty much everything in your survey template:

• Change the background color
• Upload and adjust your logo, its size, and position
• Edit all texts’ font family, size, styling, and colors
• Adjust the shape, style, and color of all buttons
• Add additional text blocks and custom links

This applies to the Rating question, Open-ended question, Thank You page and the Unsubscribe page.

We’ve already provided default texts for the template, but every piece of the survey can be adapted to your unique case.

What’s more impressive is that the Open-ended question and Thank you page can be different for Promoters, Passives, and Detractors, allowing for a personalized approach and a better segmentation of the provided feedback.

The Thank You page follows the same editing logic. The difference here is that you can also add a CTA (call to action) link.

Get more ideas and NPS survey templates in this article.

3. Survey Personalization Using Merge Fields (Variables)

In their attempt to draft a successful survey campaign, businesses often overlook the survey subject line, and the context personalization can provide. In this respect, Retently allows using merge fields in the survey’s subject line and the content itself for a significantly increased open and response rate. 

Survey variables stand for particular customer attributes, such as the defaults “first name” or “company name”, as well as complex data, such as account manager or region, which can be added when importing customers from a CSV file or synchronizing them by means of our integrations or API.

Variables can be included pretty much in any text input area of the survey template – the subject line, the additional text blocks, the rating, and open-ended questions, as well as the Thank You screen. Before delivery, our system will replace the variables in the survey template with real data, which may differ for each customer or audience segment. 

But what if the customer doesn’t have any data in the property used as a variable? As a rule, the variable will be replaced with empty data; and here’s where fallbacks will turn helpful – a default value displayed if a customer doesn’t have a specific property. 

4. Multi-Language Surveys

Retently’s unique survey template editor also allows a perfect multi-language setup.

Most survey services come with a preset of translations, which are not adapted for each industry, or sometimes can be far from written by natives.

Retently doesn’t have a multi-language selector. Instead, you can fully customize your NPS survey texts and translate them into any language you need.

Read more about multi-language surveys in our knowledge base.

5. Keep Track and A/B Test Surveys With Outbox

To easily keep track of all the surveys sent to your customers, Retently came up with an Outbox section which, by means of a set of useful filters, allows for advanced data segmentation, meant to improve the survey campaigns along the way.

That brings in several benefits targeting increased survey engagement, namely:

The delivery stats section provides granular details about the survey response rate, when it was sent, opened, or responded down to the minute, and how many customers bounced or opted out of your surveys. These will allow for more data-driven decision-making.

The Outbox is also an effective tool to A/B test your survey samples over time. By looking into the delivery stats, you can track which templates were most appealing and apply the insights in future campaigns.

If used properly, the Outbox can also help improve the response rate. For example, you can manually select some or all filtered surveys and resend a one-time email survey in the campaign they’ve been sent initially.

6. Survey Queue Management

To streamline survey management, Retently introduced a Queue page that lists all email surveys triggered by specific events but not sent due to a pre-set delay. 

The purpose of the Queue page is rather simple – to provide a straightforward way to view, navigate, and filter upcoming surveys. It also allows users to send surveys ahead of the expected time or cancel them instead without going through individual campaigns’ settings.

7. Feedback Management

Since collecting customer feedback is the main surveying goal, the feedback management capabilities could not be overlooked. Retently came up with advanced collaboration, visualization, segmentation, and analysis of the received customer feedback. 

In this context, consider managing your feedback in your Slack instance. Our Slack integration allows receiving, tracking, and responding to customer feedback in real-time, right within Slack. Teams can easily prioritize tasks and take action to resolve the most pressing issues. For example, you can mark specific feedback and assign it to any of your team members within Retently for follow-up. This way, you can respond to customer needs more efficiently, improve collaboration between teams, and deliver better customer experiences.

8. Automated Email Cleanup

Retently has a built-in email cleaning feature. Before any surveys are delivered, your recipients’ emails will be automatically checked for deliverability to ensure a greater campaign response rate. Also, you’ll be substantially reducing your bounce rate and making sure you’ll receive more relevant, actionable feedback.

9. Antivirus Detection

To avoid random scores posted by antivirus systems in their search for harmful content, Retently implemented an algorithm to ensure data accuracy.

Our antivirus detection automatically blocks the scores submitted by well-known systems such as Symantec, Microsoft Outlook Protection, Mimecast, MessageLabs, Barracuda Email Security Service, etc. 

However, as they might also evolve and other similar systems be launched in the future, there is another check in place that monitors and logs antivirus-like patterns.

Once a score potentially left by a generic antivirus is detected, it is displayed in the feedback widget with a warning (!) sign. At this point, it is up to you to delete or just ignore it from your rating calculation. 

10. Data Segmentation and Export in All Plans

With Retently, you can easily segment your audience with any of our plans. Competitors require you to purchase their premium plans to enjoy this feature.

Exporting data (like users, feedback, and scores) is also available in all Retently plans – so everyone can access and export their data at no additional cost.

11. Industry Benchmarks

Retently has a built-in benchmark feature that allows you to compare your NPS score and trends with the average score for your industry. This way, you get to save time and effort since you have all needed data right on the dashboard. You no longer need to do lengthy Google searches and deal with paywalls to find what you need.

The benchmarks are calculated by doing an anonymous average, and we only cover industries where we have over ten clients to ensure the data is relevant and actionable. Currently, Retently offers incorporated NPS benchmarks for the following industries: SaaS, Ecommerce, Financial Services, Enterprise Software, Digital Marketing, Consulting, Insurance, Healthcare, Logistics & Transportation, Construction, etc.

12. No Data Retention Limits

Unless you cancel your Retently subscription, your data is always here – to access historical customer feedback, NPS scores and compare trends and progress.

Keep a longer history of your customer interactions, and don’t worry about data becoming unavailable after a while, or the need to upgrade to a higher plan.

13. Automation Playbooks

Retently allows you to easily automate various processes and run custom scenarios using the incorporated Zapier integration and webhooks.

Retently helps you create automation scenarios based on the “if this, then that” principle.

A few common and highly useful scenarios are:

• Automatically start a conversation with a Detractor
• Automatically send a message to people who did not leave text feedback
• Delete hard-bounced contacts from your list
• Export account NPS data to Salesforce or any other CRM
• Run a webhook and send your NPS score and feedback to a 3rd party service or application

Zapier, Make & Alloy Automation:

Zapier is an integration service that connects different applications (over 7,000 apps at the time of this writing). Connect Retently to your Zapier account and sync new contacts, send transactional NPS surveys, export customer feedback, and manage your team’s tasks.

The Zapier integration is not unique to Retently. Most established competitors feature one or maybe two possible Zapier triggers or actions. However, the number of potential automation scenarios using Zapier with Retently is overwhelming due to many supported triggers and actions.

Make & Alloy are also sought-for integrations that allow you to bring together various systems and platforms to create a seamless customer experience. The integrations enable companies to streamline their customer engagement and support processes, automate workflows for quick execution of repetitive tasks, and connect with customers across channels. Hence, you can efficiently adjust customer interactions and journeys, tailoring them to specific business goals, and thus provide faster and more consistent service delivery. 

Check our Zapier integration page here.

14. Account CX

Retently goes beyond tracking customer experience metrics on a contact level. With Retently, you have the flexibility to monitor CX metrics at an account (company) level. When you send out surveys, our system automatically generates a list of accounts, allowing you to see the number of contacts associated with each account in Retently. Additionally, you have the option to manually add new companies and view CX metrics for each. 

The best part is that this valuable information can be seamlessly exported through our native integrations or API to other services for in-depth analysis.

15. Automated Feedback Classification & Analytics

Retently offers unique analytics features, providing you with an insightful overview of the text feedback you’ve received. Our AI-powered algorithm automatically detects and classifies topics and performs sentiment analysis.

With this automated topic detection and sentiment analysis, you can quickly grasp which areas of your offerings resonate positively with your audience and which aspects require improvement before it’s too late. It simplifies the process of making data-driven decisions and offers a comprehensive understanding of your customer feedback.

16. Product UI/UX

Retently features visually pleasing UI that ensures running NPS surveys and campaigns doesn’t feel like a chore. Most of our customers have told us, on multiple occasions, how much they love the clean design and the streamlined user experience.

Retently features a slick, easy-to-use, and highly intuitive interface. All the data and information are in one place, thus being easily accessible. Data visualization is simple to follow and understand. The menus and tooltips are self-explanatory, allowing for no time wasted. Pretty much no onboarding is needed (not even for new, unfamiliar users).

That’s obviously not everything …

Retently has many more unique features and capabilities.

Most of our customers love our product design, its cleanliness, and the user experience.

Our customer support team efforts are highly appreciated, this being the second reason respondents score a 9 or 10 in our own NPS surveys.  

If you ever need any help or have a question for us, we’re right there for you – our support team works round-the-clock to offer you the best customer experience.

Don’t miss out on the many benefits of using Retently and experiencing a new level of customer engagement. Get started today with a 7-day free trial and take your CX to the next level.

The post 16 Unique Retently Features – Things That Only This CX Service Can Do appeared first on Retently CX.

But how do you use NPS to drive more sales and revenue? Well, there’s no denying it can be a bit tricky – surveys and sales aren’t directly related.

Still, that doesn’t mean you can’t use NPS surveys to increase business growth. You won’t even need to scour the web to find out how to do that because – in this article – we’ll quickly show you how to score more sales using NPS.

Key Takeaways

• Customer feedback isn’t just data – it’s a sales strategy. NPS helps you identify where to invest efforts to improve retention and revenue.
• Promoters are willing to spread the word, simply give them the right incentives to turn them into your best marketers.
• Passives need a nudge. More engagement and improved experiences can turn them into committed customers.
• Detractors are a second chance, not a lost cause. A well-handled complaint can turn an unhappy customer into a loyal advocate.
• Personalization boosts conversions. Using NPS data to tailor offers, follow-ups, and customer interactions leads to higher engagement and repeat purchases.
• Happy customers spend more. A strong NPS strategy doesn’t just improve satisfaction – it directly impacts your bottom line.

Rethinking NPS: It’s Not Just a Score, It’s a Sales Strategy

Many businesses collect NPS data, but few truly understand its power. It’s often treated as simply something to track, report, and benchmark. However, NPS is one of the strongest predictors of revenue growth.

When customers give you high NPS scores, they aren’t just saying they like your brand, they’re showing buying behavior that leads to long-term profitability. Likewise, low NPS scores signal missed revenue opportunities, lost referrals, and impending churn.

To fully leverage NPS for sales growth, you need to go beyond measuring and start monetizing. It’s not about the number but what you do with it.

• What if you could turn your happiest customers into an unstoppable word-of-mouth engine?
• What if your indifferent customers became loyal advocates instead of leaving for a competitor?
• What if you could stop customer churn before it even starts?

A strong NPS strategy connects these dots and turns insights into action. 

Let’s explore exactly how to transform NPS insights into more sales, better customer relationships, and long-term business growth.

1. Use Surveys to Build Relationships

Adobe estimates that existing customers account for at least 26% of revenue – and that finding new customers costs 7x more than keeping existing clients on board. Despite this, many companies spend far more time and money on acquiring new customers than focus on retaining existing ones. Data shows that the latter is a far more effective strategy for producing a steady, predictable increase in revenue. How much of an increase? Around 67%, according to this research.

And repeat purchases from existing clients are normally based on high satisfaction with your products and services. We say “normally” because there’s an extra factor you need to focus on – customer experience.

How does NPS come into play here? Well, all the feedback you gather by means of surveys tells you precisely what your customers want. What’s more, that data can also help your customer service reps build more personalized messages when they interact with your clients, effectively showing them your brand views them as people, not just a source of income. Overall, that can help you drive growth by improving customer retention. It sets your business apart from the competition before the prospect even thinks about purchasing.

2. Anticipate Prospects’ Expectations

One smart way to make sure you’ll be able to close more deals is to customize your survey so that prospects respond with their expectations for your product rather than with general feedback. Instead of surveying your prospects along with existing customers, run a separate campaign for them. Adjust the survey template to reflect your new audience, and wait for the ratings and responses to flow in.

This way, you’ll find out what exactly a potential customer might expect from your product. With that data, you can focus on specific improvement areas and adjust your offering to the point where any barrier in the customers’ minds (of course, if they match your ideal customer profile) regarding whether or not they made the right choice with your business is destroyed.

What’s more, using customer feedback to improve your product might potentially attract the interest of your former customers. That’s not a guarantee, of course, but there’s a chance to regain the interest of previous Detractors or non-converted prospects who left your brand because they felt like you didn’t listen to their feedback.

Your customers want to deal with reps who are knowledgeable about their business needs – so your sales team needs to spend time and effort getting to know them.

Learning more about your prospects’ expectations makes it far easier for you to convert them into lucrative deals that produce long-term, recurring revenue.

3. Improve Your Value Proposition

A great value proposition can make the difference between closing or losing a deal. Unfortunately, one of the biggest mistakes businesses make is thinking that their value proposition is flawless.

One of the most common reasons deals fail is because the ones responsible for selling the product don’t understand the customer’s needs. By analyzing the feedback from existing customers, you can easily identify the features and benefits they view as most valuable. Surveys can help you refine your offering by focusing on the collected data and aligning it with sales objectives.

Instead of relying on assumptions, you can craft your value proposition around data-driven observations and user feedback to improve your odds of convincing would-be customers that they’re making the right choice.

4. Acknowledge and Reward Promoters

A strong engagement with your business can have a significant impact on boosting sales. You might wonder about the link between the two. The truth is that high NPS customers present a perfect opportunity for upselling and cross-selling. Promoters are passionate about your brand and, hence, more likely to make repeat purchases. By digging into NPS data to analyze their preferences and tailor your approach, you can introduce them to complementary products that enhance their experience and increase sales.

To extend the reach of your brand even further, consider implementing a referral program that encourages Promoters to share their positive experiences with others. Equipping them with the necessary tools to easily spread the word, such as social media sharing options, referral bonuses, or rewarding those who leave product reviews, can serve as a compelling incentive for brand advocacy. 

Maintaining their enthusiasm requires ongoing efforts, such as creating targeted marketing campaigns. Exclusive deals and personalized loyalty programs can be effective ways to show appreciation for their support and reinforce your connection. For example, consider inviting your most loyal customers to exclusive events or giving them early access to new products. Small, unexpected gestures – such as birthday discounts or personalized thank-yous – can further strengthen loyalty. 

Another way to capitalize on Promoters is through user-generated content. People trust real customer experiences far more than traditional marketing messages, so why not let your happy customers do the selling for you? Encouraging them to share testimonials, reviews, or social media posts showcasing your product can boost credibility and drive conversions. 

Regularly assessing and monitoring Promoter churn is essential to maintain a high NPS score and identify potential issues before they become liabilities. By proactively addressing these concerns – whether it’s by improving customer service or refining product offerings –  you can set the stage for long-term success.

5. Follow Up With Detractors, Engage With Passives

You could say that Detractors are lost customers, but a better way to think about them is as opportunities to right a wrong and capitalize on that. You see, not every single Detractor is someone who dislikes your product and brand at all – some of them might actually like what you offer but be very disappointed or unsatisfied with certain aspects of your business or a particular customer experience.

If you address and fix those issues, on top of also acknowledging your errors, there is a chance you might leave a strong impression on those people and turn them into customers again.

A tailored customer recovery program does exactly that by turning disappointment into a second chance for loyalty. Offering apology discounts, service credits, or free upgrades can be an effective way to regain trust. At the same time, preventing future frustrations requires a proactive approach. One of the best ways to do this is by analyzing NPS feedback trends to pinpoint recurring pain points – whether it’s slow response times, unclear pricing, or poor onboarding experiences. Once you spot these patterns, take meaningful action to address frequent complaints before they become dealbreakers.

As for Passives, it’s important to use surveys to ask them what improvements they’d like to see with your product, or what issues are preventing them from becoming fans of your brand. Passives are not exactly loyal customers, meaning they are open to other options. If you neglect them, they can easily contribute to your customer churn stats.

However, if you assign them a customer success rep and leverage customer feedback to craft personalized solutions that cater to their unique needs, you’re more likely to nurture and convert them into Promoters. If you achieve that, you’ll essentially increase your revenue in the long run since you’re boosting your retention rate.

Moreover, you can use NPS data to inform your communication strategy and draft messages that resonate with each customer segment. By constantly refining your approach, you’ll rest assured marketing and sales efforts remain impactful.

