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.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• What Is Product-Market Fit?
• Why Is Product-Market Fit so Important?
• How to Achieve Product-Market Fit
• How to Measure Product-Market Fit
• Is Finding Product-Market Fit Enough for Success?
• Find Out if You’ve Achieved Product-Market Fit

Achieving the much-desirable product-market fit is the ultimate goal of any SaaS business. After all, it means that a company has identified its business niche, has found a profitable market, and has a product that is well-liked by customers – the true Promoters. They don’t have to worry about going bust because what they sell is what the market needs.

Product-market fit (PMF) doesn’t happen overnight. It requires thorough research, analysis, planning, and time. And, as it was duly noted, if you have to ask yourself whether you achieved it, it’s most likely that you haven’t.

Before attempting to measure it, let’s first try to define what product-market fit is.

Key Takeaways

• Achieving product-market fit means your product resonates deeply with your target audience, leading to higher retention, customer satisfaction, and a foundation for scalable growth.
• The classic PMF survey question – “How would you feel if you could no longer use this product?” – is a powerful tool to measure customer dependency and uncover areas for improvement.
• If at least 40% of respondents say they would be “very disappointed” without your product, it’s a strong indicator that you’ve achieved product-market fit.
• PMF surveys go beyond the numbers – qualitative insights from open-ended questions help identify what users love, what’s missing, and what to fix to better meet their needs.
• Conduct PMF surveys at the right stage of your product lifecycle and ensure thoughtful survey design, targeting the right user segments to maximize the quality of insights.

What Is Product-Market Fit?

The term product-market fit is relatively recent, being coined by Marc Andreessen in 2007 in his guide for startups, “The only thing that matters”. The best definition was given by Marc Andreessen himself: 

Product-market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market. 

In other words, to be successful, a business has to find a suitable market, define its needs and fulfill them with its products or services. 

The market is the crucial factor here, though many would argue that a business starts with an idea, not with identifying a target audience. Actually, 35% of startups list “no market” as one of the top reasons for failure.  Even if you have a great product, it doesn’t matter if no one needs it. 

However, there may be a need in the market that the target audience is not yet aware of. But that’s until you demonstrate how your solution can benefit them. This way, you not only create a demand for your offering, but you are also directly addressing a previously unacknowledged need within your market niche.

Andreessen argues that it is easy to define whether a business achieved product-market fit. When the product is sold in large quantities, word-of-mouth works better than paid advertising, and when you can finally concentrate on growth instead of development, you know you’ve nailed it.

PMF behind the scenes

Let’s break it down with some examples:

• Slack: When Slack launched, it wasn’t just another communication tool. It nailed PMF by solving a real problem – making team communication faster, more organized, and dare we say, fun. Businesses flocked to it, and Slack grew into one of the most popular collaboration tools in the world.
• Airbnb: Airbnb’s early days were rough, but once they figured out how to connect travelers with affordable, unique stays while also helping hosts earn extra income, it was game over. They hit PMF, and the rest is history.
• Netflix: Remember when Netflix shifted from DVD rentals to streaming? They saw where the market was headed and built a product that perfectly matched customers’ desires for convenience and on-demand entertainment. The result? Industry leadership.

When you achieve PMF, your product doesn’t just fit into the market – it owns a space in your customers’ lives. That’s why PMF is so critical, especially for startups. It’s not just about having a great idea; it’s about creating something your audience truly values.

Why Is Product-Market Fit so Important?

Well, there are reasons beyond just steady high profits that come with achieving it.

The main advantage of adhering to the product-market fit strategy is that when building a product, the market for it is already there. Starting a business and knowing that an audience is ready to buy your product considerably eases sales and marketing efforts. Once achieved, it allows you to concentrate on growth and scale up operations. Without product-market fit, attempting to scale the business too early can lead to failure and wasted resources.

Product-market fit also allows companies to focus on the most promising market opportunities. When one has found the right market, it can devote its efforts to expanding in that market and developing new products that will appeal to the same audience. 

Another reason why product-market fit is essential is that it helps to create a loyal customer base. When a product meets the target market’s needs, customers are likelier to become advocates for the product. That can increase brand awareness, which is vital for the long-term success of any business.

Last but not least, product-market fit helps understand customers better. Even if your product gets enthusiastic reviews from customers and niche media, it doesn’t mean that you are there yet. This happened to the Daily app launched by Buffer. Everyone seemed to love it, but it took the team some time to realize that people simply didn’t use it after the initial stage. 

By analyzing the market consistently and gathering customer feedback, a company can stay informed about the needs of its target market and create a product that addresses those evolving needs in the long run. 

Moreover, systematic market analysis and research will help identify whether the product still solves the problem and whether the market still needs it.  

In short, PMF allows prioritizing tasks and concentrating efforts on the most critical aspects of your business at a specific stage of product development. 

How to Achieve Product-Market Fit

While finding product-market fit isn’t easy, there are some actionable steps businesses should take at the early stages. Dan Olsen, the author of The Lean Product Playbook, developed these as a guide to achieving product-market fit. These steps focus on the audience and the product itself.

1. Define the target audience

The first step any business should take is defining its target audience. Start with creating the so-called persona, a perfect customer. Analyze their background, who they are, what they do, and what their typical work day looks like. Understand their interests and everyday struggles, and when you do, you can see whether your product is relevant. 

2. Identify your audience’s needs

The next thing to do is identify the needs of your target audience, but not any needs. You have to find the pain points that existing options can’t adequately solve. Even if you created a great product, look at it from a customer’s perspective and try to understand whether it will deliver added value.

Analyzing competitors is crucial as it is most likely that your potential customers are now using their products/services to solve their issues. 

3. Test your value proposition

Your value proposition is the benefits of your product and how it will solve your audience’s existing pain points. Make a list of features your product has and compare it to your competitors to determine whether you can outperform them. Identify unique ideas or improvements to differentiate yourself and offer a better solution.  

4. Create a minimum viable product

A minimum viable product is the initial version of your product. It should have enough features for your customers to try and provide feedback on – used for further development. It’s the best way to find out whether customers will benefit from your product, and the cheapest – as there will be no need to invest big money in the project. 

First, outline the minimum number of features that will satisfy your customers’ needs and create a prototype. It will most likely have bugs, but don’t let this stop you. Send this prototype to your target audience and ask for feedback. Collect and analyze the customer data, check whether they encountered similar issues, and use it to improve your end product.  

5. Product-market fit pyramid

To structure the steps for achieving PMF, Dan Olsen came up with a 5-layer pyramid. He put the audience and its needs into the lower two levels and the product itself – into the top three layers. 

The target customer is the foundation of the pyramid: this is the market you will sell your product to. It is followed by the needs your product should solve. Businesses can only analyze and research these two layers, as they do not have control over them.

The product comes next, featuring a value proposition that addresses customer needs and includes the necessary features; followed by the user experience where customers test/use your product. 

It should be noted that if you skip any layer or don’t pay proper attention to all of them, the pyramid will collapse, and the desired product-market fit won’t be achieved. 

Hence, before jumping into product development, it’s important to first identify and answer the key questions about the target market, customer needs, and potential demand for the product. By understanding these factors, you can make sure that you are building and launching a product that truly meets customer expectations and has a viable market.

How to Measure Product-Market Fit

There are many metrics you should consider as, in many cases, you will be measuring satisfaction and engagement levels. You should look into churn rates and changes in the CLV (Customer Lifetime Value), but sending surveys is the quickest and easiest way available to any business. So far, the Product Market Fit, or PMF survey designed by Sean Ellis, serves the purpose best. So, what is a product-market fit survey?