6. Tap Into Inactive Leads

From time to time, even the strongest opportunities go quiet. If you’ve accumulated a large number of leads going dark, sending an NPS survey is a great way to reconnect and kick-start the sales process once again.

Using NPS to reignite dead opportunities is simple. Instead of sending a survey to your existing customers, create a custom audience to target inactive leads (such as people who have shown an interest in your services/products at the beginning but haven’t responded or taken any action since then).

Don’t use the surveys to ask them how likely they are to recommend your brand to others. Instead, use them to ask what improvements they’d like to see before they’d be willing to start doing business with you.

The great thing about this tactic is that it gives you feedback on why the deal hasn’t progressed. Using this data, you can refine your sales pitch and better connect with each prospect, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

While not everyone will respond to your surveys, the ones that do send an important message — that they’re still interested in talking to you, even if just to provide feedback. Build on this with a compelling pitch and there’s a serious chance of that feedback turning into a lucrative deal.

NPS and Growth – the Bottom Line

Using NPS to boost customer satisfaction and loyalty is definitely going to work in your favor. However, you stand to gain much more by focusing on boosting sales with NPS too. Getting to enjoy brand loyalty and advocacy alongside a decent increase in your client base numbers sounds more than appealing, right? Not to mention you can even use Promoters to improve your brand’s visibility, saving your marketing team tons of time and effort.

Your NPS can be a sales growth engine. The question is: Are you ready to turn feedback into revenue?

In case you’re looking for NPS survey software, we’ve got you covered. Retently offers a fully integrated solution that’s extremely easy to use, works across multiple channels, and lets you set up plenty of time-saving automation scenarios. Test it out in a free trial in order to:

• boost customer lifetime value by keeping customers engaged.
• increase repeat purchases with targeted offers and experiences.
• build stronger relationships by listening, adapting, and delivering real value.

The post 6 Actionable Strategies To Drive More Sales Using Net Promoter Score appeared first on Retently CX.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• Product Reviews vs. NPS Surveys: Key Differences
• How NPS Complements the Idea of Customer Feedback in DTC
• Best Practices for Incorporating Product Reviews and NPS Surveys
• Final Thoughts: A Recap

In today’s fast-paced business environment, customer feedback has become an invaluable resource for brands striving to stay ahead of the curve. By tapping into the voice of the customer, companies can gain a deeper understanding of customer needs and craft meaningful experiences that foster loyalty. Product reviews and Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys are commonly used to measure customer experience and collect zero-party data. 

But while customer reviews have become an integral part of the ecommerce landscape and are here to stay, NPS surveys are just making their way in the DTC industry, although extensively adopted by B2Bs. Consider this, there are 2,665 review tools available in the Shopify marketplace, as opposed to only 58 for NPS software. Quite a difference, wouldn’t you say? So, aren’t brands missing out on essential feedback data?

In this article, we’ll compare post-purchase NPS surveys and product reviews as a measure of customer satisfaction, provide ecommerce businesses with a better understanding of the strengths and limitations of these two methods, and explore whether product reviews can be an alternative or rather complementary to NPS surveys. By understanding the importance of customer feedback and the best ways to gather it, brands can improve customer experience and retention, resulting in increased business growth.

So, let’s get started.

Key Takeaways

• Goal: NPS measures customer loyalty, while product reviews assess specific products to help buyers decide.
• Feedback Type: NPS captures brand sentiment, while reviews focus on product features like quality and usability.
• Who Responds? NPS surveys any customer interaction, while reviews come from the buyers of a product.
• Data Collection: NPS feedback is private and used for internal improvements, while reviews are public and influence purchase decisions.
• Follow-Up: NPS allows proactive engagement with unhappy customers and trend analysis to enhance overall customer experience. Product reviews are trickier, requiring public responses to manage reputation.

Product Reviews vs. NPS Surveys: Key Differences

Both product reviews and NPS surveys provide valuable insights into how consumers perceive a company’s products. However, they fulfill different roles in the customer experience measurement process. These types of feedback differ in their focus, the information they provide, and the methods used to collect and analyze data. Understanding these differences and how they complement each other can help brands achieve a broader CX perspective. 

Let’s dive into their fundamental differences, shall we?

Concept

Product reviews are written evaluations of a product by customers who have purchased and used it. They generally include a  5-star rating system and a text review, providing a first-hand product experience. Users can also add product photos and videos for a complete representation.

An NPS survey is a specific type of customer satisfaction survey that measures how likely users are to recommend a product or service to their friends and colleagues. They ask clients to rate their satisfaction on a scale of 0 to 10 and provide an open-ended question for additional feedback. The results are used to calculate a score that ranges from -100 to 100, with higher scores indicating a higher level of customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Audience

Product reviews are directed toward potential customers interested in learning more about a product before making a purchase. This makes them essential for ecommerce businesses and consumer goods industries, helping consumers make informed purchasing decisions. 

NPS surveys focus on existing customers who have already purchased and used the product to measure their loyalty and satisfaction with the brand, including customer service, UI/UX, operations, etc. NPS is a versatile metric popular across various B2B and B2C industries, including SaaS, healthcare, finance, insurance, and other industries where customer satisfaction and loyalty are critical for business success. 

Timing

Product reviews are gathered after a customer purchases and engages with  the product. As to NPS, ecommerce businesses are more familiar with transactional NPS surveys sent immediately or shortly after a transaction or customer support interaction. However, NPS surveys are more comprehensive in scope and can efficiently capture the satisfaction level at each step of the customer journey.

In this context, relationship NPS surveys are also worth mentioning, which are sent at regular intervals throughout a customer’s lifecycle (such as quarterly or annually) to track changes in customer satisfaction over time. That is specifically relevant for subscription-based companies surveying their customers every six months or big-ticket-item ecommerce businesses that inquire about their experience with the product 3 months after the purchase.

Impact

Product reviews can significantly affect a company’s sales, visibility, and reputation, as potential customers often rely on them when making purchasing decisions. Reading reviews is already a must for 95% of consumers before purchasing, while 67% require a high volume of reviews to trust high ratings. 

Yet, NPS surveys impact customer experience and the ability to identify and retain its most valuable clients. They are specifically designed to measure various areas of customer satisfaction and capture actionable insights for the brand to improve. Product reviews are often more general, providing feedback on a product but not necessarily leading to specific steps for the company. 

Data Use & Accessibility

Product reviews can be used for both internal (product development) and external purposes (marketing), with the latter as a priority. Posted publicly online, they allow other consumers to make informed purchasing decisions. Online retailers, social media platforms, and review websites have made it easy for customers to find and read reviews from various sources. Additionally, the mobile revolution has enabled potential buyers to access product reviews on the go. 

Contrariwise, NPS surveys are usually employed for internal purposes, such as measuring customer loyalty, inquiring about satisfaction following specific interactions, identifying areas for improvement, and tracking changes in customer satisfaction over time. Thus, NPS surveys are mostly kept private, and only shared within the company with management and the customer experience & marketing teams for analysis.

Marketing Opportunities

The main advantage of product reviews, making them so popular for ecommerce businesses, is that they serve as a form of social proof in marketing materials. Brands showcase positive feedback on their website or social media accounts. This way, they build credibility with potential customers since they can see what others have said about the product before purchasing. Overall, incorporating product reviews into a website’s content strategy can be a great way to drive traffic, increase conversions, and boost sales. 

On the contrary, NPS survey results are not usually used for marketing purposes; however, the metric makes it simple to target Promoters and encourage them to share opinions online. Moreover, a high NPS score speaks of amazing customer experiences. Many brands display positive results on their website to show commitment to customer needs and, as a result, foster trust.

Cost-Effectiveness

Product reviews may seem more cost-effective to collect due to the availability of third-party review platforms (e.g., Google Reviews or Yelp), which do not require additional resources or costs. However, this might not be the case if brands are the ones initiating the process, meaning they would need someone in the team to collect and manually analyze data or opt for an automation tool for the purpose. In this respect, brands can collect product reviews through email campaigns sent a few days after the purchase, via platforms such as Yotpo, Okendo, and Junip, or by incentivizing customer testimonials. 

As in the case of product reviews, NPS surveys may require additional resources, such as dedicated survey software and an analyst, to run the surveys and analyze the feedback. However, being a simple, straightforward, and easy-to-implement metric, Net Promoter Score does not require extensive investments, which is essential for DTC businesses. Using a platform like Retently, ecommerce businesses can trigger post-purchase NPS surveys by various survey channels such as email, store web pop-ups, or SMS and reach customers where they are most likely to engage with the survey. 

How NPS Complements the Idea of Customer Feedback in DTC

The concept of customer feedback has always been a crucial component of successful business operations. DTC brands, in particular, have leveraged its power to build a loyal audience and create more personal connections with consumers. However, traditional methods of collecting customer feedback, such as product reviews, can’t provide a complete picture. That’s where Net Promoter Score comes in as a complementary tool. NPS offers valuable insights into customer sentiment and helps brands understand the impact of their efforts on customer loyalty. 

So, let’s explore how NPS complements the idea of customer feedback in DTC and how it can generate relevant intelligence into customer behavior, preferences, and opinions.

A Measure of Customer Loyalty

NPS surveys are intended to measure customer loyalty and provide reliable data about customers’ likelihood to recommend the business to others. Customer loyalty is a valid pointer to customer retention and repeat business, which is essential for brands depending on repeat customers for revenue. That makes the NPS survey a tool with strong predictive potential.

Based on the collected NPS scores, customers are grouped into three categories: 

• Promoters (9 to 10): Highly satisfied customers who are likely to recommend your brand to others and make repeat purchases. Naturally, you would want the number of Promoters to be as high as possible since it will indicate that your product struck a chord.
• Passives (7 to 8): While satisfied with the product to some extent, Passives may be less likely to make repeat purchases and will switch to a competitor if a better option becomes available.
• Detractors (0 to 6): These are unsatisfied customers who are likely to be disloyal and provide negative word-of-mouth recommendations.

Ecommerce companies can thus use NPS data to identify Promoters and maximize their value, nurturing customers for life. NPS surveys can also easily flag at-risk customers, so they can proactively act and retain them for longer. While product reviews focus primarily on collecting feedback for social proof, NPS is an actionable metric directed toward finding the strengths to build on and spotting the flaws to improve – all for delivering the best customer experience and fostering loyalty. 

Targeted Feedback

Product reviews represent general feedback on a product, while NPS surveys are specifically designed to provide actionable insights to improve. They can include personalized questions and follow-up actions based on the customer’s specific experience or feedback (for example, depending on what product one buys or if they are new/return customers). NPS value goes beyond the regular 0-10 rating question, hence adopting a full-funnel NPS approach is the way to go. 

Many brands find NPS valuable because it gives critical information on the entirety of the buyer’s journey from purchase to fulfillment. The questions to ask aren’t all based on product quality but are more related to the shopping and customer experience of the brand. The brand has complete control over the survey, building it in a way that would best surface the topics of interest. The customization capabilities also allow for setting up the ground for a sustainable relationship rather than a transaction-based encounter, helping to improve the company’s overall relationship with its consumers.

Easy Data Analysis

NPS surveys have a standardized format offering a consistent and reliable way to gather and interpret customer feedback. It consists of a simple question: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company to a friend or colleague?” which is easy to understand and respond to, making it a convenient way to collect actionable data. 

Ecommerce businesses can compare NPS scores with industry standards and contrast data between departments or across different customer segments. Hence, brands can easily visualize and benchmark performance against competitors, track the progress of specific support agents effectively, or compare results at re-order, allowing for data-driven improvements.

NPS surveys are also highly efficient in tracking customer satisfaction over time. For example, by regularly surveying subscription customers (every 6 months), brands can capture shifts in the overall sentiment toward their business. By gaining valuable insights into their customers’ evolving needs and preferences, companies can easily adapt to changes and make the necessary adjustments. DTCs can also analyze if improvement efforts are paying off, informing future decisions. Moreover, long-term tracking establishes a baseline for customer satisfaction, giving brands an accurate understanding of how well they serve consumers. This insight is key to boosting retention and driving repeat business.

Effortless Segmentation

By collecting customer feedback and categorizing them into groups, brands can gain insights into what motivates each segment and tailor products accordingly. This way, brands can provide more personalized customer experiences and improve overall satisfaction. For example, suppose you have a high NPS score among younger customers but a lower score among the senior segment. In that case, you can focus on creating products that appeal to the younger demographic while addressing any issues causing dissatisfaction among the senior buyers. Through segmentation, brands can target the right audience and make informed decisions about marketing and product development strategies.

Broader Perspective

Product reviews can be very helpful in providing detailed information about a product. However, NPS goes beyond product information to provide data on a range of other aspects of a company’s performance. Let’s go through some of these examples to see how it works.

• Inform the CX strategy – by analyzing NPS feedback, brands can understand customer needs, spot pain points, and make informed decisions about product selection, pricing, delivery policy, or UX/UI experience. Customer satisfaction levels and feedback trends are the ones to inform the CX strategy and overall business direction, allowing ecommerce companies to be competitive in a crowded industry.
• Understand the buyer’s journey – by figuring out the key touchpoints in the buyer’s journey and how customers feel about each, brands can make adjustments to improve the individual experiences. It can include providing additional self-service resources, updating the refund policy, or improving the check-out process. By acting on NPS data, you can ensure that every touchpoint is tailored to meet customer expectations, leading to increased customer loyalty.
• Impact customer relationships – a high NPS score points to an increased number of happy customers likely to repurchase. On the other hand, a low NPS score speaks of prevailing unsatisfied buyers who may choose to do business with a competitor. By using NPS surveys to understand customer sentiment, follow up with at-risk customers, and drive the necessary improvements, brands can strengthen relationships and build a loyal audience.
• Optimize marketing efforts – brands can see if campaigns resonate with their customers, drive sales, and create positive customer experiences. A high NPS score indicates that customers respond positively and are more likely to repurchase. In contrast, a low NPS score hints at a need to fine-tune marketing strategies and optimize efforts for maximum impact.

Data Cross-Referencing

NPS surveys are an effective method of measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty, but they become even more powerful when cross-referenced with other data sources. By combining NPS data with other metrics, such as CSAT and CES, demographics, purchase history/sales data, and customer service interactions, companies can gain a comprehensive understanding of their customer experience.

For example, suppose NPS data shows that customers are satisfied with a company’s products but not customer service. In that case, the brand can use cross-referenced data to uncover the issue and take steps to address it. Additionally, cross-referencing NPS with purchase history would help ecommerce businesses identify opportunities for upselling. Brands can use this information to develop targeted campaigns that increase customer engagement and boost sales.

Neutralizing Bias

Product reviews may be affected by positive or negative bias, as customers are more likely to leave a review if they are satisfied or highly disappointed with a product. Fake reviews can also get in the way and skew the overall product perception, providing an incorrect representation of customer satisfaction. In this context, NPS surveys can provide a more representative and objective view of customer satisfaction. 

The benefit of having multiple perspectives when evaluating data is that it grants a more accurate picture of customer sentiment and a more comprehensive understanding of the overall performance. When relying on one source, there is also a risk of missing important information or misinterpreting data. For example, combining data from customer surveys and product reviews allows brands to quickly identify improvement areas, whether in product design, customer service, or marketing.

Best Practices for Incorporating Product Reviews and NPS Surveys

When used in conjunction, product reviews and NPS surveys can surface relevant insights into customer satisfaction and help ecommerce businesses make informed decisions about customer experience. However, it is important to follow some best practices when combining these two feedback sources to make the most of it. Here are three main tips we would like to touch upon:

1. Throttle and Sampling

Throttling and sampling are essential considerations when harnessing product reviews and NPS surveys to gather customer feedback. Throttling controls the rate at which feedback is collected, while sampling refers to selecting a representative customer segment.

By limiting the number of daily surveys and reviews, brands can avoid overwhelming the team while still capturing enough data to drive improvements. Furthermore, throttling can make sure that the customer experience remains positive. Brands can thus prevent consumer frustrations caused by flooding survey or review requests, and keep the feedback collection process engaging.

With a representative customer sample, ecommerce companies can ensure a more accurate picture of customer experiences and drive meaningful improvements. A suitable sampling method can, as a result, increase data validity by eliminating potential biases. 

Still, throttling and sampling methods will depend on the specific goals of the company. For example, a brand that wants to gather more in-depth feedback on a particular product or stage in the buyer’s journey may need to collect feedback more frequently than a business that simply wants to gauge overall customer satisfaction every once in a while.

2. Timing

Ideally, ecommerce businesses should aim to trigger product review requests and NPS surveys at different stages in the buyer’s journey. For example, they can collect reviews after a consumer used a specific product, and send NPS surveys to inquire about the delivery process (right after the product was delivered),  the check-out process (after the order was placed), or at regular intervals to monitor overall sentiment. Additionally, it’s essential to consider the type of surveyed customer, as feedback from repeat customers may weigh more than that from new customers.

A popular scenario among ecommerce brands is sending a product review request two days after delivery and NPS surveys in 10 or 14 days. While the first aims to find out more about the quality of the product, the NPS survey looks into the overall shopping experience and satisfaction with the brand.

Incorporating product reviews and NPS surveys into a comprehensive customer feedback strategy can enable brands to gain a deeper understanding of their consumers and encourage informed decisions that drive business success. We recommend adopting a 50%-50% approach when implementing the two methods jointly, meaning send product review requests to half of your audience and NPS surveys to the rest, to avoid messaging fatigue.

3. Closing the Feedback Loop

Closing the feedback loop is critical to driving CX improvements. It involves not only collecting feedback but also analyzing it, taking action based on the data, and communicating results to customers.

One key benefit of closing the feedback loop is that it helps build trust. Consumers are more likely to feel valued and appreciated if companies actively listen to and act on their feedback. That, in turn, builds brand loyalty and increases customer satisfaction.

Additionally, closing the feedback loop surfaces areas for improvement in the customer experience. By analyzing the received feedback, companies can spot common topics, patterns, trends and use this information to make changes that will positively impact CX and, as a result, drive growth.

Another essential aspect is sharing feedback with relevant departments and stakeholders. By doing so, brands can ensure that the feedback is acted upon and improvements are effectively implemented.

Final Thoughts: A Recap

Product reviews and NPS surveys are irreplaceable tools for collecting insightful customer feedback. But while providing complementary information, they also have their unique strengths, meaning brands should consider their specific goals when deciding which method to use. 

By understanding the strengths and limitations of each type of feedback, ecommerce businesses can make the most of both to improve the overall customer experience. Combining these two sources can help DTCs gain a more well-rounded understanding of their customer’s needs and help brands target their efforts more effectively.

Take control of your customer experience! Retently provides a simple yet effective way to gather and analyze customer feedback. With its user-friendly interface and advanced analytics capabilities, you can easily measure customer satisfaction, identify areas for improvement, and track progress over time. Sign up for a free trial to see the difference it can make for your brand.

The post An In-Depth Comparison of Product Reviews and NPS Surveys appeared first on Retently CX.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• What Is NPS?
• What Is RFM?
• The Link Between NPS and RFM
• Ready to Measure Your NPS?

In a highly competitive environment, assessing the success of a DTC brand just by checking the revenue and customer lifetime value is not enough. Predicting customer behavior and future growth is essential, and multiple methodologies are available to achieve this.

RFM and NPS are widely used in ecommerce for these purposes. RFM stands for Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value and is an efficient analysis model that allows brands to gauge and identify high-value customers for further targeting. Analysis of purchase frequency and timing provides a clear picture of buyers’ future actions, allowing the calculation of future revenue.

Yet, while observation is arguably the most straightforward approach to forecasting customer behavior, it still requires significant effort. For a quicker result, NPS will do the job as it assesses customer attitude and loyalty to the brand. As a result, the higher the score, the higher the likelihood of future purchases.

While different in their approach, NPS and RFM are important metrics that help ecommerce businesses better understand their customers and drive growth. In this article, we’ll explore the workings of these models, find out whether there’s any link between them, and how brands can leverage them to gain insights into customer behavior and experience.

Key Takeaways

• RFM analysis helps segment customers based on their behavior, while NPS reveals their loyalty and likelihood to recommend. Together, they give a holistic view of customer value and satisfaction.
• Combining RFM segments with NPS feedback enables highly personalized retention, upselling, and cross-selling strategies tailored to customer needs and preferences.
• By identifying at-risk customers through low RFM scores and negative NPS feedback, businesses can take timely actions to prevent churn and improve customer retention.
• NPS feedback provides qualitative insights that, when paired with RFM data, allow businesses to improve customer experience for specific high-value segments.
• Integrating RFM and NPS into ecommerce growth strategies helps prioritize efforts on high-value customers and maximize ROI, leading to sustainable growth.

What Is NPS?

NPS, or Net Promoter Score, is a popular metric that serves as a measure of customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. A simple question, “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our company to a friend or colleague” is used to assess the success of a business and the loyalty of its customers. 

Respondents are grouped into three categories based on their answers. Customers who rate 9 or 10 are the Promoters, as they genuinely love your product. Passives choose between 7 and 8, and while they may keep buying, they will quickly turn to a competitor. Anyone giving a score of 6 or lower is considered a Detractor – a dissatisfied customer who will likely purchase again only if you take appropriate steps. 

Your NPS score is the difference in percentage between Promoters and Detractors. For example, if 55% of our customers are Promoters, and 15% are Detractors, your NPS is 55%-15%=40%. It’s worth mentioning that companies with high NPS show higher growth rates, which is natural since satisfied customers are willing to recommend the business to others. That translates into increased sales, positive word-of-mouth, and a strong brand reputation. 

The rating is followed up by open-ended questions that provide more details on the reasons for customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The captured feedback helps concentrate efforts on the most relevant business areas, identify any difficulties customers may face, and single out customers who will gladly promote the brand or never purchase again.  

Another important consideration is that NPS facilitates customer segmentation, which, in turn, simplifies marketing efforts by providing clarity on the specific follow-up required for each group. Promoters are the right customers for cross-selling, upselling, and referral programs. Passives need further encouragement and will be happy with discounts and additional offers to keep them engaged. Winning Detractors will require more work, but solving their concerns will allow reaping benefits later.

The NPS concept is based on customer self-assessment, which leaves out biases and assumptions while giving relevant and actionable feedback for ecommerce businesses willing to improve customer experience and reduce churn.

What Is RFM?

RFM (Recency-Frequency-Monetary) is a customer segmentation model used to identify and target high-value customers. The RFM concept differs from NPS as it relies on the data gathered by marketers and salespeople, yet, it is another way to measure customer value.

Understanding the Key Factors

As the name implies, the RFM model relies on three key factors:

• Recency: When did the last purchase occur? Customers who have made a more recent purchase are more likely to return than those who have not purchased in a long time.
• Frequency: How often does a customer purchase? Customers who make frequent purchases are more likely to be loyal and purchase more.
• Monetary value: How much money did your brand earn from a customer? Those who spend more on their purchases will likely be more valuable.

The RFM model assigns a score to each customer by analyzing these factors. The scores segment buyers into groups, including high-value, loyal customers and those targeted for improvement.

How to calculate RFM?

When doing the RFM analysis, you will naturally want a list of customers who buy frequently and spend the most. Just like in the case of NPS, there is a way to calculate the RFM value of every customer. Usually, marketers use a 1-5 (the standard) or 1-10 scale and assign scores based on every parameter, with a year as a timeframe. A 1-10 scale allows for more granularity but can also increase the complexity of the RFM analysis.

Let’s start with Recency. Depending on the specifics of your business and buyer’s journey, you must decide on the time frames, and score ranges to best suit your needs. For example, if you sell clothes and people generally buy anything new every two months, you will give 10 to any customer who purchased during that period. Then keep decreasing the number, giving a 9 to those who bought anything during the last three months, etc. You can continue this pattern for each time frame until you reach a minimum score for customers who have not purchased in a long time.

The same goes for Frequency, which is based on the number of customer purchases over a certain period. In this respect, a customer who makes six purchases a year will receive a higher score than those who purchased once. 

As for the Monetary value, 10 goes to those who spend the most. It can be a straightforward calculation considering the total spend in a given period. It may also take into account other factors, such as the average order value or the customer’s lifetime value.

To combine the three scores for Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value into a single RFM score, you can use different methods depending on your brand’s specific needs and goals. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to this. 

To calculate the RFM score, brands can combine the assigned value to each of the three factors.

Now, if you have given a customer 8 on Recency, 5 on Frequency, and 5 on Monetary, the three-digit score is 855. 

Another method is averaging the three scores. Based on our example, this would result in: (8+5+5)/3=6. Naturally, customers with higher scores are considered more valuable. These are the most common approaches used.  

Depending on the nature of your business, Frequency may be insignificant, and you may want to decrease its influence on the final score. In this case, you may use a different scoring scale to measure it, but you must adjust the formula accordingly. 

Hence, another standard method is to assign weights to each of the three scores based on their importance and add them up.

For instance, if Recency is deemed more critical than Frequency and Monetary value, you could assign a weight of 60% to Recency, 30% to Frequency, and 10% to Monetary value. Then, you would multiply each score by its corresponding weight, add up the results, and get a final weighted RFM score.

Analyzing the same example, we would get:

RFM score = (8 x 0.6) + (5 x 0.3) + (5 x 0.1)

RFM score = 6,8

Regardless of the favored method, make sure to apply it consistently across your customer base.

Benefits of the RFM model

Analyzing RFM data has multiple benefits that extend beyond its ability to segment customers and improve marketing efforts. It provides valuable insights into customer behavior that can inform various business decisions.

Just like NPS, it allows projecting future revenue by identifying the expenditures of existing and new customers. This information can guide marketing strategies and improve customer retention efforts. 

RFM analysis can provide ecommerce businesses with insights into the most popular products among their customers. By expanding their product offering in that category, they can improve satisfaction levels and prompt positive word-of-mouth. By identifying the most frequent customers and their purchase patterns, brands can also better anticipate demand and adjust their stock accordingly. This way, they can minimize the risk of product shortage.

In addition, RFM can spot opportunities for cross-selling and upselling. Based on the purchasing behavior, companies can single out products frequently purchased together and use this information to offer targeted recommendations to active customers.

It also allows brands to pinpoint the most valuable customers: those making the most frequent and high-value purchases. Ecommerce businesses can use this information to allocate resources more effectively and make strategic decisions that increase customer lifetime value and revenue. Proper data analysis also helps identify patterns in customer behavior to fine-tune existing offers and predict your clients’ needs.  

The Link Between NPS and RFM

Are the two approaches really that different, or do they actually share a common thread in the data they provide? 

When it comes to the RFM model, it is natural to think that Frequency is the most important characteristic here: you can predict customer behavior just by looking at this data. However, it turns out that Recency is a more reliable metric as it best predicts the likelihood of future purchases. The reasoning is simple: if the transaction was recent, customers have that specific brand in mind and will likely return for new purchases. Clients who haven’t purchased anything for months are less likely to buy again unless targeted by costly marketing campaigns. 

As for Frequency, depending on what you sell, it may be a minor characteristic: people buy groceries daily and purchase laptops once in a couple of years. The same is true for the Monetary part: if a client buys an expensive item and never returns, their monetary value may be higher than that of a regular customer who buys frequently but spends less in the same timeframe. That’s why Recency is the most critical parameter, though all three should be taken into account to get a reliable data set.

Recency is important in NPS as well. Usually, the survey is sent immediately or shortly after the transaction to get the most relevant and actionable feedback. It’s when customers are “fresh” and more willing to share comments and suggestions. Consequently, the more you wait to send the survey, the less accurate information you will receive. In addition, you may not get any feedback at all, instead confusing customers with your survey if the interaction happened ages ago. 

Anyway, it doesn’t mean you’ll get high NPS scores if you send the survey immediately since many factors influence it, including the quality of your product, delivery, packaging, website experience, and even the customer’s current mood. Still, many companies notice that the NPS decreases when they survey customers who last interacted with them long ago and return to normal after a new transaction.

Of course, given the broad use of NPS, there is an exception to it to consider, which is relevant for subscription-based companies who measure their customer satisfaction on a regular base, let’s say every 6 months. That might also be the case for big-ticket-item ecommerce brands that can inquire about their experience with the product 3 months after the purchase.

Basically, Recency is the parameter that should be considered when using both NPS and RFM models to predict customer behavior, improve their experience, and increase future revenues. 

Advantages of a combined NPS-RFM approach in ecommerce

While RFM and NPS are generally used separately, they can provide complementary insights, offering brands a more comprehensive view of their customers. RFM looks into customer behavior based on past purchases, while NPS measures customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Yet, even if Recency in the RFM model is the best predictor of future behavior, it still can’t be taken for granted. To better understand customers, compare the list of people with the highest scores for both RFM and NPS: if the names match, those clients will surely return.

Cross-referencing the results is another way to use both models to your benefit. After you spot the recent customers, checking their NPS survey results and analyzing the feedback is more than recommended. This way, you can predict their behavior and solve any issues they may encounter in good time to ensure they return for future purchases. 

The same procedure is relevant for NPS: identify your Promoters and check their Recency score. If they didn’t get a 10 (in case you use a 10-point scale for the RFM analysis), it is time to remind them about your existence and encourage them to visit your website.  RFM analysis can help reveal which products they may be interested in for future purchases.

Here are a few more examples of why your brand needs to use RFM and NPS analysis together:

1. Efficiently segment customers

RFM segments buyers based on purchase behavior and engagement level, while NPS seeks to understand each group’s customer satisfaction. For example, customers with high RFM and NPS scores can be classified as loyal advocates. These clients are frequent spenders and vocal advocates for the brand, making them valuable assets for word-of-mouth marketing. Identifying high-value customers can bring many benefits, including effective resource allocation and increased revenue. 

2. Build targeted marketing and leverage personalization

By segmenting customers based on their RFM score and NPS rating, ecommerce companies can develop targeted marketing campaigns, personalized product recommendations, and effective customer service strategies. Analyze the data to determine which groups are most likely to respond to specific offers, tailor marketing efforts to each customer segment and address any pain points to improve conversion rates. For example, a brand can use RFM analysis to find customers most likely to purchase a new product and then use NPS data to craft a marketing campaign that speaks directly to their needs.

3. Enable campaign analysis

While RFM can pin the most valuable customers, NPS can assess the impact of a marketing campaign on these customers. In this context, a high NPS score indicates that the campaign resonates with the target audience. The same is valid for loyalty programs. 

4. Improve customer experience

By blending RFM scores and NPS feedback, brands can learn why customers are satisfied or dissatisfied with their experience. For example, if you spot Detractors in high-value customer segments, take steps to address their concerns, improve overall satisfaction, and drive positive word-of-mouth. This way,  ecommerce businesses can develop products that better meet their needs, while positive word-of-mouth will fuel long-term growth.

5. Increase customer loyalty

While RFM scores can provide insight into the Frequency and Monetary value of customer purchases, they do not directly measure customer satisfaction or loyalty. Yet, NPS singles out the drivers of customer loyalty. By combining these two metrics, brands can determine RFM segments with the highest NPS scores and focus on strategies to improve loyalty within those segments (e.g., reward customers for their loyalty with exclusive offers). By taking steps to retain these high-value customers, you can build long-term relationships and increase the likelihood of repeat purchases.

6. Reduce churn

Via RFM and NPS analysis, brands can determine at-risk customers and engage them with retention campaigns. For example, customers with low RFM and NPS scores are, without a doubt, heading to the front door and requiring special attention. These customers have not made recent purchases, spent little money in the past, and are unlikely to recommend the company to others. Brands can proactively take immediate measures to retain them before it’s too late by addressing their pain points and using targeted offers.

Managing the joint challenges of RFM and NPS

Besides the clear connection between NPS and RFM, there are potential data conflicts to it. Obviously, the two metrics may not always align. A customer who makes frequent purchases may have a high RFM score yet still not be satisfied with specific aspects (like customer support or the ordering process), experiencing a low NPS score. At the same time, a very satisfied customer may still rarely purchase,  having a lower RFM score.

Therefore, relying too much on either has its drawbacks. As a brand, you may focus solely on a high RFM score and disconsider NPS, losing customers in the long run. Also, reaching a high NPS score, you may be prone to neglect high-value clients, failing to seize opportunities to boost revenue.