1. PMF survey example  

While customer satisfaction surveys give you an idea about the customer’s attitude towards your product, it doesn’t really help with identifying how necessary that product is. Sean Ellis, an entrepreneur and investor, came up with a simple question to assess this need – which makes up the core of the product/market fit survey template.

It features the question: “How would you feel if you could no longer use our product?”. Respondents must choose from several alternatives: Very disappointed – Somewhat disappointed – Not disappointed (it really isn’t that useful) – N/A as I don’t use it anymore.

The PMF score is calculated by dividing the % of Promoters – customers who responded with “very disappointed” – by the total number of responses. Hence, if you have 40 Promoter responses and a total of 60 responses, your PMF score will be 60% (PMF score= 40 “very disappointed” responses/60 total responses * 100).

Ellis argues that if at least 40% of respondents would be very disappointed, then a company achieved product-market fit. Another requisite is sending the survey to customers who have used your product for some time and fully understand its features. And, it turns out that there is no need for big numbers to get to a result: in many cases, 40-50 responses are enough to get an idea about the need for a product. 

2. Open-ended Product-Market Fit survey questions

As in the case of customer satisfaction surveys, by itself, this question alone isn’t enough. You can always follow up with open-ended questions allowing respondents to expand on the details behind their answers. In case they wouldn’t be disappointed, you could ask them whether it is because they found a better alternative (and which alternative) or they simply don’t need your product. 

Still, there are three essential follow-up questions that must be addressed to get more relevant and actionable feedback, to be further used in development and growth strategies.  

As one of the product-market fit conditions is finding the right target audience, why not ask your customers about it? They have used your product for some time and could give you additional insights and show you the right direction. Ask them what type of people would benefit most from using your service/product and create a persona based on the responses. Describe their job, everyday life, and duties, their potential problems and expectations – this will be your perfect customer – and build your product for them. Though it may seem that this approach narrows your audience too much, in practice, it is not. 

It is now time to understand the strengths of your product. Ask your customers about the main benefit they get: speed, easy navigation, reliability, or customization options. Concentrate half of your efforts and time on improving that specific feature.

As customers know their needs better, ask them how you can improve your product. You will most likely receive multiple suggestions, but, you should carefully analyze them to ensure they suit your target audience. Instead of jumping into the creative fever and adding as many features as possible, narrow down the suggestions and choose the most relevant ones. This is where you should concentrate the other half of your efforts. 

Rahul Vohra used this approach to help his company Superhuman reach product-market fit. He sent his clients a short survey that included the question from Sean Ellis and these three additional questions to gain new insights into the perfect customer and the features they value most. 

By segmenting and analyzing responses, he improved the already existing beneficial features and created a product roadmap that included some of the most relevant customer suggestions. He then split the suggestions further into different categories depending on the cost and impact and concentrated his efforts on high-impact/low-cost options. 

But the most important thing Rahul Vohra did was proper segmentation of customers. Instead of trying to understand why customers wouldn’t be disappointed if they could no longer use Superhuman, he analyzed the responses and suggestions of the other two groups and split them further based on the created persona. This exercise helped him get a better understanding of the product-market fit score and customer needs and concentrate his efforts on truly relevant features. Considering that their score went from 22% to 58% in three quarters, the approach works. 

Is Finding Product-Market Fit Enough for Success?

Though the idea behind product-market fit seems easy to understand, not everyone is convinced: some entrepreneurs find faults in the system. Rand Fishkin, the founder of Sparktoro, is concerned that people who blindly follow the concept commit errors on their way.

For instance, he argues that switching from developing a product to scaling the business isn’t the best move as the product should keep evolving to correspond to customers’ demands. In addition, startups refuse to consider other aspects of making the product appealing, like pricing.

Another problem is that companies don’t optimize their marketing efforts before and after product-market fit and fail to build a client base. In search of investments, they work hard to achieve product-market fit, forgetting about other aspects. 

Another concern is that there is no reliable way of finding whether product-market fit has been achieved, thus meaning that the consequent actions based on ‘feeling’ may harm a startup instead of helping it to prosper. 

Fishkin suggests simultaneously working on product development and its promotion. If a startup has a small loyal client base, it is a good idea to search for similar customers, adjusting the product to suit their current and future needs. His idea is to split the customer base by size, brand awareness, and conversion and analyze it further to make the right decisions about when to develop the product and when and to whom to promote it. 

Find Out if You’ve Achieved Product-Market Fit

Having the correct product available in the right market at the appropriate time is the essence of product-market fit. Though achieving it requires considering many factors, measuring it is simpler by analyzing customer behavior and running customer surveys. Only by understanding your users will you be able to optimize your product to turn it into a must-have, as well as adjust your marketing efforts for a better reach-out. 

Actively engage with customers from the initial stages of developing a product idea. By gaining a clear perception of their needs and wants, you can create a value proposition that leverages the company’s unique strengths to create a meaningful competitive advantage. 

PMF and NPS surveys are the most suitable engagement methods, as they clearly show customers’ attitudes toward your product or service. Retently offers the possibility to send these types of surveys by customizing templates, including the questions, and integrating with many online services like Salesforce, Zapier, Slack, Hubspot, etc. In addition, when signing up for an account with Retently, you will get a 7-day trial to make sure it meets your requirements before committing.  

The post A Guide to Measuring Product-Market Fit with PMF Surveys 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

• Key Takeaways
• What is a Signature Survey?
• Best Practices for Creating Effective Email Signature Surveys
• Practical Use Cases for Email Signature Surveys

Imagine transforming every email you send into an instant feedback opportunity. That’s exactly what email signature surveys can do! Without adding any extra steps or disrupting your recipient’s flow, you can gather real-time insights with every interaction. As email continues to be a major touchpoint for customer engagement – set to grow into a $17.9 billion market by 2027 – this simple addition to your signature could be your key to unlocking deeper insights into customer sentiment.

Whether you’re gauging customer satisfaction, gathering feedback on recent interactions, or spotting areas for improvement, embedding a quick survey in your email signature offers a non-intrusive way to collect continuous feedback. This smart, efficient tool transforms your everyday communication into a strategic data collection engine that fuels CX improvements and business growth.

Key Takeaways

• Email signature surveys enable effortless, real-time feedback gathering directly from daily communications, turning each email into a valuable data collection opportunity.
• With brief, user-friendly formats like rating scales or emoji feedback, signature surveys encourage higher participation without overwhelming recipients.
• By embedding surveys in email signatures, using clear CTAs, keeping questions to the point, and optimizing for mobile, businesses can effortlessly streamline feedback collection.
• Signature surveys allow businesses to track key CX metrics in real time, driving timely, data-driven decisions that improve customer satisfaction.

What is a Signature Survey?

An email signature survey is exactly what it sounds like – it’s a short survey embedded in the email signature, the little section at the bottom of an email where you normally find contact details or company info. Instead of just a name and a job title, an email signature survey adds a short question or rating system, inviting recipients to quickly share feedback with just a click.

Think of it as a mini-poll tucked away where people naturally look for info, making it an easy way to gather insights without disrupting the flow of communication. For example, after a customer service interaction, the support rep’s signature might include a simple “How did I do?” rating with clickable smiley faces. 

So, why are they so efficient? Think about it: customer service teams, sales representatives, and support agents send hundreds – if not thousands – of emails each week. Every single one of those emails becomes a chance to gather real-time feedback, directly from the people who matter most – your customers. Whether it’s asking how a service experience went or getting a quick rating on a product, feedback can be captured while the interaction is still fresh in the customer’s mind. 

Thus, in-signature surveys provide a low-effort yet high-impact method for businesses to stay attuned to customer needs and optimize service quality.