Yet, we’ve got you covered with some tips to follow for the best possible outcome:

• Prioritize CX – RFM analysis can indeed identify valuable buyers but don’t ignore the role of customer satisfaction. Only by adopting a customer-centric approach and using NPS feedback to improve their experience can ecommerce businesses nurture long-term success.
• Look for patterns –  As such, patterns offer invaluable insights into customer behavior and preferences, hence when analyzing RFM and NPS data, seek them out. For example, if Detractors are more likely to be low-value customers, this could hint at product value issues or price sensitivity. Make sure you’re not looking at isolated data points but taking a holistic view of how customers interact with your brand. 
• Inform decisions –  Remove the guesswork and use data to back up decisions. Create a more comprehensive customer profile by cross-referencing RFM and NPS data with other sources such as demographic data, customer service interactions, and social media comments. Ensure that customer data is collected consistently across all touchpoints.
• Treat it as an ongoing process – Customer behavior and preferences are not static, so it’s essential for brands to regularly review data and adjust the RFM and NPS strategies to match their goals. Keep track of key performance indicators and use them to inform decision-making.
• Leverage automation – RFM and NPS data analysis can be challenging and time-consuming, especially if done manually. And while for smaller shops, a manual approach might still work, things will get complicated as they scale their business and larger data sets pour in. Specialized tools can streamline the process and reduce data errors, empowering brands to respond more effectively to ever-changing customer needs.

Ready to Measure Your NPS?

Running a successful ecommerce business isn’t as easy as it sounds, right? Between attracting new customers, keeping the ones you have, and staying ahead of competitors, the challenges can feel endless. One big hurdle? Understanding your customers well enough to keep them coming back for more.

Here’s the thing: growth means more than getting more traffic to your site or running flashy marketing campaigns. Real, sustainable growth comes from knowing your customers inside out – what they want, how they shop, and why they stick around (or leave). And that’s where the role of customer insights kicks in.

Although both RFM and NPS center on customer behavior, they approach it differently. RFM focuses on the transactional history, analyzing how recently and frequently a customer has made purchases and how much money they spent. NPS dwells on customer attitude towards the brand, measuring the likelihood of recommending it to others.

Yet, when used jointly, RFM and NPS give ecommerce businesses a more nuanced understanding of their customers. A good grasp of purchase behavior and satisfaction with the brand facilitates informed decision-making, tailored experiences, and improved customer relationships.

Here at Retently, we specialize in NPS surveys: the templates are tailored to match brands’ needs, the computations are done automatically, and the advanced reports help interpret data and detect feedback patterns. In addition, we offer native integrations with your store, email & SMS marketing, customer support, call center, and CDP platforms. Try it out for 14 days to get a new perspective on customer needs and identify new growth opportunities.

The post The Link Between RFM & NPS in Ecommerce Growth appeared first on Retently CX.

Satisfied customers translate into growth through word of mouth. They mean that your product or service delivers significant, measurable benefits. They prove that your business is capable of growing into an even larger, more profitable operation than it currently is.

Just like measuring and monitoring your personal health is an ongoing process, keeping track of the health of your business isn’t something you can do once and then forget about. Instead, it’s also a long-term commitment and an ongoing process that, when done correctly, yields lasting rewards.

How aware are you of your business health? Do you have up-to-date insights into your customers’ perception of your product or service? Or are you relying on outdated statistics from months or even years ago?

Below, we’ve explained why measuring customer satisfaction is a long-term process, and how you can leverage Retently and Net Promoter Score® to get an accurate gauge not just of how customers feel about your product but how their thoughts, feelings and feedback change over time.

Let’s explore how shifting your mindset can transform your approach to customer feedback – and your business.

Key Takeaways

• NPS is a journey, not a destination. Treating NPS as an ongoing process rather than a one-time metric unlocks its true potential to drive customer loyalty and business growth.
• Regular NPS tracking ensures your business stays aligned with evolving customer expectations, giving you a competitive edge.
• Continuous NPS tracking helps you spot emerging patterns, enabling proactive adjustments before issues escalate.
• Small, consistent changes based on NPS feedback compound over time, driving meaningful and sustained progress.
• Automation tools enable you to efficiently collect, analyze, and act on NPS feedback, helping you scale your efforts as your business grows.

NPS Beyond the Metric

Let’s be honest – when you first hear about NPS, it’s tempting to focus only on the score. After all, who doesn’t want to brag about a high NPS? But here’s the thing: NPS is much more than a vanity metric. At its core, it’s a feedback loop – a dynamic conversation between you and your customers.

Think of NPS as a signal, not the final answer. When customers rate their likelihood of recommending your business, they’re giving you valuable clues about what’s working and what’s not. Their score is just the starting point. The real gold lies in their comments and the trends behind those numbers. Are Detractors frustrated with your support? Do Promoters rave about your product’s ease of use? Understanding this context is where NPS becomes powerful.

Let’s dig in.

As Your Customers Grow, Their Needs Change

In B2B, customers rarely remain constant. Companies grow over time, and if they use your product or service as a core part of their business, their needs are also likely to change with time.

That is particularly common for the technology industry, where growth can happen overnight, and a company that had 1,000 customers last week can have 5,000 the next.

Staying up-to-date is also important because products can quickly become obsolete. A product that looks and feels new at one point in time may lose its appeal within a few years, especially if it’s in a fast-growing market segment with rapidly developing needs.

Your customers will inevitably change. The speed of change depends primarily on your industry – in tech, it’s fast; in others, slow. Since your customers will grow and their needs will progress, it’s important that you stay aware of their thoughts and feedback over time.

By treating NPS as a one-time survey, you miss out on the opportunity to capture the evolving nature of customer sentiment – a wealth of data that enables you to make informed decisions about your products and the overall customer experience.

Embracing NPS as an ongoing process and measuring customer satisfaction on a consistent basis lets you stay up-to-date with exactly how your customers feel at any given moment. Instead of using data points from months ago to keep track of customer needs and sentiment, you can access current data exactly when you need it the most.

This data allows you to identify emerging needs and trends before they reach the point at which your business could be affected. Rather than reacting to a shifting industry too late, you’ll stay ahead of the curve and deliver what your customers need before it becomes mission-critical.

Moreover, a proactive approach to customer satisfaction, fueled by an ongoing NPS process, will help you foster long-term customer loyalty and leverage advocacy marketing.

As Your Company Grows, Your Product (and Service) Changes

Not only will your customers grow over time – if your business is a success and your customer base expands over time, your ability to deliver your product will also change. Your marketing and service approach will likely evolve with it as you adapt to the new scale of your business.

That could result in your business’s customer experience and satisfaction improving. It could also have the exact opposite effect and lead to more dissatisfied customers. Without recording your customers’ thoughts and feedback on a regular basis, it’s impossible to predict the outcome.

Every business needs to make compromises as it grows. When these compromises affect your ability to deliver the right product or service to your customers, it’s essential to be aware of their response.

Measuring customer satisfaction with NPS on an ongoing, long-term basis lets you identify areas where you’re falling short due to growth and scale. If these weaknesses frustrate or annoy customers, you can quickly act on their feedback and implement new processes to win them back.

Ignore customer feedback as your business grows and you could find yourself replacing one set of customers with another. Measure, track and respond to feedback, and you’ll develop your existing base of satisfied, loyal customers.

What’s more, a dynamic NPS process doesn’t just help you retain customers – it also opens the door to new revenue opportunities. Promoters, for example, are more than just satisfied customers; they’re advocates who are likely to purchase more and refer others to your business. Identifying these Promoters through NPS allows you to nurture them with targeted upselling and cross-selling campaigns.

On the flip side, addressing the concerns of Detractors can turn them into loyal customers who might have otherwise left. Imagine a customer who gives a low score due to confusion about your pricing. By reaching out, clarifying their concerns, and offering a tailored solution, you could transform their experience – and secure additional revenue in the process.

As Your Market Matures, New Competitors Increase the Stakes

The more competitive your marketing becomes, the more critical customer feedback is for staying one step ahead of your competitors.

It’s easy to be the best product in a small market with no competition. It’s far harder to be the best in your niche when you have 10, 20, or 30 competitors, all working hard to poach as many of your customers as possible.

In industries with a low barrier to entry, all it takes is a single better offering from a competitor to disrupt your business and start losing customers.

That is particularly troubling if you offer a product with low customer investment. If it’s easy for customers to switch from your product to an offering from a competitor, there’s a real chance that they will eventually do so.

The key to avoiding this situation is customer feedback. Feedback lets you stay one step ahead of your competitors by identifying and addressing needs before they can. It also lets you gain a deeper level of awareness of what your customers truly value in your product category.

An ongoing NPS process and continuous feedback keep you aware of how your customers respond to the products offered by your competitors, not just what they think of your product. This data is highly valuable in creating a product that not only acquires customers but retains them for the long term, hence increasing their customer lifetime value.

Even in a highly competitive market, a consistent NPS process has proven to be an invaluable strategy for market leaders like Apple, Tesla, Amazon, Airbnb, or Rackspace. These companies have capitalized on customer feedback to tailor their products, proactively address pain points and elevate the customer experience. Regardless of your size or niche, a similar approach will help you pinpoint growth opportunities while maintaining a loyal customer base.

The Less You Talk to Your Customers, the More You Need NPS®

Some businesses naturally have more customer interaction than others. An agency delivering a service will have frequent contact with its customers, whereas a product-based B2C company is unlikely to speak to any of its customers on a daily basis.

In businesses with frequent customer interaction, there’s less of a need for continual feedback, as concerns and questions are communicated naturally. However, in businesses with little or no customer interaction, systems like NPS are essential for measuring customer satisfaction.

Treating NPS as an ongoing process lets you stay in tune with customer needs and expectations and, as a result, deliver meaningful experiences. If you are looking to make NPS an integral part of your operations, consider investing in dedicated NPS software, following up on the received feedback and regularly reviewing performance.

NPS is a Journey, Not a Destination

When was the last time you asked your customers, “How are we doing?” Chances are, you’ve used Net Promoter Score to find out. NPS is one of the simplest ways to gauge customer sentiment – it’s quick, easy, and gives you a number to work with. But here’s the catch: many businesses treat NPS like a one-and-done survey. Send it out, get a score, and move on. Sound familiar?

In reality, NPS is so much more than just a number. It’s a window into how your customers feel about your business, and more importantly, it’s a tool for building better relationships over time. Treating NPS as a static metric misses the point. The real value lies in using it as a continuous process – a way to listen, learn, and adapt to your customers’ needs.

Now’s the time to shift your mindset. Don’t let NPS sit as just another KPI on a dashboard – turn it into a critical part of your strategy. Start small: map feedback touchpoints, close the loop with customers, and share insights across teams. Over time, this commitment to continuous improvement will lead to sustainable growth and a loyal customer base that champions your brand.

Retently lets you automate customer feedback using a simple NPS survey. Start using Net Promoter Score to gather, analyze and act on customer feedback to improve retention and grow your business. Find out more about Retently’s unique features or test it out in a free trial to witness the positive impact this ongoing input can have.

The post Why Net Promoter Score is an Ongoing Process (Not a One-Time Survey) appeared first on Retently CX.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• What Does CX Mean?
• What Is Customer Satisfaction?
• Measuring Customer Satisfaction
• What Metrics Measure Customer Satisfaction?
• Which Customer Satisfaction Metric Is Better?
• Quick Wins: How to Decide Which CX Metric to Use
• Ready to Start Tracking Customer Satisfaction Metrics?

For every complaint you receive, there are approximately 26 customers who are unhappy with your company, but choose to say nothing. Those are the clients you will most likely lose if you don’t take proper action.

Besides just losing clients and revenue, low customer satisfaction levels can also harm your brand’s image – especially if certain customer complaints go viral online.

Luckily, customer satisfaction measurement tools can help you collect valuable customer feedback, so you can make the changes and improvements your customer base is actually asking for – all to offer them a better experience and a more pleasant customer journey.

For the sake of keeping things simple, we should mention that customer satisfaction metrics are generally also called CX metrics.

Key Takeaways

• No single metric can capture the full customer experience. Using NPS, CSAT, and CES together ensures a well-rounded understanding that addresses both strategic and operational needs.
• NPS helps with the long-term strategy, CSAT improves specific touchpoints and CES optimizes processes, making these metrics critical across the customer lifecycle.
• CX metrics are only valuable when paired with qualitative feedback and used to make meaningful improvements, such as resolving pain points, streamlining processes, or enhancing customer support.
• Companies that consistently track NPS, CSAT and CES outperform competitors in customer retention, loyalty and revenue growth.  

What Does CX Mean?

CX stands for Customer Experience. An accurate CX definition describes customer experience as the way consumers perceive how your brand interacts and treats them. That perception has the potential to influence the way people feel about your business, and how likely they are to do business with you and talk positively about your brand.

So, it’s easy to see why CX and customer satisfaction metrics are interchangeable. Usually, the provided customer satisfaction score is a good indicator of customer experience.

Just how important is CX, you ask? Well, consider this – according to research, it was bound to become the main brand differentiator by 2020, effectively overtaking pricing and product –  statement undoubtedly confirmed years past.

On top of that, great CX is directly linked to improved brand loyalty and increased retention rates. After all, data shows that consumers who enjoy a great customer experience are 5 times more likely to recommend a brand to others. Also, customers who have a positive CX are 54% more likely to make another purchase.

Now you may have some knowledge of why CX makes the best business decisions but you need reliable methods that can collect customer insights for efficient improvements. So how do you actually perceive and measure customer satisfaction, what are the data sources, and which are the best customer satisfaction metrics to rely on. Let’s get to it, shall we?

What Is Customer Satisfaction?

It seems that there is no universally accepted definition of customer satisfaction. However, most of them agree that customer satisfaction is closely connected to expectations, hence the ongoing debate as to whether it is a cognitive or an emotionally-driven process. 

There are many interesting theories used to explain customer satisfaction, but the two considered to best portray the concept are the disconfirmation and value-percept theories. 

The first indicates that customers compare a new experience with a standard they already have in mind, and their satisfaction with the product/service depends on whether it lives up to the respective expectations. It is a generally accepted theory, however it is difficult to apply it to all product categories.

According to the expectancy-value theory, customers make judgments about a product’s value and its benefits, based on personal needs and wants. Customer satisfaction levels depend on how close the initial judgment is to the value the product provides after the actual purchase.

To sum up, the difference between the performance of the product a customer interacts with and the personal expectations and needs in relation to it, is what shapes customer satisfaction. Still, a rather abstract notion I would say – so how can it be translated into something measurable?

Measuring Customer Satisfaction

According to researchers, the customer satisfaction measurement can be divided into two categories: the direct measurement system (data provided directly by the customer, for example via customer satisfaction surveys) and indirect measurement system (data surfaced from sales numbers/revenue streams, app engagement, etc.).

When it comes to measuring customer satisfaction, the standard approach is by means of a scale rating. The most familiar one is the scale from 0 to 10, mostly due to its similarity with the scoring used in education systems worldwide, but also can be scales of 1 to 7, 1 to 5, emoticons, thumbs-up and stars.

Given the different information streams and the various categories, there are several tools and metrics used to approach the customer and analyze the results – data that if acted upon leads to increased customer loyalty, retention and as a result revenue.

What Metrics Measure Customer Satisfaction?

NPS, CSAT, and CES are the most commonly used customer satisfaction metrics. This is mostly due to the fact that they are rather straightforward, simple in their implementation and very easy to be understood by all staff categories as compared to complex indexes. We’ll quickly showcase what each metric is and how it works, to then help consider which one is a better option.

Respondents normally answer using a 0-10 scale, with 10 being “Very Likely” and 0 being “Very Unlikely.” The 0-10 scale makes it easier for you to segment customers according to their responses:

• 9-10 – Promoters (clients who love your company and will actively promote it)
• 7-8 – Passives (customers who like your company but don’t love it yet)
• 0-6 – Detractors (clients who are unhappy with your company and are at risk of churning)

Depending on how many and what kind of answers you get, your NPS score can be somewhere in the -100 and 100 range. Anything under 0 is usually a bad sign, a score between 0 and 30 is normally a good score, a score between 30 and 70 is a great score, and anything over 70 means you have very high loyalty levels.

To calculate your NPS score, you will have to subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. However, there is an easier way to determine it by using specialized NPS software, or sending surveys manually and then compiling the score by using an NPS calculator.

That’s not all, though. The single question must be followed up by an open-ended question – one that asks respondents what made them give that particular score. You can also use other open-ended questions – like asking clients what they didn’t like about your company, or what you can do to improve their customer experience.

Those kinds of questions can offer you more insight into how consumers view your brand, and what actions you need to take to enjoy higher customer satisfaction levels.

Respondents can usually rate their satisfaction with answers in the “Very Satisfied – Very Unsatisfied” range. Alternatively, you can also let respondents rate their answers in the 1-5 or 1-10 range.

Just keep in mind that the closed-ended answers people can give are not set in stone – you can customize them as much as you want to make them more relevant to your brand.

CSAT surveys aren’t limited to a single question. If you want, you can use multiple questions and have open-ended and closed-ended questions in the same survey – like the Hilton Hotels chain does, for instance.