Benefits of Using Email Signature Surveys

Email signature surveys offer several unique benefits compared to traditional survey methods. Let’s explore the key reasons why they lead to higher engagement, integrate seamlessly into workflows and collect feedback without being intrusive:

1. Higher Engagement

One of the biggest advantages of email signature surveys is their ability to drive higher engagement compared to traditional surveys. Think about it – most people don’t like receiving extra emails, especially if it’s yet another request to “take a few minutes” to fill out a survey. Even with the best of intentions, survey emails might get ignored or lost in crowded inboxes.

Email signature surveys, on the other hand, are naturally embedded into the flow of communication. Since they’re already part of an email the recipient is reading, there’s no extra step involved in opening a separate message. It’s a subtle, convenient way to ask for feedback without being pushy. As a result, people are much more likely to engage because it doesn’t feel like an additional task. They’re already in the email, so why not just click a star or two?

2. Seamless Integration

Email signature surveys are seamlessly integrated into the emails you’re already sending out. Whether you’re communicating with customers, partners, or colleagues, the survey is automatically included in your signature, so you don’t have to think about it. The best part? It doesn’t require recipients to jump through extra hoops. They’re already reading your email, and the survey is right there – making it easy and natural to respond.

3. Non-Intrusive Feedback Collection

When it comes to collecting feedback, one of the challenges is doing so in a way that doesn’t feel invasive. No one likes to be overwhelmed with requests, especially when they’re in the middle of a busy workday or trying to get things done. Email signature surveys solve this issue – they offer non-intrusive feedback collection.

Because the survey is discreetly placed in the email signature, it doesn’t disrupt the flow of communication. The recipient can choose to engage with it at their own pace, without feeling pressured. Whether they want to click right away or come back later, the option is always there without being annoying.

For the sender, it’s a win-win: you’re gathering feedback without bothering your audience. The subtlety of an email signature survey makes it more likely that people will engage when they’re ready, leading to more genuine and thoughtful responses.

4. Quick Feedback Loop

Another key benefit is the speed of feedback collection. Since the survey is already embedded in emails being sent regularly, businesses can gather insights in real time. Whether you’re seeking feedback on a recent customer service interaction or gauging interest after a product launch, email signature surveys ensure that you can capture insights without delay. This accelerated feedback loop allows businesses to act quickly on the data, making necessary adjustments and improvements to enhance customer satisfaction.

5. Ongoing Monitoring and Data Collection

Since email signature surveys are automatically included in the email, they provide a reliable way for businesses to continuously monitor customer satisfaction. Through simple star ratings, NPS scores, or brief open-ended questions, businesses can keep a consistent pulse on how their customers are feeling. This ongoing feedback loop provides a steady flow of data that can help businesses identify trends, track changes in sentiment, and make data-driven decisions over time.

Email Signature Survey Types

The type of email signature survey you choose – whether an embedded question, clickable link, or feedback button – can make all the difference in driving customer engagement and feedback quality. Each offers a unique way to gather valuable insights from everyday emails without disrupting the natural flow of communication. Let’s explore the various types and how they can enhance your feedback collection strategy:

In-Email Feedback Collection

In-email feedback collection allows customers to provide their input directly within the email, streamlining the process and encouraging higher participation. Here are several formats to keep in mind:

• 1-10 Scale Ratings: A numerical scale embedded in your email signature gives customers the option to rate their satisfaction with a simple click. This is particularly useful for tracking Net Promoter Score (NPS), as it allows you to capture a precise measure of customer loyalty at a glance. Customers appreciate the simplicity, and businesses benefit from actionable insights with minimal effort​.
• Emoji Feedback: Using familiar emojis – such as happy, neutral, or sad faces – recipients can quickly express their sentiments. The interactive and visually engaging format makes this an ideal option for collecting immediate feedback in a fun, intuitive way. It’s great for measuring general satisfaction or customer effort, and the emotional context is easy for customers to relate to.
• Star Rating Systems: Similar to emoji feedback, star ratings (usually a 1-5 scale) allow recipients to evaluate their experience instantly. This system is commonly used for assessing overall satisfaction in a clear and universally understood format, making it easy to spot trends in customer feedback.
• Open-Ended Question: For businesses seeking more in-depth insights, embedding an open-ended question in the email signature invites customers to share their thoughts in more detail. While this requires a bit more effort from the respondent, it often results in richer, more qualitative data, providing deeper context behind the feedback.

Click-to-Respond Feedback Collection

Click-to-respond formats make the feedback process equally simple but direct recipients to an external survey page. This approach is perfect for when you need more comprehensive feedback but still want to maintain ease and engagement. Two common formats make this approach effective:

• Clickable Survey Link: Embedding a simple text link, such as “Share Your Feedback” or “Tell Us How We Did” within your email signature provides a smooth transition to an external survey form. This method works well when you want to ask multiple questions but don’t want to overwhelm the recipient within the email itself. Customers can respond at their convenience, making it more flexible.
• Feedback Button: A more visually striking option, feedback buttons (e.g., “Give Feedback” or “Rate Your Experience“) stand out in the email signature and encourage clicks. The bold, clear call-to-action grabs attention and increases the likelihood that recipients will engage. Feedback buttons can direct customers to more comprehensive surveys, offering flexibility in terms of the depth of feedback collected.

Why These Formats Work

Each of these formats is designed to maximize convenience for recipients while ensuring businesses gather meaningful insights. In-email feedback collection is perfect for gathering quick, low-effort responses directly within the email, making it easier for recipients to participate without interrupting their workflow. These methods, like star ratings or emoji feedback, provide instant insights into customer sentiment, allowing businesses to monitor key customer satisfaction metrics in real time.

Click-to-respond surveys offer more flexibility for customers who prefer to provide detailed feedback on their own time. By directing recipients to a dedicated survey page, businesses can ask more questions without compromising the flow of everyday communication.

Using a combination of these formats ensures that businesses can capture a broad range of customer feedback, from quick satisfaction checks to detailed insights on customer experience. This balance leads to better engagement, more actionable data, and ultimately, improved customer satisfaction.

Best Practices for Creating Effective Email Signature Surveys

Creating an email signature survey might seem simple, but there are a few best practices to follow if you want it to be truly effective. Let’s break it down into four key areas: design, personalization, frequency, and the all-important call-to-action.

Design & Simplicity

When it comes to designing your email signature survey, simplicity is key. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for recipients to engage with the survey, so avoid overwhelming them with too many options or complicated designs.

• Short & Sweet: Stick to one or two questions max. The fewer clicks required, the better. You don’t want your survey to feel like a chore – just a quick, easy task that takes seconds to complete. What’s more, studies show that surveys longer than 5 minutes experience a 17% drop in response rates, with the decline increasing sharply beyond 10 minutes. Something like “Rate your experience” followed by a few clickable stars or smiley faces is a great example of keeping it simple. 
• Visually Appealing: Use clean, minimalistic design elements to make the survey stand out but not overpower the email. A small button or link that says “Rate Us” with clear icons or stars is perfect. Avoid heavy graphics or cluttered designs that could distract from the email’s main message.
• Easy to find. Make sure the survey is visible within the signature area, but don’t let it take over the entire email. It should feel like a natural extension of the email signature, not the main focus.
• Mobile-Optimized: Make sure the survey is mobile-friendly. A lot of people check emails on their phones, so your survey needs to be easily accessible and clickable on smaller screens.

Personalization

People are more likely to engage with a survey if it feels relevant to them. Personalization can go a long way in increasing response rates. Think about it: a generic “How did we do?” is fine, but tailoring the survey to the recipient can boost engagement and make the feedback more meaningful.

• Context Matters: If you’re emailing a customer after a support interaction, ask a question related to that specific interaction instead of a generic request: “How satisfied are you with the support you received today?”. This makes the survey feel more personal and relevant to the recipient’s experience.
• Recipient-Specific Surveys: Some tools allow you to dynamically insert personalized questions or adjust the tone depending on the recipient. This adds a level of relevance that makes people more likely to provide feedback.
• Balanced Tone for Engagement: Strike the right balance between professionalism and approachability in your email signature surveys. Use a friendly, engaging tone instead of overly formal language. This invites feedback in a way that feels welcoming, not demanding while maintaining your brand’s credibility.

Frequency

To avoid overwhelming your audience with too many surveys, it’s important to think about how often you rotate or change your survey questions.

• Avoid survey fatigue: To keep things fresh, rotate or change the questions every few weeks or after key milestones. This prevents recipients from tuning out the survey altogether.
• Tailor Questions to Current Interactions: For example, if you’re launching a new product or service, you might want to ask for feedback specifically about that for a limited time.
• Analyze Trends, Not Every Response: Since you’re collecting feedback continuously, focus on overall trends rather than trying to get responses from the same people over and over again. Once someone has responded, give them a break!
• Close the Customer Feedback Loop: Feedback only becomes valuable when it drives tangible improvements in customer service, product offerings, or business processes. Without actionable outcomes, the survey loses its effectiveness and purpose.

Clear Call-to-Action

The call-to-action is the final nudge that gets people to actually participate in your survey. Without a clear and compelling CTA, even the best-designed survey might go unnoticed. Here’s how to create an effective one:

• Be Direct and Clear: Use simple, action-oriented language like “Rate Us” or “Share Your Feedback”. Make it obvious what you want the recipient to do.
• Create a Sense of Value: Give the recipient a reason to click. Phrases like “Help Us Improve!”, “We Value Your Opinion!” or “Your Opinion Makes a Difference” make the CTA feel more personal and important.
• Make It Stand Out: Visually, your CTA should be easy to spot but not overwhelming. Consider using a button or a different color to draw attention to the survey without it overpowering the rest of your email.

Before launching your survey, test it with a small group for clarity and functionality. Once live, monitor key metrics and continuously refine the survey to maximize participation and response quality. It’s all about making it easy, relevant, and engaging for your audience.

Practical Use Cases for Email Signature Surveys

Email signature surveys can be used in a variety of contexts, from customer-facing interactions to internal communications. Here are some practical use cases that show how different teams and departments can use them to gather valuable feedback:

1. Customer Support

One of the most popular uses for email signature surveys is in customer support. After resolving a customer’s issue or answering a question, gathering feedback through a quick survey embedded in the signature is an effortless way to assess how the interaction went.

• Why It Works: After a support interaction, customers are more likely to provide immediate feedback because their experience is fresh in their minds. Including a simple survey – such as a star rating or a thumbs-up/thumbs-down option – in every support email captures this feedback in real-time without burdening the customer.
• What You Gain: Feedback helps you measure customer satisfaction (often through a CSAT score) and identify trends in how customers feel about your support team. This information can guide training for support agents or highlight areas where your customer service may need improvement. Plus, spotting negative feedback quickly allows you to follow up with unhappy customers before issues escalate.

2. Sales

Every email exchange with a prospect is a chance to learn about how they perceive your product, service, or sales process. An email signature survey allows leads to share their thoughts on the experience without feeling like they’re being pushed to do so:

• Why It Works: After a meeting, product demo, or email exchange, embedding a brief survey in the signature can provide valuable insights. For example, you could ask questions like “How helpful was our demo?” or “Are you ready to move forward?”. These can help you gauge the lead’s interest level and identify any sticking points.
• What You Gain: By using email signature surveys in sales, you can gather feedback on your sales process, product presentations, and overall customer sentiment. This insight can help sales teams refine their approach, understand where prospects are in the decision-making process, and improve their chances of closing deals.

3. Post-Purchase Feedback

After a customer makes a purchase, follow-up emails provide a perfect opportunity for an in-signature survey. This allows you to gather feedback on their buying experience and product satisfaction without sending an additional survey email.

• Why It Works: By embedding a survey directly in a post-purchase email, customers can easily share their experience while they’re still engaged with your brand. This feedback helps you identify any pain points in the purchasing process and improve future transactions.
• What You Gain: Insights into the customer’s buying journey provide a clearer understanding of what’s working and what’s not, helping you refine the process and boost overall satisfaction​.

4. Onboarding

Onboarding emails to new customers or clients are another excellent touchpoint for email signature surveys. Adding a brief survey to these emails helps assess how smooth the onboarding process has been.

• Why It Works: Including a quick survey within onboarding emails makes it easy for customers to share feedback right away. This feedback is crucial to addressing any issues before they escalate, ensuring the customer feels supported from the start.
• What You Gain: Using these survey responses, you can identify gaps in the onboarding process, make necessary adjustments, and ensure new customers have a positive, streamlined experience.

5. Service Renewals or Subscription Management

For subscription-based businesses, renewal emails offer a natural touchpoint to include an email signature survey. This allows you to gauge customer satisfaction and identify any potential issues before they decide to renew or cancel.

• Why It Works: A in-signature survey in renewal emails enables customers to share their satisfaction with the service, providing early warning signals if they are considering cancellation. This helps you proactively address their concerns.
• What You Gain: Feedback from these surveys helps improve service offerings and increase renewal rates by ensuring customer satisfaction is maintained.

6. Post-Event Feedback (Conferences, Webinars, Workshops)

After hosting events like webinars or conferences, follow-up emails are commonly sent to attendees. Embedding an email signature survey in these emails allows you to gather feedback on the event’s content and organization seamlessly.

• Why It Works: Surveys included directly in post-event emails allow participants to provide immediate, fresh feedback. This feedback helps assess how well the event met their expectations and highlights areas for improvement.
• What You Gain: Using this real-time feedback, you can enhance future events, ensuring they are more engaging, valuable, and tailored to your audience’s needs.

7. Internal Employee Feedback

Email signature surveys aren’t just for customers – they can also be used internally to gather employee feedback. Whether you’re communicating across departments or following up on a project, including a survey in your email signature can help foster transparency and continuous improvement within the team.

• Why It Works: In a busy workplace, employees may not always have time to sit down for formal feedback sessions. An email signature survey makes it easy for team members to quickly share feedback, whether it’s about a recent meeting, project collaboration, or internal processes. These surveys can be also used for peer reviews or to gauge satisfaction with internal services like IT support or HR interactions.
• What You Gain: This method is particularly useful for measuring employee satisfaction, gathering input on processes, or even checking in on team morale. For example, after a company-wide announcement or internal project update, you could ask something as simple as, “How clear was the communication in this update?”. Additionally, these surveys create an open line of communication where employees feel heard, and management can respond to concerns in real time. This helps build a positive workplace culture and ensures that internal processes are running smoothly.

In-Signature Surveys vs. Follow-Up Surveys

When it comes to gathering customer feedback, email signature surveys and follow-up surveys serve different purposes based on timing, effort, and the type of insights required. 

Email signature surveys are embedded in ongoing communication, allowing for immediate feedback while the interaction is still fresh in the customer’s mind. For example, a customer can rate their experience directly in a support email, capturing their reaction in real-time. In contrast, follow-up surveys are sent after the entire interaction has concluded, often days later, offering more reflective feedback but risking delays.

In terms of response rates and effort, email signature surveys have the advantage of being low-effort for customers, as they are part of an email they are already reading. This convenience often leads to higher response rates. Meanwhile, follow-up surveys typically arrive as separate emails, which can feel like an extra task, resulting in lower participation.

For use cases, email signature surveys are ideal for gathering real-time feedback on specific touchpoints, such as after a product demo or support interaction. On the other hand, follow-up surveys are better suited for in-depth, comprehensive feedback, particularly when assessing the overall customer experience or measuring long-term satisfaction.