The CSAT score is an average based on the survey results. Generally, these scores are expressed in a percentage – from 0% to 100%.

Here’s an easy way to calculate a CSAT customer satisfaction score – take the number of “Satisfied” respondents (those who answer in the “Satisfied-Very Satisfied” range, or similar parameters), divide it by the number of received responses, and multiply it by 100.

So, if 100 people respond to your survey, and 80 of them are “Satisfied,” that means you’d have an 80% CSAT score.

People who take the survey will get to choose between multiple answers – normally ranging from “Very Difficult” to “Very Easy”. Of course, the answers can vary – they can also be in the “Strongly Agree – Strongly Disagree” range, and they can be numbered as well.

The collected customer feedback is then analyzed to find the average.

If most answers are positive (in the “Easy-Very Easy” category), it means customer satisfaction levels are quite decent for your brand since clients have an easy time using your services/products.

If the answers are negative (in the “Difficult-Very Difficult” category), that means you are in need of improvements to make the interaction with your business easier.

Which Customer Satisfaction Metric Is Better?

NPS – Advantages and Disadvantages

To begin with, NPS offers proper customer segmentation. You can see exactly which types of clients you need to focus your efforts on (Promoters, Passives, or Detractors) to get better results. By consistently analyzing the ratio of Promoters and Detractors, you would be able to get accurate insights about the long-term relationships you are building and whether you’ll be able to grow as quickly as you initially planned.

Besides that, NPS surveys tend to be very accurate. They use a question that’s larger in scope to get unbiased, providing accurate feedback about a product or service. Instead of asking about a specific experience, NPS uses a broad question to inquire on customers’ likelihood to recommend a company as a whole.

The effect is that the score and feedback are less likely to be affected much by particular events. As a result, your business gets specific and meaningful feedback, all with fewer outliers caused by recent positive or negative customer experiences.

Also, NPS is a long-term customer satisfaction metric. NPS focuses on the overall referability of your brand – not just on the individual customer experience. The premise is based on the fact that people are unlikely to refer a brand if they don’t trust it, and if they do refer a brand, they are more likely to stick to it.

Additionally, NPS surveys are accurate and realistic since the sample size should be randomized to cover the entire customer base, and not just the recently active users. It gives a much more realistic perspective of the overall customer sentiment.

One last NPS advantage worth mentioning is that these surveys tend to get a higher response rate. While the average survey has a response rate of just over 3 percent, NPS surveys regularly earn response rates in the 10 to 30% range. It’s usually due to having just one question, and because a numerical scale makes it easy for respondents to offer quick feedback since they don’t have to read any additional text.

And that much-higher-than-average response rate means that even a small NPS survey audience can produce meaningful, statistically significant data that your business can use to improve customer retention and generate more revenue.

Now, in terms of disadvantages, most NPS surveys do require follow-ups, so you can’t really rely just on one single question. Also, good NPS ratings can create a “tunnel vision” effect, where businesses think they’re on the right track, and that’s it.

While a high NPS score is a great accomplishment, you can’t just call it a day after getting the results. You need to act on that score, and start engaging your Promoters to advocate your brand to others, and become even more proactive in addressing the issues faced by the Detractors. NPS works best when paired with a proper voice of the customer program.

CES – Advantages and Disadvantages

The strongest incentive to use CES surveys is the fact that, according to HBR research, the results are a strong predictor of future purchase behavior – given that 94% of consumers who report their interactions with a brand being “low effort” will repurchase.

Also, another research shows that 81% of consumers who report that their interactions with businesses are “high effort” say they would speak about the brand in question in a negative manner. What does that mean? That CES could also give you insights into how likely your customers are to refer you to others. The idea would be that if it’s very easy for them to do business with you, they’d be more likely to promote you.

Lastly, due to the survey’s focus on customer effort, it can offer you actionable data that allows you to quickly pinpoint weaknesses across different types of client interactions with your brand.

Now, onto the drawbacks – one of the main problems with CES is that it doesn’t allow any customer segmentation. Basically, you can’t find out what type of customer had trouble interacting with your product or learn about the kind of relationship you have with a specific customer.

What’s more, you can only find out if clients have trouble using a service or product. You can’t find out why they are having that problem in the first place, and what the exact issue is.

For instance, a customer might feel it was hard for them to get something from your brand that your business doesn’t normally offer. In that case, the CES results show that the said customer had trouble interacting with your business, when – in reality – that kind of information might be irrelevant to you. That’s why it is important to complement the surveys with follow-up questions allowing customers to expand on the problems they encountered using your service.

CSAT – Advantages and Disadvantages

CSAT can be a flexible customer satisfaction metric, which is its strongest suit. You can easily customize questions to make an in-depth analysis of your brand’s strengths and weaknesses. Since the rating scale can be tied to the context, it allows you to use different indicators (like numeric scales, stars, emojis) that appeal to your audience.

Also, CSAT surveys allow you to use different formats – from simple to complex – to engage with your audience. The more thorough formats can be very useful if you have a bigger business (like a hotel chain) and don’t want to bombard customers with multiple one-question surveys.

Now for the drawbacks – the first issue with CSAT is that it only reflects short-term customer sentiment, as the results are normally based on how they are feeling on a given day. There’s also the problem of subjectivity, as “satisfied” can mean different things to different people.

Case in point – there’s the problem of cultural bias. According to a Psychological Science article, people from more individualistic countries (like the US) are likely to choose the more “extreme” sides (“Very Satisfied,” “Very Dissatisfied”) than people in collectivist countries (someone from Japan who’s more likely to offer a “Not Satisfied” or “Satisfied” rating).

Your CSAT score could also be skewed by clients in the “Neutral” or “Dissatisfied” category who might not bother to fill out the whole survey. Not to mention the score could be inaccurate due to fear of admission. Users who rely on your brand’s customer service on a daily basis might be afraid of being honest with the brand – especially if they think that any negative feedback could impact the turn-around time or ongoing business relationship. You can take that fear of the table by using anonymous surveys where respondents can leave their names only if they feel comfortable to.

One last issue to consider with this type of survey is that the CSAT score doesn’t really tell you a lot about consumer loyalty. At best, a low score would be able to predict customer churn.

For instance, having a high score doesn’t mean you can actually predict repeat business. Yes, you can find out if clients are happy with what you offer, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re likely to promote your brand. You can just take a guess, which isn’t a very reliable method.

NPS, CSAT and CES – The Bottom Line

It would be unfair to compare NPS, CSAT and CES as they deal with different aspects of the customer journey. They are connected, complement each other and should be used together at specific stages of the customer lifecycle.

CSAT surveys, despite positive scores, can’t predict customer loyalty, but they can give you helpful information on specific actions and features. CES, on the other hand, offers value in specific situations, such as assessing service performance or a product’s ease of use. These two measure isolated cases at a specific touchpoint, but the feedback will directly contribute to the way you shape your product and guide the customer journey.

Although they usually offer information with short-term relevancy, the results of these surveys should not be underestimated.

For instance, if your customers have difficulties in using a specific product, a quick CES survey with a follow-up question will help identify the issues and solve them promptly. If your customers are dissatisfied with your service, you would want to know it at an early stage. Of course, there is always a possibility that your service isn’t what some users are looking for, so CSAT results will be ambiguous, but a follow-up question will help sort it out. Finally, if your customers aren’t happy with your offering at different stages of their journey, your NPS will be lower.

NPS deals with broader aspects, and hence its appeal. It generates relevant feedback that your business can use to improve consumers’ perception of your brand. NPS does that by asking customers or users a broad follow-up question: “How can we improve?”

Because the standard NPS question isn’t related to a specific experience (like CSAT or CES), respondents are free to talk about the specific things they like or dislike about your product or service.

There’s no forced relevance. Instead, customers are free to provide their honest feedback on any aspect of your product that upsets, frustrates, or disappoints them. They have control over what is and isn’t relevant, and – as a result – can provide meaningful feedback.

The end result is direct and actionable feedback your team can use to make real changes to your product in order to boost retention and increase the monthly recurring revenue.

In addition, NPS has a serious focus on long-term growth. We’ve previously written about why Net Promoter Score is the ultimate growth hacking metric. At its core, it’s simple — there’s no element as closely correlated with long-term, sustainable business growth as customer satisfaction.

Because NPS asks customers how likely they are to recommend your product/service to others, it gives you an accurate view not just of how customers see your product, but how likely they are to help it grow organically.

It also lets you stay on top of growth liabilities, such as the potential for negative publicity from Passives and Detractors that are disappointed or frustrated with your product. By acting quickly to close the feedback loop, it can even prevent you from losing customers.

NPS is the equivalent of taking a pair of blinders off. Not only is the data unbiased and accurate — it’s put into context as an aspect of your business’s growth, helping you to make smarter and more effective decisions.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you should disconsider the other metrics. For instance, CES is still a useful way to get direct information about how clients interact with your services and products, and what tweaks you need to make to streamline the experience. You could actually use CES alongside NPS  to measure consumer loyalty and referral marketing alongside how user-friendly your products/services are.

Quick Wins: How to Decide Which CX Metric to Use

• Choose NPS if you want to measure loyalty and track customer advocacy over time. It’s great for identifying trends, assessing overall brand perception and understanding your brand’s long-term relationship with customers.
• Choose CSAT if you need immediate feedback on specific transactions or interactions. It’s ideal for identifying areas that need quick fixes in order to improve individual touchpoints.
• Choose CES if your focus is on reducing friction and streamlining processes. It’s perfect for understanding how easy it is for customers to interact with your business.

While these metrics have different perspectives, they’re most powerful when used together. NPS gives you the big picture, CSAT dives into the details, and CES helps you optimize the journey – creating a comprehensive strategy for improving the customer experience.

The key to success is turning feedback into action. Whether it’s fine-tuning a process based on CES insights, resolving a service issue flagged by CSAT, or nurturing brand advocates identified through NPS, every step you take will drive meaningful results for your business.

Ready to Start Tracking Customer Satisfaction Metrics?

If you want to learn how your brand is perceived by your customers, how satisfied they are with your service and how simple it is to use, you’ll be happy to know it’s quite easy to get started. All you need to do is sign-up for a trial.

It’s extremely user-friendly, you can set up complex automation scenarios with just a few clicks, and fully customize your survey templates to make them better fit your brand’s identity. Don’t forget about the wording – include only the questions that matter, by tailoring them to your specific needs using Retently’s survey maker.

Additionally, you can set up triggers to automatically send out surveys whenever your customers perform a certain action, use segmentation to send targeted surveys, and even integrate numerous other services with Retently.

The post NPS, CSAT and CES – Customer Satisfaction Metrics to Track in 2025 appeared first on Retently CX.

Table of Contents

• 1. Survey Template Personalization
• 2. Email Deliverability
• 3. Survey Audience Tips
• 4. Survey Schedule Tips
• 5. Other Tips

This article provides a list of actionable tips to improve your email survey response rates. Although it was written with Net Promoter Score© in mind, it is applicable to any customer satisfaction – CSAT, CES, regular multiple-choice surveys, etc.

Like every metric that depends on user-submitted data, NPS© gets more accurate as the audience size and survey response rate grow.

If you’re not getting enough responses from your Net Promoter Score campaign, there’s a real risk of your data not offering a full picture of your business’s health and the ability to delight and retain customers.

The regular multi-question survey response rate is just over three percent — a slightly higher value than the benchmark click-through rates for marketing emails. NPS surveys score much over the norm, with an average survey response rate of 30 to 40% for an effective campaign.

Luckily, increasing your NPS response rate and getting more customer feedback (and more meaningful insights) from every delivered survey is surprisingly easy

Below, we’ve shared actionable tactics that you can easily implement with the right NPS software. They’re split into logical sections to cover various aspects of the NPS framework — from template personalization and survey deliverability to audience and schedule.

To jump to a specific section, use the quick links on the left.

Let’s get started!

1. Survey Template Personalization

Nowadays, clients want personalized service from the brands they buy from. Research shows that 79% of customers expect brands to get to know them on a deeper level and provide tailored offers and experiences. That means businesses need to incorporate personalization into every aspect of their client interaction — from email marketing and customer communications to the surveys they send.

1. Survey Branding

One of the first things you’d want to start with is customizing your survey template to fit your company’s brand image.

You may not consider your surveys as a central part of your marketing messaging, but they are to your customers. These emails represent your brand just as much as any other interaction. Personalized surveys must look and sound like your company, so clients don’t get inconsistent experiences when they receive your NPS email in their inboxes.

Add your business logo to assert the legitimacy of your survey, then adjust the colors and styling that represent your brand. Make sure it follows the same concept as your product and advertisements since most people associate a company with their branding colors and style.

2. A/B Test Survey Subject Lines

The average email open rate is 25 percent. This means that if your NPS email is average, only a quarter of your target audience will open and read it, with an even smaller number of respondents bothering to score and provide feedback. Increasing the conversion rate here can make a bigger difference in your bottom line than many other efforts.

The key to achieving a higher open rate — and, as a result, a higher response rate — is to test a variety of email subject lines.

By experimenting with survey subject lines (“Do you have a spare 30 seconds? Please help us improve your experience” versus “Complete our survey!”), you’ll stand out from the hundreds of generic emails that most people receive on a daily basis.

Discovering a good subject line takes time. Aim for a personal and engaging subject line without ever being ambiguous about the content of your email, and you’ll strike the perfect balance between enthusiastic customers and detailed, actionable survey data.

Recommended reading: Cold Email Subject LInes: 16 Best Practices +68 Examples

3. Address Your Customers by Name

You can make your surveys more personal by using custom variables.

Survey template variables allow you to include information about the customer, such as their name, email address, or any other custom properties you’ve stored about that client.

Add them to the survey email subject or body and address your customer by name, further mentioning their company.

Important, do not forget also to add fallbacks to variables in order to handle the situation where that particular contact doesn’t have a value in the field you’ve chosen.

At Retently, we did a study based on 100,000 surveys sent by our clients and concluded that survey B, in the image below, gets a 30% higher open rate than survey A.

4. Personalize Open-Ended Questions

Experiment with the standard NPS rating question and adjust the Open-ended question. Tailor it to particular customer groups – by subscription, lifecycle stage, industry, etc. – and customize the survey accordingly. The more targeted your survey templates are, the higher the response rate is.

So, simply learn more about your customers and make sure your messages are witty enough to give them a second thought about participating in your surveys.

Recommended reading: 20 Great NPS Survey Question and Response Templates

5. Send the Survey in Your Customers’ Language

Regardless of the channel you opt for sending your surveys, make sure to address your clients in their native language.

When you want to survey customers from different geographical areas, it’s important to change the language of the rating and the follow-up questions.

Since you aim to benefit from an increased response rate and get the most out of the customer feedback, you must make sure your message is at least understood by the ones approached. If you stick solely to the default options and ignore the fact that some of your clients require a customized NPS survey in a specific language, you risk not receiving any feedback whatsoever.

Business is international; SaaS companies serve customers from all around the world. Thus, the touchpoints must be customized accordingly.

6. Make Your Mobile Survey Template Look Great

In a world where mobile dominates, responsive design has become the standard. Approximately 68% of all online traffic is mobile, making it essential for your survey template to look great on mobile devices.

When you send an email survey or display it in your web application (in-app), you have no control over which devices your respondent will use. You have to make sure your NPS survey can be completed anytime and on any device.

Not sure if you’re doing it right? Run your survey template through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to see how responsive and mobile-friendly your survey is.

7. Fewer Survey Questions

Make your survey as simple as possible, as tempting as it might be to add other survey questions!

At Retently, we regularly received requests from our customers asking to add more survey questions but had to refuse them for quite a while.

If there’s one thing users hate, it’s an overly long survey. Did you know that survey response rates can drop by 30-50% after the initial two or three questions? Luckily, Net Promoter Score makes this a non-issue by only asking respondents a single question before requesting their qualitative feedback.

Customers will naturally back out of surveys that appear to require a lot of time. Show them how easy it is to complete them, and you’ll notice a measurable increase in your survey completion and response rates.

2. Email Deliverability

Poor email reputation directly impacts deliverability, slowing down your NPS campaigns and sending them to spam folders. An excellent sender reputation helps deliver more surveys to your customers’ inboxes without delay. In addition, many of the techniques for improving sender reputation will make NPS emails more engaging, increasing the open and click-through rates.

The best NPS tools will allow you to send the surveys from your own domain and even offer a dedicated email-sending IP address. As you are the only one sending emails over this IP, your sender reputation is shaped solely by your activity.