Therefore, choose email signature surveys for quick, seamless feedback collection, and opt for follow-up surveys when more detailed, reflective insights are needed after the full interaction has been completed.

Wrapping Up

Email signature surveys are an incredibly simple yet efficient way to gather continuous feedback from customers, leads, and even internal teams. By embedding feedback options directly into your email signature, you can tap into valuable insights without the hassle of sending separate survey emails or disrupting your recipients’ workflow. These surveys stand out for their non-intrusive nature, seamlessly integrating into everyday communication.

With customer experience and feedback as key drivers of success, email signature surveys are a low-effort, high-reward strategy. If you’re not already using them, now is the perfect time to start. You’ll be gathering feedback in a way that’s effortless for both you and your audience, creating opportunities to learn, improve, and grow – one email at a time.

So, why wait? Try Retently today and transform your everyday emails into a powerful feedback collection tool.

The post Driving Customer Engagement with Email Signature Surveys appeared first on Retently CX.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• Capturing Key Insights: How We Use Retently Across Customer Lifecycle Stages
• Crafting the Perfect Survey: Retently’s Approach and Tips for Success
• Integrations: Streamlining Processes and Data Flows
• Tracking CX  Trends: Unlocking Insights Across Customer Segments
• Turning Feedback into Success With Retently

At Retently, we don’t just talk about the power of customer feedback—we live it. As a leader in customer satisfaction tools, we provide businesses with the means to gather, analyze, and act on critical insights that drive loyalty and growth. Through our CX surveys and advanced feedback analytics, we enable businesses to truly understand their customers and turn that understanding into action.

But here’s the catch—we don’t just help other companies thrive; we rely on our own platform to fuel our success. That’s right, we use Retently daily to sharpen our approach, refine our services, and meet the needs of our clients. 

In this article, we’re pulling back the curtain to show you how we leverage our own product to improve and stay connected with our clients. From perfectly timed surveys to actionable insights, you’ll see how Retently drives our growth—and how it can do the same for you.

Key Takeaways

• We use post-trial and recurring NPS feedback to consistently refine our product and quickly adapt to customer needs.
• Helpdesk CSAT surveys provide insights into support performance and allow us to make adjustments that enhance customer satisfaction after every interaction.
• CES surveys highlight how easily new users adapt to our product, enabling us to smooth out onboarding challenges.
• PMF surveys guide our roadmap and help identify our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), focusing our efforts on must-have features.
• By analyzing trends across customer segments, we adjust our offerings to stay relevant and meet specific customer needs.

Capturing Key Insights: How We Use Retently Across Customer Lifecycle Stages

Using CX surveys effectively goes beyond a one-time effort—it’s about collecting and acting on feedback throughout the customer journey. We’ve fine-tuned our process by strategically deploying surveys after key events, like the end of a free trial or after cancellation. By personalizing questions and automating survey delivery, we gather detailed insights that keep us in sync with our customers’ needs.

Some of these surveys are core to our approach, actively triggered at specific touchpoints or on a recurring schedule to monitor the customer experience. Others are experiments we’ve explored to capture targeted data. No matter which method you choose for your specific use case, know that it’s been thoroughly tested and will deliver the actionable insights you’re after.

Now, let’s explore the types of surveys we’ve leveraged over time to make informed decisions and strengthen customer relationships.

Post-Demo Call Survey: Turning First Impressions into Actionable Insights

The demo call is often the first live interaction a potential customer has with our product, making it a critical touchpoint in the customer journey. To capitalize on this moment, we deploy a Post-Demo Call Survey to capture immediate feedback from prospects while their experience is still fresh. This survey allows us to understand how well the demo resonated with them, whether it effectively showcased the value of our product or addressed their specific needs.

The insights gathered from this survey are invaluable for fine-tuning our sales approach. For example, if feedback suggests that certain features were unclear or that the demo didn’t fully meet expectations, we can adjust our presentation to better align with customer interests. This feedback loop ensures that each demo becomes more targeted and effective, increasing our chances of converting leads into paying customers.

Beyond refining our demo process, the Post-Demo Call Survey also helps us spot potential customer concerns early on. If a prospect expresses hesitation or points out areas where they feel the product falls short, we can immediately address these issues with follow-up communication or additional resources. This proactive approach shows that we’re committed to understanding and meeting their needs right from the start.

Post-Trial NPS: Unlocking the Why Behind Customer Decisions

Every free trial tells a story, whether it ends in a conversion or not. For us, the real value lies in understanding the factors behind both outcomes. After the trial ends, we send a post-trial NPS survey to ask what drives customer decisions. Did our product meet their needs, or did something fall short? This survey helps us dig into the details.

Timing is everything. We’ve mastered sending the survey at just the right moment—after the trial ends but before users disengage. This ensures that their feedback is both reflective and relevant. However, gathering feedback is only the first step. When trial users share their concerns—whether it’s a missing feature, an unclear onboarding process, or another roadblock—we don’t just listen; we take action.

Our follow-up could be a personalized demo, a guide highlighting features they might have missed, or simply directing them to the right resources. The goal is always the same: turn every trial into an opportunity to improve, adapt, and eventually win over more customers.

Understanding why a user didn’t convert during the trial isn’t just about fixing a problem but streamlining the entire experience. Our post-trial NPS survey provides us with the insights needed to keep evolving and ensure that our product exceeds the expectations of future customers.

Post-Onboarding CES Survey: Supporting Every Step of the Journey

Once customers start using our product, it’s important to ensure everyone on the team feels comfortable and equipped to make the most of it. Onboarding isn’t a one-time event—it’s an ongoing process as new team members come and go. To make sure that everyone finds our product easy to use, no matter when they start, we rely on CES (Customer Effort Score) Surveys. These surveys help us understand how smoothly each team member is getting up to speed with our product.

Instead of sending the survey just once, we send it to every new user after they’ve had some time with the product—whether they’ve been using it for a few weeks or are just starting out. This way, we can see how well our onboarding process works for both new and existing users.

If the survey shows someone is struggling, we don’t wait to step in. We adjust our training materials, offer extra help, or share additional resources to help them get the needed support. Our goal is to keep improving the onboarding experience so that it’s smooth and effective for everyone, no matter when they join.

With these CES surveys, we make sure onboarding is always a positive start that sets our users up for success from day one.

We’ve also tested sending CES surveys after key user actions, like setting up integrations or creating their first campaign, and following self-service support interactions, such as using our knowledge base or FAQs. This has helped us ensure that users are not only successfully onboarded but also easily deal with key aspects of our product.

NPS Recurring Survey: Keeping a Pulse on Customer Sentiment

Maintaining a strong connection with our customers requires ongoing engagement. That’s where our NPS recurring survey comes in. Every 180 days, we reach out to users who log into our platform to gauge their satisfaction and keep a pulse on their evolving needs. This semi-annual check-in provides consistent feedback, helping us identify trends, detect potential issues early, and adjust our strategies before minor problems become major challenges.

The beauty of the recurring NPS survey is its ability to track changes over time. By comparing data from previous surveys, we can see how customer sentiment shifts and understand what’s driving those changes. Are users more satisfied as we roll out new features, or are there concerns that need attention? This data allows us to be proactive rather than reactive and keep improving our product.

We also recognize that not all customers engage with surveys in the same way, so we’ve made it easy and convenient to share their thoughts. We use both web in-app surveys and follow-up email reminders to reach customers where they’re most comfortable. If a user doesn’t respond to the in-app survey, we send a reminder via email, giving them another chance to weigh in. Switching to a different survey template for the second attempt also tends to increase engagement.

But the NPS recurring survey isn’t just about gathering scores; it’s about closing the loop. When we receive feedback, especially if it indicates a drop in satisfaction, we take immediate action. Whether it’s reaching out to offer support, address specific concerns, or simply acknowledge their input, we aim to ensure every customer feels heard and valued.

Helpdesk CSAT Survey: A Must for High-Volume Support Teams

When your support team handles a high volume of customer inquiries, ensuring every issue is resolved smoothly is crucial. During busier periods, we’ve made it a priority to send post-support CSAT surveys to get immediate feedback on how well our team is performing. While that is not a primary scenario for us, given the low ticket volume, we know that for many companies, this type of survey is a game-changer. That’s why Retently offers a simple way to set up and automate Helpdesk Surveys for those who need them.

By following up on resolved tickets with a quick survey – typically including a CSAT question – we can ensure that issues are managed efficiently, response times are on point, and customers leave happy. Yet, we don’t just react to inquiries; we also take proactive support steps, such as monitoring common issues and updating the Knowledge Base or FAQs for guidance.

For businesses with a busy helpdesk, this feedback is invaluable. It helps fine-tune support processes and make sure no customer slips through the cracks. By integrating Helpdesk Surveys into the workflow, we can maintain the quality of our service and keep clients satisfied.

While CSAT surveys are most commonly used post-support, they are not limited to that. We’ve tested them in the post-onboarding phase and to evaluate satisfaction with specific feature releases. CSAT surveys served us well in these use cases as well.

Product-Market Fit Survey: Making Sure Our Product Is a Must-Have

How do we know if our product truly hits the mark? That’s the question our Product-Market Fit (PMF) Survey is designed to answer. The PMF Survey is our way of measuring how essential our product is to the people who use it, in order to keep up with their needs and expectations.

In the past nine years, we’ve conducted two Product-Market Fit surveys that have shaped our product roadmap and defined our Ideal Customer Profile. By asking how customers would feel if they lost access to our product and which features they find most valuable, we’ve gained insights into what truly matters to them and how relevant our product is in their daily lives.

Why is this feedback so crucial? Because it tells us if we’re on track or need to make changes. If customers say they’d be very disappointed without our product, we know we’re delivering real value. But if the response is somewhat indifferent, it’s a clear sign we need to step up our game. This feedback directly influences our product development, helping us prioritize the most important features and improvements to our users.

But the PMF Survey isn’t just about identifying gaps—it’s about staying ahead. This process helps us refine our roadmap, ensuring we’re always building something that’s not just useful but indispensable.

Churn Surveys: Identifying Specific Reasons for Customer Departures

Churn Surveys provide detailed feedback from customers who decide to cancel or downgrade their subscriptions. These surveys focus on gathering specific information about the reasons behind their decision. Whether it’s dissatisfaction with certain features, concerns about pricing, or better alternatives on the market, the data we collect helps us pinpoint exactly where things went wrong.

By analyzing these responses, we can identify common patterns and areas that need improvement, such as feature gaps or support issues. This information is crucial for making targeted adjustments to our product, pricing models, or customer service practices to reduce future churn and downgrades.

Additionally, Churn Surveys give us a chance to address unresolved issues and potentially re-engage customers. By following up on their feedback, we may find opportunities to win back their business or at least prevent negative word-of-mouth and improve the experience for other customers moving forward.

Crafting the Perfect Survey: Retently’s Approach and Tips for Success

We’ve learned that the most effective surveys go beyond a single question. While the rating question – whether NPS, CSAT, or CES – is a good start, we dive deeper by including tailored open-ended questions or experimenting with multiple-choice questions to capture insights that numbers alone can’t provide. 

For example, multiple-choice questions are particularly suited in churn surveys, as departing customers are less likely to spend time on detailed feedback. On the other hand, pairing a rating question with a couple of open-ended follow-ups is ideal when you want to dig deeper into customer opinions, such as in PMF surveys.

Yet, most of the time you will find yourself combining them for more nuanced feedback. For instance, you might start with an NPS question like, “How likely are you to recommend our product?” to measure overall loyalty. Next, you could include a multiple-choice question such as, “What do you like most about our product?” with options like pricing, feature set, or ease of use, for an idea of what customers value most. You can then follow up with an open-ended question on future intentions: “What specific improvements would you like to see from us in the future?”. Even if some customers do not share qualitative feedback, the multiple-choice responses will already offer a good understanding of their preferences.

With Retently, you can actually tweak your template to include a variety of questions, but we recommend sticking to the most relevant ones to increase response rates. Annoying customers with too many questions will only reduce the quality of your feedback. We also take our time to customize every aspect of the survey – from branding and colors to buttons and layout – so it aligns perfectly with our brand’s identity.

Our advice? Take full advantage of Retently’s flexibility to craft appealing surveys that blend various question types. Whether it’s understanding what’s working well or identifying areas for improvement, a personalized approach, the right mix of questions and appropriate timing can make all the difference.

By going beyond the basics and A/B testing our approaches with Retently, we manage to keep up with our customer’s needs and deliver meaningful outcomes.

Integrations: Streamlining Processes and Data Flows

We focus on making our feedback collection process as smooth and efficient as possible by connecting Retently with the tools we rely on. This integration helps us handle requests faster and more effectively. Here’s how we do it step by step:

1. Syncing Contacts from Pipedrive:

First, we connect Retently to Pipedrive, our go-to CRM. This integration keeps our customer data up-to-date, automatically syncing contacts to maintain accurate records. This setup allows us to manage and trigger surveys effectively, making sure that our outreach is timely and aligned with customer interactions.

2. Triggering Surveys with Chargebee:

Next, we integrate with Chargebee, our subscription management tool. This allows us to automatically trigger surveys based on key transactions, like when a customer activates a subscription or renews. By tying feedback to these critical moments, we capture insights exactly when they’re most relevant.

3. Using our Google Workspace:

Sending email surveys through our Google Workspace lets us control communication channels while maintaining brand consistency. This approach builds trust with recipients by using a familiar domain and integrates seamlessly with our workflows, simplifying response tracking and follow-ups. Retently’s customers can also leverage the Custom From feature to personalize their own surveys.

4. Exporting Feedback Back to Pipedrive:

Once a survey is completed, we ensure that all feedback data is exported directly back into Pipedrive. This includes not just the survey score but also detailed notes and customer comments. When a customer responds to a survey, a new note is created in Pipedrive, attaching all relevant details to their profile. This means that every team member can easily access the latest feedback and act on it.

We also track customer satisfaction at the organizational level by leveraging our Account CX functionality. For example, when multiple users from the same company complete a survey, we group their responses under the same account. This allows us to see how different users within the same organization feel about our product, giving us a broader view of the company’s overall satisfaction.

The computed account-level CX score is also exported to Pipedrive. This helps us monitor each account’s overall health and proactively address any concerns before they escalate.

5. Real-Time Feedback in Slack:

Finally, we bring it all together with Slack. Survey feedback is sent straight to our Slack, where our product, support and CS teams can review and respond in real-time. This keeps everyone in the loop and ensures that no feedback goes unnoticed.

That’s how we do it, but the beauty of Retently is that you can integrate it with the tools that work best for you. Whether it’s through Zapier or our native integrations with platforms like Salesforce or Hubspot, you can easily connect Retently to the tools that fit your workflow.

Tracking CX  Trends: Unlocking Insights Across Customer Segments

Our CX Trends feature is like a spotlight that reveals how customer satisfaction shifts across different customer segments or product traits. By keeping a close eye on these trends, we gain valuable insights that help us fine-tune our offerings and stay in sync with our customers’ needs. Here’s how we make the most of tracking trends in three key areas:

Customer Tier

We track satisfaction based on subscription tiers or packages. This helps us understand what each group values most and ensures that our plans stay relevant and competitive. By spotting trends in NPS scores and feedback across different tiers, we can adjust our services to better meet the unique needs of each segment. Whether it’s a basic plan or a premium package, we make sure every customer gets the value they expect.