Recommended reading: Email Deliverability: Avoiding the Spam Folder

8. Send Your Surveys From a Real Person

One of the biggest NPS mistakes you can make is sending your survey from a generic email.

If you’ve ever received an email from an address like no-reply@acme.com, you’d know why — the more generic an email address seems, the more likely you are to trash it immediately.

Instead of using a generic email address, configure your NPS service to send the survey from an email belonging to a real person. This way, customers will see that you’re reaching out with a personal survey instead of automatically sending a generic email to a large audience.

The sender’s details are important because many people will not open an email if they don’t recognize who it’s from.

Of course, if they are being sent from the Boss or the account executive responsible for that specific customer group, the impact will be more visible. The user is more likely to open the email if they see a person’s name, ideally the head of the company (e.g., “John Doe, CEO @ Acme Inc”).

9. The Anita-Effect

Take into consideration the Anita-effect, which suggests that, within a male-dominated business, open rates are higher when the sender is a female.

Although the effect is not proven scientifically, getting a chance to test it on the grounds of your own surveys is definitely worth giving it a try. Probably many would argue the theory, defining it as sexist or based on particular gender stereotypes and attitudes, while others will look at it as another opportunity or attempt to increase the survey response rate and bring in more business.

10. Send the Survey From Your Company Domain

Most Net Promoter services send the surveys from their own domains or mask the sender’s email, which is still insufficient to provide a better email delivery rate.

Survey credibility is one of the first things respondents look at. By having your survey sent from your domain, respondents feel safer that their answers are received by the business they trust and that the collected information won’t be misused.

11. Setup SPF, DKIM, and DMARC Records

DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) and SPF (Sender Policy Framework) protocols allow email service providers (ESPs) like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, to filter incoming messages for spam or spoofed email addresses. The protocols verify the source of the incoming message, and if passed, the email will reach the intended recipients’ inboxes.

One quick method to improve your email delivery rates is to incorporate SPF and DKIM into your DNS settings. With this addition to your DNS entries, you’re telling recipients that you’ve authorized your NPS provider to send emails on your behalf. Without this change, your email is more likely to be marked as spam since it was addressed from your domain but sent from an IP address operated by your NPS service.

12. Send Your Surveys From a Dedicated IP Address

An IP address is a numerical label, a “digital label” assigned to a computer connected to the Internet.

A shared sender IP address is when multiple companies use the same IP to deliver their emails. They all share one IP address.

A dedicated IP allows you to digitally sign your emails and take full control of your sending reputation.

We recommend using a dedicated IP address for businesses doing high-volume sending. There are several advantages to opting for a dedicated IP, as the below:

• You are entirely in control of your IP’s reputation;
• Your emails will be signed with the domain or subdomain configured in your NPS service (SPF, DKIM and DMARC authentications), with no other 3rd party domains displayed;
• Certification services such as SenderScore Certified (now Validity), helping your survey emails to bypass the anti-spam filters, usually require a dedicated IP address;
• It facilitates being whitelisted with Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail.
• You should not send more than 1,000 surveys per day unless you have a dedicated infrastructure and IP addresses supporting that.

13. Clean Your Email List

The quality of your respondents’ list is decisive for the success of your survey. With an audience that is genuinely engaged with your business, having a much higher response rate is an undoubted assurance.

Maintain the quality of your clients’ list by regularly cleaning them with specialized services like Neverbounce or their free alternatives.

Do your best to avoid surveying people who are not expecting it. Take a closer look at your bounce reports, import email suppression lists into your NPS software and regularly unsubscribe inactive customers.

Recommended reading: 7 Email List Hygiene Best Practices for a Fresh and Clean List

3. Survey Audience Tips

No client is equal, and each NPS email must craft the audience carefully based on various factors, among which are the customer lifecycle stage, industry, position, etc.

Do not send all your customers the same NPS email!

14. Segment Customers; Don’t Survey Too Early

Timing is not just about asking the right questions; it’s also about segmenting users based on their current customer lifecycle stage and wisely triggering surveys to reach only the targeted segment.

For instance, if you ask newly signed-up users how they find the overall product experience, they’ll mostly ignore the survey and move on (because they just don’t know it yet!).

On the other hand, if you capture feedback from customers after their first product interaction (post-activation), chances are that a large percentage of users will happily engage and share their honest feedback.

In other words, you need to understand your customer’s positioning before you pop the survey, as there’s no point in gathering feedback from customers who have barely had a few interactions to form an opinion.

15. Prevent Them During a Call or Quarterly Business Review

To increase the number of responses, try notifying your customers about the forthcoming survey. Customer Success Managers can do that during their regular quarterly business review with the client.

Studies concluded that pre-notification can increase survey response rates by 4 to 29%. Thus, notifications should be sent or otherwise communicated to clients who are supposed to receive a survey, since research points to lower refusal rates and higher general response.

16. Do Not Survey Unhappy Customers

Nothing is more frustrating than providing feedback and feeling that it’s not being listened to. In business, there are always situations when you can’t solve a customer’s issue immediately – either due to a lack of resources or a bug that has been postponed for various reasons, etc.

If you know that a client is unhappy with something you can’t fix in the near future, don’t send them an NPS survey. Never ask for feedback if follow-up can’t be ensured. There is no point in sending a customer satisfaction survey with no action plan in mind. It will just bring frustration and waste the customer’s time. Temporarily unsubscribe these clients from your next NPS campaign.

17. Respect Customers’ Privacy

Even before GDPR – the regulation impacting the way companies store and use customer data – came into effect, businesses worldwide had to maintain practices that were respectful to the client’s data privacy.

People are more reluctant than ever to share personal information, so collect only the minimum amount of data needed. A clear privacy disclaimer in your NPS email footer will make people more likely to answer your customer satisfaction mails honestly. Thus, you will witness a positive effect on the average survey response rate.

Your privacy disclaimer, which must be part of your survey email, needs to include the following information:

• Collected personal data
• Use and disclosure of such personal data
• Contact information for particular clarifications or adjustments
• Ability to change or delete their personal information

4. Survey Schedule Tips

Here are some general rules that will help you do it right until you find a schedule that works best for you.

The first survey should be sent after your new customer has interacted with your business, approximately within the first 7 to 30 days – a sufficient time span for them to form an opinion about your product.

Quarterly or even bi-annual recurring surveys are the ones to follow. These time intervals seem to strike the best balance of regular feedback and convenience for customers, while still allowing you to monitor if customer satisfaction has changed during their lifecycle.

In the meantime, transactional surveys are the ones keeping a pulse on particular client interactions with your business. They are usually meant to assess the health and efficiency of specific processes (e.g., customer service, the purchasing process, online transactions, etc.).

18. Send Your Surveys at the Right Time

It is important to keep in mind that the time you send out your survey is one among many factors that determine the response rate of your survey.

According to Smart Insights, 23.63% of all email opens occur within the first hour of delivery, with the rate dropping to as low as 4.8% by the fourth hour and 0.63% by the 24th hour. Your NPS email is competing with people’s personal or business emails, as well as with lots of spam and marketing newsletters.

Therefore, it’s crucial to pick the right time to send your surveys and make sure your customers will answer them. Most marketers believe that emails sent between 8-10 am are the most likely to be opened and read by customers, with the 8 pm to midnight time slot being another top performer.

An important feature you’ll want and need in an NPS tool is the ability to schedule your surveys so that they reach your customers at the most effective time possible, based on their timezone – called smart-send or survey timewarp.

19. Do Not Over-Survey Your Audience

The opposite of surveying your customers once and then forgetting to engage them further is surveying them too often. By sending your survey every few weeks, you’re more likely to alienate your customers than generate any meaningful feedback. For instance, Delta Air Lines and Starwood Hotels ask their customers for feedback on every flight and every stay. Isn’t that too much?

Rather than asking customers for feedback at every touchpoint, set parameters on how often it makes sense for you to survey. For instance, at Retently, we engage our clients once per quarter. The goal is to get an NPS response every six months. So if a client responds, he is skipped in the next recurring campaign. If he doesn’t reply, we’ll go ahead and survey him next quarter.

Your survey frequency should be tailored to your customer interactions and business model without becoming an annoyance. Whether you’re running a subscription-based software service, an ecommerce marketplace, or a service-focused business, every customer journey is unique, but they all share a common goal: advocacy.

Note: Dig deeper into the ecommerce & retail buyer journey or SaaS customer journey to learn how to leverage CX surveys at key touchpoints. 

But what is the right number of users to survey in a particular NPS campaign? This would much depend on what you are after: a statistically significant NPS to benchmark and report on or running a continuous voice of the customer program.

Measuring your NPS: The easiest way is to survey enough customers to get an NPS that is statistically significant. The number of respondents you need to sample will depend on how many clients you have.

Voice of the Customer: Customer-centric organizations may opt to survey all customers, collecting feedback and closing the loop. There are two sampling strategies: all customers at once or over a period of time.

All-customers-at-once surveying is the classic campaign approach, sending a quarterly or bi-annual NPS emails to all customers. This is fine when you have a relatively small number of customers and need a quick reading on the score.

A more favored approach is surveying all customers over a period of time in order to keep a constant pulse on customer satisfaction. If you used to send a quarterly survey to 3,000 customers at once, you would rather opt for surveying 1/3 of the subscribers or 1,000 over a whole month. This way, all 3,000 would be surveyed each quarter.

In addition, you should be able to set up other scheduling rules, such as:

• Daily survey limit: a cap on the number of surveys you can send per day.
• Survey throttle: ensures the same person is not over-surveyed if present in multiple campaigns (relevant for companies running regular NPS campaigns, mixed with transactional surveys).

Whatever schedule you go for, one must respect the golden rule: do not over-survey your customers! Getting them annoyed will result in quite the opposite: your score will drop, even if you have the best product on the market.

Recommended reading: Feedback Fatigue: Stop Over-Surveying Your Customers

20. Do Not Send More Surveys Than You Can Process

Survey your respondents no more than you can digest the customer feedback, respond to your customers, and develop an action plan. The effort becomes pointless if you do not have enough time to analyze the customer responses, understand your customer experience, and set forth the next steps for improvement.

Inundated with data, you will find it impossible to read and respond to each customer in a timely manner. Make sure to have enough manpower to cope with the responses and that your team is able to act on that feedback efficiently.

Otherwise, automate the process, trigger different auto-reply messages for Promoters and Passives, and manually approach the Detractors. If your NPS software doesn’t support this function, you can integrate it using a service like Zapier.

5. Other Tips

Not everything fits nicely into neat little boxes (ahem, categories). BUT that doesn’t mean those things aren’t important!

So, here are a few miscellaneous tips that you shouldn’t ignore.

21. Consider Offering an Incentive for Respondents

As a general rule, incentives should be avoided for surveys and studies, since even a relatively small one can influence a respondent’s opinion and result in inaccurate data.

Yet, if your NPS response rate is low and other tactics don’t work, adding a small incentive for users to complete your survey can be an easy way to generate more feedback. A variety of data shows that incentives can increase survey response rates by 5 to 20 percent. These could be a discount, a giveaway, or an account credit.

Basically, the participant is more likely to get involved when the participation reward outweighs the cost. The average increase in response rates when offering incentives was 19.1 percent for monetary and 7.9 percent for non-monetary rewards. Incentives don’t have to be expensive to positively impact the amount of received feedback. Keep it small, and you will boost your response rate without hurting the quality of your data.

Recommended reading: How to Turn a High NPS Into Reviews and Referrals

22. Use a Survey Channel That Suits Your Audience

One of the biggest advantages of Net Promoter Score is its simplicity. Because NPS is a single-question survey, it’s easy to incorporate it into any communication channel, from email to a web application.

A simple way to improve your response rate is to survey customers using a channel that matches their habits:

• If you communicate with your customers via email, you’ll generally get the best response rate by emailing them your NPS survey;
• If your product is a SaaS service, you’ll get a higher response rate by running an in-app NPS campaign;
• If your product is a mobile app, you’ll normally get the highest response rate by incorporating your survey into the app, using a mobile SDK.

The channel you use to communicate with your customers greatly impacts your response rate. Choose the right one or combine them for a better result, and you’ll maximize your survey’s visibility and generate the highest possible response rate from your target audience.

Recommended reading: What is the Best Channel for Your Customer Surveys – Email, SMS or Pop-Up?

23. Send Survey Reminders

Some of your respondents, when initially receiving the survey, will not complete it right away and may forget about it later. To maximize the survey output, you can remind this portion of your audience about the need to complete the survey. It is recommended to send no more than two or three reminders to avoid irritating your customers. Also, make sure not to send reminders to those who’ve already completed the survey and leave an option to unsubscribe for those not interested in taking it.

Here’s an interesting fact: sending a friendly reminder to complete your survey between 3 to 7 days can increase the response rate by up to 14%.  And guess what? If you’re worried about customers getting annoyed and unsubscribing because of these reminders, don’t be. On average, only 0.5% of them will actually unsubscribe. The advantage of a 14% boost in responses is well worth the tiny cost of a 0.5% unsubscribe rate.

Reminders are not designed to convince users to complete the survey but are meant to give those who didn’t have time during the initial launch a second nudge to participate. This being the case, the effectiveness of your reminders will depend almost entirely on the survey schedule.

24. Process the Auto-Replies

We’ve all seen this kind of auto-replies when sending regular emails to our contacts. Have you ever wondered how your NPS service handles them?

Most do nothing. A great survey service will let you know and provide a few options:

• Unsubscribe a contact who changed his job. This will improve the quality of the respondents’ list and, therefore, the survey response rate;
• Resend the survey in a few days or weeks to still get it delivered, thus boosting deliverability.

25. Show Gratitude and Take Action

Act on the received feedback. Otherwise, there might be no next time and your surveys will get nothing but ignored.

Say thank you – it’s the cheapest and easiest tip. Show gratitude for customer time and for their feedback. Not only will it nurture a positive experience with your business, but it will also boost participation in future surveys. Here are a couple of nice outros:

• With your feedback, we’ll make your experience even better!
• Thanks for helping us out, you’re amazing!
• Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey.

Note: For more ideas, make sure to check out our article 25 Top “Thank You for Your Feedback” Responses for Improved Customer Relations.

Expressing gratitude to your customers for their time and efforts is a must since it shows the value of their feedback for you and encourages further fruitful interactions.

Recommended reading: Closing the Customer Feedback Loop: Turn Insights into Action

26. Choose the Right NPS Service and Automate Everything

Since NPS is a simple concept, it can be tempting to create and deliver your survey using a regular email client or send a basic NPS email with services like SurveyMonkey or Typeform. While doing so might save you a few dollars a month, it’s likely to cost you valuable time and resources that are better spent running your business.

A specialized service will provide a bunch of survey templates, useful reports, and automation capabilities. Also, advanced NPS products give the possibility to automatically send surveys based on specific customer touchpoints and even initiate conversations and close the feedback loop.

Recommended reading: Choose the Best NPS Software for Your Business

And that’s that!

Got any cool tips you would like us to add to the list? Leave us a comment and we’ll consider including them in this article!

The post 26 Actionable Tips to Improve Your Survey Response Rate appeared first on Retently CX.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• Market Leaders’ NPS Scores
• High Customer Retention and Growth
• What Do These Companies Have in Common?
• Want to Find Out What Your Own NPS Is?

Does your company retain its customers or take them for granted? Customer retention is one of the most important aspects of growing your company, yet it’s one that many overlook, focusing more on acquiring new customers. Given that, it’s 6 times more expensive to attract new customers than to keep existing ones – the ignorance shall turn costly.

The longer your company can retain its customers, the greater the value of each customer you acquire. The key to retaining customers is extremely simple: deliver value and provide a great experience that makes customers want to stick with you and recommend you to others. Of course, besides doing that, you also need to track your results.

Well, by far the most effective way to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty is via the Net Promoter Score. After all, brands with high customer retention are usually companies with a high NPS score.

Since the best way to realize the importance of something is to see it in action, we’re going to discuss what companies with the highest NPS score in 2024 (Apple, Starbucks, Netflix, Tesla, Airbnb, and Amazon) have in common that sets them apart from their competitors.

Key Takeaways

• Companies with high NPS know that keeping customers happy is smarter – and cheaper – than always chasing new ones. 
• These brands thrive by consistently delivering value through reliable, user-friendly products while providing personalized and seamless experiences across every customer touchpoint.
• By leveraging employee satisfaction, they deliver exceptional customer service, as engaged employees are more committed to creating experiences that drive loyalty and boost NPS scores.
• High NPS companies maintain accountability and credibility with users, making them a favored choice for repeat purchases.