Roles within the Company

Different roles within an organization interact with our product in their own ways. By tracking satisfaction across roles—whether it’s end-users, decision-makers, or technical teams—we can tailor our approach to address each group’s specific needs. This helps us ensure that everyone, from the frontline users to the executives, gets the most out of our product and enjoys a more personalized and satisfying experience.

Industry Segmentation

Each industry comes with its own set of challenges and needs. By tracking trends across the industries we serve, we can spot patterns in satisfaction and adjust our offerings accordingly. Whether a particular industry’s scores are trending up or down, this data helps us stay ahead of the curve and ensure our product continues to hit the mark in key markets.

Turning Feedback into Success With Retently

Over the years, we’ve realized that feedback is more than just data, it’s the core of meaningful actions and lasting success. By eating our own dog food, we’ve consistently refined our strategies, strengthened customer relationships, and enhanced our offerings. The captured insights have allowed us to respond effectively to customer needs and keep our business on a steady growth path.

With Retently, we’ve developed a deeper understanding of what our clients value and where improvements are needed. This ongoing engagement has enabled us to reduce churn, increase loyalty, and consistently deliver more value. By actively listening and adapting based on feedback, we’ve made Retently essential to our success.

Now, we’re excited to help you achieve the same results. Whether your goal is to boost customer satisfaction, refine your product, or stay closely connected with your clients, Retently gives you the tools to make it happen. 

Start your journey with Retently today and see how it can transform your business. Leverage our free trial and see firsthand how customer feedback can drive your success.

The post How Retently Uses Retently: A B2B SaaS Guide appeared first on Retently CX.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• What Is a Detractor?
• How to Identify Detractors
• How Detractors Can Ruin Your Business?
• How Much Time Do You Have to Stop a Detractor from Churning?
• How to turn Detractors into Promoters? 
• What About Detractors That Give No Feedback?
• Can You “Save” Every Single Detractor?
• The Bottom Line

Detractors are kind of a “taboo” topic in the business world – nobody really likes talking or thinking about upset customers.

But those customers are actually vital for business development and this quote should sum up just how important they really are:

“The brand is no longer what we tell the customer it is – it is what the customers tell each other it is.”- Scott Cook

True, most unhappy customers decide to never use the service they didn’t like, or even worse, share their disappointment with their friends.

That shows why you can’t ignore Detractors but there’s more. Even though negative feedback might seem like a terrible thing, customers that express their dissatisfaction are creating an opportunity for you to improve their experience.

But how do you actually do that?

Well, if you want to truly understand Detractors and learn how to appease them, check out this article.

Key Takeaways

• Use NPS and CSAT surveys to spot Detractors early and engage them before they churn silently.
• Address issues with speed and empathy to turn negative experiences into positive outcomes.
• Focus on resolving high-priority Detractor concerns first to prevent further damage to your brand.
• Implement changes based on Detractor feedback and show them that their input leads to real improvements.

What Is a Detractor?

Generally speaking, you define Detractors as someone who is unhappy with your brand, product or service; someone who finds fault with everything you say or do.

In other words – a critic.

In business, this term is used when referring to a customer segment in the Net Promoter Score® framework. Detractors are the survey respondents who score you from 0 to 6 on the NPS® scale. They are unsatisfied customers who will recommend against your company.

But as a more standard Detractors definition, you can just think of them as dissatisfied customers.

How to Identify Detractors

There are several customer satisfaction metrics that you can use to identify your Detractors, the top two being – Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys.

To understand the difference between these methodologies, consider the following analogy:

Let’s assume that your company is a bucket holding a “pool” of customers.

The water flowing from the above tap is the newly acquired customers, while the holes in the bucket are potential bottlenecks in customer experiences that push the water out.

The rate at which the water flows from the tap would be your company’s growth rate (G), while the total outflow of water through the holes would be your churn rate (C).

Ideally, you would want to reduce your churn rate and increase the growth rate, so that you could serve the maximum number of customers and build up revenue.

CSAT helps you assess the number of holes in your bucket and provides actionable insights for solving them. It’s measured by asking how customers would rate a recent business experience on a scale of 1 to 5 (there are also variations with a scale of 1-3 or 1-7).

Net Promoter Score, on the other hand, tracks the overall customer experience. It’s measured by asking the question:

“On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend [company] to a friend or colleague?”

While CSAT measures customer satisfaction for every activity, NPS data helps you assess the potential growth rate of your company and provides open-ended actionable feedback to bring down the churn.

To explain it with the pool analogy, CSAT aims to just fill up the holes (C), but they don’t give you solid insights into the projected growth trajectory (G).

NPS can be used to discover leaks that you didn’t even know existed. It’s focused on the overall customer experience instead of a specific interaction.

It also offers much wider coverage. While CSAT surveys mostly reach active users (who are already engaged with your product), NPS surveys can be sent to users who are about to churn or newly acquired customers (who have not yet used the service).

For any conventional business, CSAT acts as a lagging indicator of short-term customer happiness (satisfactory transactional experiences), while NPS acts as the leading indicator of long-term customer happiness (great product experiences).

Since you are at a higher risk of losing non-engaged and dissatisfied customers than active users, NPS proves to be a much better metric for identifying core issues and reaching customers before they switch to a competitor.

That, however, does not mean that CSAT surveys are inferior to NPS.

Often, feedback captured from CSAT surveys can be instrumental in root cause analysis and improving customer experiences. These surveys can be used in conjunction with NPS surveys to narrow down short-term problems, weigh their importance, and take corrective action.

How Detractors Can Ruin Your Business?

It can be easy to ignore Detractors if they’re not a very large percentage of your whole customer base. You can make money off of your loyal clients, right?

Not exactly. If you actually do that, you leave your business open to serious risks since Detractors can damage it.

Here’s how:

Detractors Bring Your Sales & Profits Down

It’s not hard to see how – upset customers simply won’t have a reason to keep doing business with you. In fact, according to data, poor service costs businesses an average of $41 billion each year – and that’s only in the US!

Let’s take a closer look at the facts.

To start with, it’s well known that around 41% of consumers will spend less money on a service if they have a bad experience with it. A recent CX trends report also states that 50% of customers will switch to a different brand after just one bad experience, while a second experience of this kind will rocket your numbers to 80%.

What’s more, 51% of B2B customers will avoid your brand if they have a poor customer service experience for up to two years. 

Your business will also lose money because you’ll need to find new customers to take the place of the Detractors you lost. Acquiring new customers is more expensive than retaining existing ones – five times more, to be precise.

On top of the money wasted on ads and lead generation, you’ll lose valuable time and manpower which could be redirected to the benefit of your existing customers.

Too many unhappy customers also makes it hard to justify premium prices. When your brand is linked to negative experiences, you might be forced into price wars or discounting, which cuts into profits and damages your brand’s reputation.

Moreover, research showcases that the success rate of selling to a new customer is only between 5% to 20%. Compare that to the rate for existing customers which is between 60% – 70%.

Oh, and get this – only one in 26 unhappy customers is going to complain. The other 25 will simply churn. So, you might not even realize how much money you lose until it’s too late.

Detractors Harm Your Brand’s Image

In times when negative word of mouth can have damaging effects on your business, ignoring such customers would be a big mistake. Thanks to the power of social media, people can now easily gather and share information on their experience with your brand.

And social media is exactly where a large number of customers go to complain when they have a poor experience with a brand.