Market Leaders’ NPS Scores

According to the data we gathered from various sources, these are the scores of the mentioned companies:

• Netflix’s NPS is 68, well above their competition;
• Starbucks’ NPS is a decent 77;
• Amazon’s NPS is a pretty high one at 62;
• Airbnb’s NPS is quite strong at 74;
• Tesla’s NPS is an astounding 96.

Given that an NPS score averages between -100 and 100, it’s clear the NPS scores of these top companies match their brands’ level of popularity.

So, what do those high scores translate into, specifically?

High Customer Retention and Growth

A high NPS score means a lot of customers are so happy with the brand that they are much more likely to stick around with it simply because they like the company alongside its products and its services.

Let’s see what level of customer retention each company has, in fact.

Amazon Customer Retention

Research has shown that 73% of people who try out Amazon Prime become paid members. What’s more, after the first year, 91% of the members renew their subscription for a second year, and 96% of those members pay for a third year as well.

Even today, Amazon is actually boasting amazing customer loyalty, at least according to Forbes; however, the company wasn’t quite ready to share exact customer numbers up until recently. Still, Amazon did state they signed up more new paid members in 2017 than any other year and in 2020 they mentioned having more than 200 million Prime members worldwide.

In 2024, Amazon reported impressive financial results, with total revenue climbing by 12% year-over-year in the US and 11% year-over-year in international markets.

Airbnb Customer Retention

The platform has grown very popular since it first launched, and Airbnb’s NPS score reflects that.

Although Airbnb’s revenue took a massive hit due to lockdowns throughout 2020, and did not reach the forecasted 60.8 million users by 2021, the audience steadily grew over the years.

According to statistics, Airbnb amounted to around 41.1 million users as of 2019, and the number was expected to grow to around 45.6 million by 2022 – and that’s only in the US! Worldwide, it’s estimated that Airbnb has around 150 million users.

Tesla Customer Retention

Tesla’s customer retention shows what an impact that huge NPS score has. Apparently, approximately 91% of Tesla owners said “they would buy again” from this brand. Tesla has actually been no #1 in the Annual Owner Satisfaction Survey over the years.

Tesla is therefore a leader in brand loyalty, being the only major automotive brand that showed an increase in sales of up to 21.4% in 2020 to date. At the same time, 25% of Tesla owners said they’re not even considering buying a different vehicle or doing business with another brand.

Although US demand for electric vehicles has been weaker than anticipated lately, the global market is on the rise, with electric cars projected to account for over 20% of worldwide sales in 2024. Therefore, Tesla’s outlook remains optimistic.

Netflix Customer Retention

Compared to its competitors, Netflix has an amazing retention rate. According to research, while a lot of Hulu (61%) and HBO Now (62%) subscribers pay for other streaming services, 80% of the Netflix subscribers don’t. In fact, the Hulu and HBO Now subscribers in question actually pay for Netflix on the side!

Plus, the average Netflix subscriber will stay with the company for 25 months. So, Netflix has enough time to earn back the money they spend on acquiring new customers.

As the pandemic was underway Netflix added a record of nearly 37 million additional customers in 2020. Although it was unlikely that they would be able to match the same result in the following years, Netflix still remained the leader of the streaming industry with over 221.8 million total paying subscribers by the end of 2021. As of the second quarter of 2024, Netflix reached over 277 million paid subscribers worldwide.

Starbucks Customer Retention

Consumers love Starbucks – even more since the company implemented its rewards program. Apparently, customer loyalty was so high that Starbucks’ program ended up holding more money than some banks.

Starbucks’ app is also used regularly by around 48% of app users, being the most popular amongst the restaurant loyalty rewards apps. It is also the second most-used mobile payment app (after Apple Pay) with 31.2 million users – showcasing the kind of customer loyalty the brand enjoys.

What Do These Companies Have in Common?

1. Simple, Reliable Services & Products

All these market giants have so many Promoters because those people love how easy their services/products are to use, and how reliable they are.

For example, the biggest initial selling point of Netflix was its simplicity – a great online entertainment service that saved you time. That trend continues to this day. Amazon has invested plenty of resources into making its sales, shipping, and return processes as simple and reliable as possible.

Tesla’s cars feature a very sleek, user-friendly design. Instead of multiple buttons, joysticks, and knobs, Tesla owners get to enjoy a large display screen that features easy-to-use on-screen touch controls.

Airbnb’s platform is fairly easy to use and get the hang of, and its mobile apps are simple to understand too. Since guests can message hosts before making a booking to ask questions and get to know them, it also makes the service quite reliable in the sense that people will know exactly who they will be doing business with.

As for Starbucks, they’re known for offering what some would call “the best coffee experience”, highlighting their reliability. Plus, their loyalty app lets people order ahead, meaning they can just place an order for a coffee and food, and pick it up on their way to work or home.

That’s not to say you need to do the exact same thing as these companies, but anything that makes your product a more convenient, reliable, and dependable choice will increase the value a customer gains from staying with you.

2. Fast, Straightforward, Quality Services

Offering reliable, easy-to-use services/products will do wonders for a company’s customer retention rate, but it won’t be enough to maintain it. The offering in question also needs to be fast and convenient, so that they save consumers time and effort.

Here are just some ways these companies achieve that goal:

They Make Customer Interactions with Their Brands Effortless

How? By collecting all the relevant info from customer complaints, support requests, and feedback, and sharing it across departments in their companies.

For instance, once you have registered a complaint with Amazon, you don’t have to keep repeating the problem over and over again. The records of customer complaints are persistently stored in Amazon’s centralized database, and can be accessed conveniently by any customer service executive.

Netflix makes it easy to call them through a toll-free number, and has an extensive “knowledge base” where users can usually find the solution they seek on their own. Their live chat is also known to be quite speedy, helpful, and easy to access since it’s clearly displayed on the website.

Tesla is well-known for providing a hassle-free, personalized customer experience, and they have even started allowing customers to escalate issues to a company executive. Tesla customer reps also communicate with other internal departments to improve the customer experience.

Something like this might not always increase the number of Promoters, but it goes a long way in reducing the outflow of Detractors, thereby improving your Net Promoter Score. It can also cause existing Promoters to act as your brand advocates, and potentially turn Passives into Promoters.

They Provide Single Sign-On Features

Netflix and Amazon are good examples – they let you access all their services using just one credential.

For instance, you can use your Amazon ID to place orders, access AWS services, or purchase books on Kindle. Similarly, you can purchase a single Netflix subscription and use the credentials to stream content from any of your devices.

But, wait… how does a single sign-on implementation improve NPS?

In rather simple terms, NPS is just a metric that evaluates the referability of your brand. The more referable your brand is, the better the NPS score.

By making users remember just one credential for accessing the entire ecosystem, you make the product experience simple and easy-to-use.

The counter-argument to using multiple login credentials has been that it makes the ecosystem secure and less susceptible to malicious attacks. But here’s the thing – should security come at the cost of convenience?

And even if you don’t consider that argument, think about this – if you have multiple login credentials for a single user, how are you going to accurately track customer behavior?

For example, if Amazon used different credentials to access different services, how would it accurately analyze brand advocacy? It’s perfectly possible for user X to love purchasing from Amazon but hate the Kindle experience. If he/she uses different login credentials to access these two services, there’s no way Amazon could accurately map the user’s behavior.

By associating a unique customer ID with every customer, you can accurately measure your NPS score and identify customer behavior (Promoters/Detractors/Passives). You can also personalize features, keep track of customer complaints, and deliver a consistent customer experience.

3. Amazing Customer Service

All these companies with high NPS scores offer a personalized, convenient, and satisfaction-oriented customer experience. People would argue they are some of the companies with the best customer service in the world.

Amazon employs large customer rep teams, makes it very easy for consumers to return items, and goes above and beyond to offer true customer satisfaction – whether it’s by letting people keep the items they accidentally ordered and shipping the right ones free of charge, or refunding small balances of 16 cents to customers when the price of an item they’ve previously ordered decreases.

When Netflix subscribers run into an issue, they know they will be talking with a real person on the other end – their employees are allowed to make their chats funnier and more engaging, which makes them more memorable for customers. Even the CEO would take calls every once in a while.

Starbucks focuses on making people feel like they belong to a community – even going as far as asking customers for ideas, and implementing some of them. For years, Starbucks had a dedicated platform, where customers could submit or vote for the most innovative ideas, which were then put forward to key decision makers. In the first 5 years, their customers generated more than 150,000 ideas and the company implemented 277 of those.

Starbucks baristas are also encouraged to remember customers’ names to make the whole experience feel more personal and create an ongoing customer relationship – a decent move, given that 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that addresses them by name.

They also do not forget about the service basics which every Starbucks’ employee must master to be able to actually exceed expectations, create moments of connection and deliver inspired experiences.

Tesla’s personnel is heavily focused on customer convenience, with some reps even paying customers a visit if they live too far away from a service center. Tesla’s sales reps (also called Product Specialists) are on the company’s payroll and don’t get sales commissions, meaning there is never an incentive for them to pressure buyers to make a purchase.

As for Airbnb, their customer support is really straightforward and well segmented (since they have 2 different users – hosts and guests). The company goes to great lengths to ensure users are happy – even offering a $1 million guarantee for hosts! Here are other examples showing how far Airbnb is willing to go to please their users.

But the main thing that is common across these brands’ customer service departments is this:

Quick, Responsive Omni-Channel Support

All these brands focus on responding as fast as possible to consumer demands and complaints, which is a smart move given that around 32% of consumers expect a response to a complaint or review they left online within 30 minutes.

Besides that, these companies acknowledge the importance of omni-channel support. After all, over 35% of consumers expect to be able to contact a customer rep on any channel. Also, businesses with omni-channel support have over 91% greater year-over-year customer retention rates.

Having support reps answer phones and emails is a nice start, but many customers are likely to contact you on social media, too.

4. Unique, Innovative Products and Offers

Most companies with high NPS scores stand out from their competition by offering consumers a unique value proposition. After all, when you become a unique option within your industry, you’re no longer “another” choice — you’re the only choice many people will consider.

Most of the brands we’re discussing in this article have an innovative value proposition. No online store even comes close to matching the scale of Amazon. There’s no streaming service with a larger range of content than Netflix (although Amazon’s competing service comes close).

Tesla established itself as a huge source of innovation in the automotive market, and Airbnb is the go-to option for city breaks for many people worldwide. While Airbnb did not pioneer a unique concept, they made their brand stand out through unique-looking, engaging website design and by popularizing the idea of guests sharing a place while the host was also there.

As for Starbucks, they certainly didn’t come up with the idea of selling coffee, but they innovated the way it’s sold. As early as 2008, Starbucks publicly announced they were changing the way they made coffee to offer the best possible experience. The company made its brand more appealing and unique by adopting and promoting the homely coffee-house vibe people saw in shows like “Friends.”

One way to achieve such results is to encourage your employees to think creatively. For instance, Netflix encourages employees to come up with ideas about how to improve the company’s services, form groups to discuss said ideas with other employees, and then ask other departments for input. Google is another good example (even though it’s not present in this article), as they allow engineers to spend 20% of their work week on projects that interest them.

Moreover, look for ideas everywhere. That includes listening to your customers and your team. If you are using Net Promoter Score surveys, ask customers how you could improve your product or service when asking for feedback.

Netflix is a good example of what can go wrong if you don’t take customer satisfaction surveys seriously. Long story short, the company’s CEO – Reed Hastings – wanted to change a subscription service that offered access to DVD rentals and unlimited on-demand streaming by splitting it into 2 different services, each priced separately.

That would result in a 60% price hike for customers. When asked how customers might react to this, Hastings said there’d be minor backlash. That was a baseless claim, as no customer satisfaction surveys were performed prior to the decision.

After introducing the price hike, Netflix lost around 800,000 subscribers, and its stock price dropped by approximately 77%. The company obviously recovered, but that mistake almost cost them their business.

We’ve previously written about the importance of NPS for Product Managers, Growth Hackers, and Marketing Managers. We’ve talked about its value for providing valuable customer feedback that gives you plenty of ideas for product innovation. Listen to their thoughts carefully and choose the ones that best fit your needs and goals.

5. High Customer Loyalty and Word of Mouth Advertising

If customer success is the process of orchestrating your customers toward their desired outcome, brand loyalty is the end-result.

Brand loyalty enables you to eliminate price sensitivity, beat the competition and mitigate exorbitant marketing expenses. After all, why spend money on advertising when you can turn your customer’s social capital into your economic capital?

And that’s no speculation. It seems that increasing customer retention by just 5% can boost your profits by up to 25-90%.

NPS is nothing but the measuring scale of customer success, with brand loyalty as the measurement unit. The reason these brands have high NPS scores is because they have succeeded in building up immense brand loyalty:

• Tesla has an almost cult-like following;
• Netflix has the most loyal customers;
• Amazon’s loyalty rates are so good they eat into competitors.

Companies with a high NPS score have a lot of customers who love their brands so much they are more than willing to recommend them to their friends and family.

As a result, companies like Amazon, Airbnb, and Tesla have people doing marketing for them at no extra cost – bringing in more potential customers who already view the brand in a positive light. After all, around 74% of consumers say that word-of-mouth advertising is a key influencer on their purchasing decisions.

How do these companies achieve something like this? Well, here are the main things they do:

They See Consistency as the Main Key

Once you’ve created a unique product experience that people want to talk about, the next step is to be consistent in your efforts. After all, it takes months to win a customer, but only seconds to lose one.

Amazon provides great customer experiences, regardless of the size and frequency of your order. It doesn’t matter whether you order from the app or through the website – the shopping experience stays consistent.

Netflix lets you stream your favorite movies or shows at the same speed, regardless of your device, the movie genre, the time, or location. Tesla has consistently raised the bar in terms of product innovation, and has always made sure all their customers benefit from car redesigns, like when they changed the seats for all Tesla cars free of charge to improve owners’ comfort levels.

When a company consistently delivers great customer experience, they infuse customer loyalty and motivation to talk about those experiences.

They Offer a Personalized Customer Experience

Don’t underestimate the power of a personalized experience for consumers. According to statistics, 78% of online consumers say that personally relevant content from brands increases their purchase intent, and personalization can reduce acquisition costs to as much as 50%.

Also, according to Genesys Global Survey, 38% of customers believe personalization plays a vital role in delivering happy customer experiences.

How do companies with high NPS scores handle this?

Well, Netflix uses the power of AI and machine learning analytics for personalized video recommendations. Tesla’s buying process is very personal for consumers, and Starbucks’ loyalty program is focused on offering personalized rewards and offers. Plus, we already mentioned that Starbucks employees are encouraged to address customers by name and tailor their interactions to the individual customer.

And Airbnb is already looking into adopting machine learning so that they can offer users a more personalized travel experience.

All in all, personalization makes customers feel that you’re delivering a one-to-one customer experience, thereby improving user engagement and customer satisfaction. And it’s only logical that these happy customers are more likely to recommend your brand than unhappy customers.

They Build Up Their Reputations

According to the paradox of choice, customers feel less anxious when they have fewer choices to make.

For example, you would rather order stuff from Amazon than take the risk of trying a new online store. It’s because Amazon has built up the reputation of being the #1 online marketplace. Tesla has built its reputation as the most reliable provider of electric cars, and Netflix has its reputation as the streaming platform with the biggest content variety.

Starbucks at its turn, has built a reputation as a coffee mega-chain by standing true to more than 40 years of heritage and infusing the human connection into its strategy; as well as for their ongoing commitment to give back to communities through community stores or by encouraging local volunteering. 

Reputation is about building customer trust so that they feel comfortable sharing information and transacting on your platform.

It’s the most vital ingredient for brand loyalty because customers are unlikely to recommend brands that have a bad reputation or are not trustworthy.

They Focus on Accountability

“Divide responsibility and nobody is responsible.” – Edward Deming

Amazon has managed to practically kill ‘brick-and-mortar’ businesses by instilling great accountability into their business model. For instance, you can order anything from Amazon, and return it within 15 days if you don’t like it. If that’s not enough, Amazon even refunds customers the price-difference on items they recently bought.

Airbnb, like we already mentioned, offers hosts a $1 million guarantee. When Netflix changes pricing plans, they give existing members a price guarantee for a certain time, letting them use the pricing plan they initially chose. And Starbucks goes as far as offering a 60-day guarantee for its products.

Basically, people buy from businesses that have high accountability and credibility, as it reduces buyers’ anxiety and makes them confident about making future purchases.

They Capitalize on Employee Satisfaction

“You can’t expect your employees to exceed the expectations of your customers if you don’t exceed your employee’s expectations of management.” – Howard Schultz, Chairman and CEO at Starbucks

There is little to no chance of amazing customer experiences without happy and proactive employees that will go above and beyond. Only engaged and motivated employees can be committed to a company’s success.

Looking into the numbers, highly engaged teams achieve a 10% increase in customer ratings and a 20% increase in sales. They are more productive, relate better with customer needs, and hence are better at engaging and retaining customers. Summed up, these capabilities result in 21% higher profitability. 

Starbucks understood in their early days the huge impact employee satisfaction has on the overall customer perception of a brand. With the creation of the Bean Stock in 1991, Starbucks  made their employees partners, giving them ownership in the company, sharing the company’s success and thus strengthening their relationships.

Moreover, Howard Schultz vowed to leave no one behind – commitment that stemmed from his childhood experiences. This instilled a vision to treat people like family who at their turn would pour their heart into making the company better.

This vision led Starbucks to create one of the most competitive benefits and compensation packages. They have communication systems in place like Ethics & Compliance Helpline – a line which is open for calls around the clock for partners to share their concerns anonymously. 

To let partners know they are deeply valued, Starbucks set up various recognition programs and awards such as Coffee Master Awards, Spirit of Starbucks or Bravo! awards for exceeding customer service standards or increasing sales.

According to Airbnb, a world where anyone can belong anywhere starts with a workplace where you feel welcome. Every effort in terms of employee satisfaction is thus directed towards creating amazing physical, emotional, intellectual, virtual and aspirational experiences for the Airbnb staff. 

The brand opted for a shift from Human Resources to Employee Experience, an approach pioneered by Mark Levy – former Global Head of Employee Experience at Airbnb – and his team. The impact of such an approach is reflected by great employee satisfaction levels, with 90% of Airbnb employees recommending the company as a great place to work at.

Amazon was ranked #2 on Forbes World’s Best Employers 2020 list. During the COVID crisis, on top of the $15 minimum wage and other benefits, they launched new initiatives like developing their COVID-19 testing capacity and launching a $25 million relief fund to support partners during the crisis.

Promoter companies continue to put all their effort into the team’s well-being, aware that happy employees create the best customer experiences. eNPS surveys are great for this purpose, since they allow you to keep a pulse on employee satisfaction at all times. Starbucks for example runs a Partner View survey yearly to learn more about employees’ concerns and their satisfaction with their job.

Want to Find Out What Your Own NPS Is?

Before you start making any policy and service/product changes, it’s best to find out roughly how many Detractors, Passives, and Promoters you have, so that you attempt adjustments that really matter to your customers.

You might think that finding out the NPS score of your company can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to be – if you use an automated platform like Retently. We make it very easy to send targeted NPS surveys to your customers by giving you the ability to segment them into different categories.

Also, Retently lets you customize your surveys to your heart’s content, set up automation scenarios, and survey customers through multiple channels – like email or in-app surveys. Best of all – you can integrate our platform with other services you use to automate the feedback-gathering process even further.

So, feel free to browse our plans and see which ones work best for you.

The post What Do Companies with High Net Promoter Score Have in Common? appeared first on Retently CX.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• Track Customer Transactions via Zapier
• How to Set Up a Transactional NPS Survey With Retently
• Ideal for SaaS and Ecommerce Businesses
• Efficient Transactional Scenarios

A great advantage of the Net Promoter System, aside from its simplicity and insightfulness, is that it works with any business models, such as B2C or B2B, and any business type and industry.

Originally, the NPS surveys were sent at standard intervals, such as every quarter, once every six months and so on. This surveying model is known as Relationship NPS, which measures how your customers’ satisfaction changes over time. This model would fit any company that wants to implement a basic Customer Success strategy.

But there are companies that are constantly changing their products or services and they need to track customer sentiment at a much higher frequency. Moreover, since they are fast-changing companies, each update within their product line is most likely to change customers’ attitudes towards them, therefore they needed to send surveys for each customer touch-point, such as new order placed, each payment made, free trial endings, etc. This model is called Transactional NPS, which basically means triggering a survey after each customer transaction and measuring how their satisfaction was influenced by it.

We have previously discussed the differences between Relationship and Transactional NPS, and today we’re going to explain how to set up a Transactional NPS campaign in Retently, through our native Zapier integration.

Key Takeaways

1. Retently’s Zapier integration automates surveys triggered by specific customer actions in other services, providing timely feedback after key transactions like purchases or subscription changes.
2. Retently connects with over 7,000 apps via Zapier, enabling custom survey triggers through services like Google Sheets, MailChimp, Salesforce, Shopify and Intercom.
3. Transactional NPS is perfect for SaaS and Ecommerce businesses, capturing feedback at crucial touchpoints like trial endings and order deliveries to enhance customer satisfaction.

Track Customer Transactions via Zapier

Zapier is a popular service that allows you to automate tasks between 7,000+ applications out there. Simply put, it is an intermediary automation service that tracks certain events or customer touchpoints in a web application and triggers a specific action in one or more other services based on them.

Our customers at Retently have been using the Zapier integration to automatically import new customers from services we do not provide native integrations for, send Transactional NPS surveys, export customer NPS scores and feedback and manage team tasks.

One of the main differences between Relationship and Transactional NPS is that the latter doesn’t limit the number of surveys you can send. So each time a customer performs a specific action, they will receive a survey, and it might happen a couple of times a day. That’s why we highly advise you to leverage Retently’s built-in throttling feature to handle repeat events.

Throttling allows you to control how often surveys are sent to the same customer. For example, if a customer has already received a survey in the last 30 days, you can choose to hold off on sending another one right away. This way, your feedback requests are timely and considerate.

Now, let’s see how Zapier and Retently integration can transform your NPS strategy:

Automate Transactional Surveys

Automating your transactional surveys with Zapier makes the whole feedback process smoother and easier. Instead of manually sending surveys after a sale, a project milestone, or a customer support interaction, Zapier does it for you.

This not only saves you time but also reduces human errors, ensuring you collect feedback consistently. Plus, with real-time automation, you can act on feedback right away, spot areas for improvement and let your team focus on more strategic initiatives.

Customize and Filter Your Surveys

Zapier gives you plenty of options to customize your Transactional NPS campaign. You can set up specific triggers that match your business goals, and use Zapier’s filters to make sure only the most relevant customers get surveyed. This way, you can target key touchpoints without cluttering your list with unnecessary contacts.

For example, instead of surveying everyone who triggers an event, you can filter it down to focus on those who matter most to your feedback strategy. This flexibility helps personalize your NPS campaigns and target interactions that are most likely to impact customer satisfaction.

Analyze Transactional NPS Data

Once the Transactional NPS surveys are sent and responses collected, analyzing the data is essential. Look for patterns in feedback related to specific transactions or customer touchpoints. By segmenting responses based on different triggers, you can pinpoint which interactions drive positive or negative feedback and prioritize improvements accordingly. This data-driven approach helps boost customer satisfaction by refining product offerings and service delivery.

Avoid Survey Fatigue

While Transactional NPS is great for regular feedback, too many surveys can overwhelm your customers. To prevent this, carefully map out the customer journey and strategically place your survey triggers at key touchpoints rather than every minor interaction.

Retently’s throttling feature is a big help here. It lets you control how often surveys go out to the same customer so they don’t get flooded with requests. You can also keep things fresh by offering small incentives or making the survey easy to complete. This keeps your feedback flowing without annoying your customers.

How to Set Up a Transactional NPS Survey With Retently

To get started go to your Zapier account and create a new Zap. In the Trigger section of your Zap, you will be asked to choose a service that will provide customer transaction data.

The next step is to choose a trigger. Each service will provide a different set of triggers, but the most common are:

• New customer/contact
• Updated customer information
• New order
• Unsubscribed customer

After you’ve set up your trigger, you will have to edit the Actions section of your Zap. Choose Retently as your action app and the action you need next is “Send an Email Survey”.

The next step will ask you to connect and authorize your Retently account.

Moving forward, you’ll need to choose a Retently survey campaign the customer will be surveyed in, and then map the customer data. This basically means selecting which data from the chosen trigger you want to import to Retently along with the customer.

After you’ve enabled your Zap, each time a customer performs the chosen trigger, he will be added to Retently and surveyed right away.

Ideal for SaaS and Ecommerce Businesses

The Transactional NPS model is a perfect fit for subscription-based services and online stores because their customers are constantly engaging with their products and each interaction has a certain level of influence on their satisfaction.

• SaaS: Send a survey to customers who have just ended their Free Trial and collect valuable feedback that will help you improve your product for newcomers. Another great scenario is to survey customers who chose to upgrade their subscription and learn what they like most about your service. Or on the contrary – you can send surveys to customers who downgraded their subscription or canceled it altogether to find out what was disappointing for them.
• Ecommerce: Send a survey each time a customer orders a new item, or after their order has been delivered to learn more about the quality of your services and especially how the order was handled by intermediary services or local divisions of your company. Send surveys to collect feedback after an order was canceled or funds were refunded. Another great idea is to survey a customer after the support ticket was closed and see how satisfied is he with your customer support team.

Efficient Transactional Scenarios

Retently offers native integrations with a variety of tools to help businesses automate and optimize their customer feedback collection. These integrations allow you to easily trigger surveys, gather feedback at key moments, and analyze customer satisfaction – all within the Retently platform. For example, you can connect:

• Salesforce to automatically send surveys when new leads, contacts, or opportunities are created.
• Shopify to trigger feedback requests based on customer actions such as new orders or abandoned carts.
• Intercom to collect feedback during customer interactions, like new conversations or user sign-ups.
• Zendesk to automate surveys following support ticket resolutions or property changes.
• Pipedrive to capture customer insights at critical points in your sales process, such as deal closures or stage changes.

However, while these built-in integrations are robust, some platforms, like Salesforce or Shopify, are so complex that covering every possible use case can be challenging. Zapier fills the gaps by connecting Retently with plenty of apps, allowing you to build custom workflows tailored to your exact requirements. 

Below we’ve listed some popular services and their triggers for an efficient Transactional NPS campaign.

NetSuite

NetSuite is a comprehensive cloud-based ERP platform that streamlines business processes across financials, operations and customer management. With Retently, you can automate key interactions within NetSuite to enhance your Transactional NPS campaigns:

• New Customer Record: Triggers a survey when a new customer is added to NetSuite.
• Sales Order Fulfilled: Sends a survey when a sales order is fulfilled, capturing feedback on the order process.
• Invoice Issued: Initiates a survey when an invoice is issued, allowing you to gauge customer satisfaction with the billing process.
• Customer Payment Received: Launches a survey when a payment is received, helping you understand the payment experience.
• Customer Record Updated: Sends a survey when a customer’s record is updated, ensuring ongoing satisfaction.
• Sales Order Created: Triggers a survey when a new sales order is created, capturing initial customer impressions.
• Customer Support Case Closed: Initiates a survey when a customer support case is closed, gathering feedback on the resolution.
• Quote Approved: Sends a survey when a quote is approved, assessing the sales process.

Try NetSuite – Retently Zap

Zoho

Zoho is a versatile suite of cloud-based applications that manage everything from CRM to finance, email, project management, and customer support. With Retently, you can automate key interactions within various Zoho apps to enhance your Transactional NPS campaigns. Here are examples of how each Zoho product can integrate with Retently:

Zoho Projects:

• Task Completed: Trigger a survey when a task in a project is marked as complete to gather feedback on project milestones.
• New Project Created: Send a survey when a new project is initiated to understand initial expectations and satisfaction.
• Milestone Achieved: Initiate a survey when a project milestone is reached to capture feedback on progress and client satisfaction.

Try Zoho Projects – Retently Zap

Zoho Mail:

• New Email Received: Trigger a survey when a specific email is received, such as a confirmation or inquiry email, to capture immediate feedback.
• Email Sent: Send a survey after sending an important communication to gauge the effectiveness of the message.
• New Contact Added: Initiate a survey when a new contact is added through email, helping assess first impressions.

Try Zoho Mail – Retently Zap

Zoho Connect:

• New Post in Channel: Send a survey when a new post is made in a specific Zoho Connect channel, collecting feedback on team communication.
• New Event Created: Trigger a survey when a new event is added, capturing expectations or post-event feedback.
• Task Assigned: Initiate a survey when a task is assigned in Zoho Connect, assessing clarity and communication.

Try Zoho Connect – Retently Zap

Zoho Creator:

• New Record Created: Trigger a survey when a new record is created in Zoho Creator, capturing feedback related to form submissions or data entries.
• Record Updated: Send a survey when an existing record is updated, gathering insights on changes or updates.
• Workflow Executed: Initiate a survey after a specific workflow is executed, measuring the effectiveness of the process.

Try Zoho Creator – Retently Zap

Zoho Show:

• Presentation Published: Send a survey when a presentation is published or shared, collecting feedback on the content and presentation quality.
• Slide Updated: Trigger a survey when a slide in a presentation is updated, ensuring satisfaction with revisions.
• New Collaboration Started: Initiate a survey when a new collaboration is started on a presentation to assess team feedback and involvement.

Try Zoho Show – Retently Zap

Zoho Desk:

• Ticket Closed: Trigger a survey when a support ticket is closed to gather feedback on the resolution process.
• Ticket Created: Send a survey when a new support ticket is created, assessing initial customer concerns.
• Customer Response Received: Initiate a survey when a customer responds to a ticket, capturing insights on their experience.

Try Zoho Desk – Retently Zap

Zoho Campaigns:

• Campaign Sent: Send a survey after an email campaign is sent to gather feedback on the campaign content.
• New Subscriber Added: Trigger a survey when a new subscriber joins a list, assessing their first impressions.
• Campaign Opened: Initiate a survey when a campaign email is opened to gather feedback on engagement and interest.

Try Zoho Campaigns – Retently Zap

Google Sheets

If all your customers are kept in a Google sheet rather than a cloud-based CRM service, then you can send surveys whenever they perform one of the following actions:

• New Spreadsheet Row: Triggered when a new row is added to the bottom of a spreadsheet.
• Updated Spreadsheet Row: Triggered when a new row is added or modified in a spreadsheet.

Try Google Sheets – Retently Zap

MailChimp

MailChimp is a great email marketing automation service and few of the basic triggers it offers will do a highly efficient Transactional NPS campaign. Here’s a list of the most common triggers:

• New Subscriber: Triggers when a new subscriber is added to a list.
• New Unsubscriber: Triggers when any current subscriber unsubscribes from a list.
• Updated Subscriber: Triggers when a subscriber is added or updated in a list.

Try MailChimp – Retently Zap

Eventbrite

Eventbrite is a platform that helps users create, manage, and sell tickets for events. By integrating Eventbrite with Retently, you can automate feedback collection at key stages of your event management process. Whether you’re organizing events or managing attendees, this integration ensures you capture valuable insights from participants and organizers alike. Here’s how you can leverage this integration:

• New Organizer Created: Send an NPS survey or add a contact when a new organizer is set up.
• Attendee Check-In: Trigger a survey when attendees check in to an event.
• New Order Placed: Send a survey when a ticket order is placed.
• New Attendee Registered: Automatically initiate a survey when a new attendee registers.
• New Event Created: Send a survey when a new event is launched.
• Attending a New Event: Trigger a survey when you purchase tickets for an upcoming event.

Try Eventbrite – Retently Zap

Jira

Jira, a widely used project management and issue-tracking tool, integrates seamlessly with Retently to automate customer feedback collection at critical points throughout your workflow. Here’s how you can use this integration:

• New Priority Set: Trigger a survey or add a contact when a new priority is established.
• New Issue via JQL: Send a survey or add a contact when a new issue matching JQL criteria is created.
• Project Created: Trigger a survey or add a contact when a new project is added.
• New Issue Type Added: Send a survey or add a contact when a new issue type is introduced.
• Issue Updated: Trigger a survey or add a contact when an issue is updated.
• New Issue Created: Send a survey or add a contact when a new issue is added to a selected project.

Try Jira – Retently Zap

Create Your First Transactional NPS Campaigns With Retently

You can start to set up and launch your first Transactional NPS campaign with Retently. Sign up today for a 7-days Free Trial and start collecting more insightful and relevant feedback.

The post Send Your Transactional Surveys Using Retently’s Zapier Integration appeared first on Retently CX.