What’s more, 70% of consumers specifically call out brands on social media to make other people aware of potential issues.

Safe to say, that’s not going to do your brand’s image any favors. Potential leads will be scared off when they associate your company’s name and imagery with those social media posts and angry reviews from unhappy customers.

Also, consider this – a dissatisfied customer will tell anywhere from 9 to 15 people about heir bad experiences with your brand. Even worse – approximately 13% of them go the extra mile and notify 20 people about this.

Lastly, in very extreme scenarios, customers might be so upset to go as far as informing the media about their experience. Granted, only 5% do that for now, but it’s not exactly a risk you can afford to ignore.

It’s the kind of thing big companies like Time Warner Cable and Comcast ignored for years, that place them at the bottom of the customer satisfaction benchmarks.

Detractors Help Your Competition

“Although your customers won’t love you if you give bad service, your competitors will.”

That quote from Lauren Freedman (President of the e-tailing group, a popular Ecommerce consultancy) pretty much sums it all up.

Quick – what’s the first thing a Detractor is going to do once they abandon your brand?

Find an alternative to your service, of course. And that’s where your competitors come into play – just waiting to snatch up your customers.

That’s no speculation – 8 in 10 customers say they have no problem switching to a competitor if they receive poor customer service.

And pretty much anything can trigger that.

In fact, 74% of consumers consider switching to a competitor if the checkout process is difficult, while 50% of them will gladly do it if you don’t anticipate their needs. Also, if your customers feel like they are underappreciated, nearly 40% of them will switch companies.

So, the more Detractors you have and the more you ignore them, the easier you make it for your competitors to take the lead on the market.

Detractors Can Drain Employee Motivation

Detractors don’t just affect your business – it can really take a toll on your employees too. According to a Fontana study, one-third of employees who regularly handle difficult customers report a significant increase in work-related stress.

This isn’t just an occasional bad day – it can be a key factor leading to burnout. In fact, according to a survey by Jeff Toister, author of “The Service Culture Handbook”, 59% of customer service representatives are at risk of burnout, with 28% facing severe burnout.

But the issue runs even deeper. Among those at severe risk of burnout, 52% said their company is not customer-focused. This disconnect between company values and day-to-day experiences only adds to the strain, leaving employees feeling unsupported and undervalued.

Employees who feel constantly stressed and unappreciated are much more likely to consider leaving. Plus, the time your team spends putting out fires with Detractors often means they’re pulled away from more rewarding and creative tasks. This can leave them feeling stuck, further draining their motivation.

As this cycle of demotivation continues, it can start to affect the whole team. When individual performance dips, team morale can crumble, making it harder to maintain a positive and productive workplace environment.

How Much Time Do You Have to Stop a Detractor from Churning?

The answer to this question depends on a number of factors, from your responsiveness to your ability to connect with customers, solve their issues and improve their experience.

There’s no “industry standard” time that you can use to work out how long you have until a Detractor leaves. Most Detractors, however, fit into one of the below categories:

• They’ve already decided to cancel and want you to know why;
• They are frustrated and actively researching and considering alternatives, but haven’t decided to cancel yet;
• Certain aspects of your product or a single interaction have disappointed them, but they still think your product or service has potential and want to help you improve it;
• They use your product out of necessity and aren’t actively considering switching to an alternative, but want to voice their complaints and criticism.

Although not all Detractors fit into these categories, you can use them to segment many of your customers based on their feedback. Most of the time, customers in the first category — Detractors that have already decided to cancel — will leave the soonest.

Retaining these customers can be a serious challenge — one that simply can not be taken up by most brands. Once a customer has made up their mind to cancel, they’re already out the door.

Detractors that fit into the other three categories, however, usually won’t rush to cancel.

How to turn Detractors into Promoters? 

Retaining a customer who’s already next to the door is a real challenge. We’ll outline several actionable strategies we tested out and found to work very well:

1. Encourage Feedback & Make It Simple to Get in Touch

The truth is that you have fewer fully satisfied customers than you might think. If you don’t hear a complaint, it doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. And if you don’t see it, there’s little you can do to prevent any future occurrences. 

Many customers who feel ignored simply stop doing business with you or switch to your competitor without even giving you the opportunity to improve.

Bearing this in mind, you should make it simpler for the customer to get in touch with you. If they run into another barrier of not being able to voice their complaint, that will only anger them more. 

Don’t let customer surveys be the only way they can reach you. Be available to provide customer support on the channel they prefer using. Be it your website, mobile app, or social media – they should be able to provide feedback without having to complete numerous forms.

Also, don’t wait until customers come to you. Be proactive in reaching out to them and asking for feedback. They will give you the opportunity to fix small problems on the initial stage before they escalate into bigger issues.

Just make sure you give off the feeling that you want their feedback and need their suggestions. Customers are setting time aside from their busy days to give valuable feedback. So, if you make them feel like you’re just collecting data for the show, they will not be willing to collaborate.

Around 73% of buyers say that valuing their time is one of the best ways a company can offer them great service. And we already discussed how upset customers will quickly switch to a competitor if they feel like you don’t appreciate them enough.

So we’re not just speculating.

In addition, put your contact information prominently across your website or email. People want to know that they can reach you.

Oh, and train your employees to be amiable even if the feedback is negative, or the customer is very angry. If they talk back or try to shift the blame on the client, it will only escalate the hostilities, making things worse.

What they actually need to do in such a situation is to listen, ask questions, apologize, and be polite. Detractors might actually calm down when they see that your reps are emphatic and taking their frustrations and pain points seriously.

2. Provide Swift Responses

If a Detractor is in a “pulling my hair” state, responding as soon as possible should become your first priority. One unsolved issue in due time can escalate to several brand-damaging comments since 40% of business buyers get frustrated the most because of slow response times.  

Replying to a customer in less than an hour rather than 48 hours can make a huge difference – it proves that you are genuinely concerned about their satisfaction and that your business puts client interests first. Also, a timely response can significantly minimize the chances of possible damage to your reputation. 

After all, when it comes to customer service, 90% of consumers want an “immediate” response. And 60% rate “immediate” as ten minutes or less!

Sure, that mostly sounds like B2C buyers, but get this – 80% of B2B customers also expect responses in real-time. In fact, 67% of them actually want a response via email within one hour, while 15% of them expect to get an immediate answer.

Automation can improve your efficiency by allowing you to make the most of your time. While some companies might be hesitant to use automation due to its impersonal nature, when properly implemented, automated responses can be a great way of interacting with customers.

But don’t get carried away by that. You can’t just automate replies – you also need to personalize them.  If the already upset Detractors see a generic reply, there’s a good chance they’ll simply ignore it, assuming you didn’t even bother listening to their problems.

Plus, personalization is more important than ever nowadays. Luckily, today’s automation tools can personalize your responses in many ways that will help you take care of far more customers than you possibly could if you were using the old-fashioned, manual approach.

Let’s say you want to send a personalized email to those Detractors who haven’t specified why they gave you a low score. 

What you can do is set up a rule that will trigger an email reply to those contacts who gave you a rating of zero to six points on the NPS scale. Personalize your email by including their name, acknowledgment of their feelings, a question to find out what went wrong and a sweet thank you for closure.

3. Listen and Show Empathy

About 79% of consumers want human-driven service nowadays. They just don’t like the idea of dealing with a chatbot or self-service options.

It’s not hard to see why. Customers often understand that you are following the script. And it might make them feel like “I’m just another problem on their list”. 

Try to make an emotional connection with your customers and give them a sense that you are in a conversation with them. Speak to them in a friendly and engaging tone. Appear eager to solve their concerns. The occasional emoticon might actually mellow down even the most frustrated customers. Typically, customers prefer a casual tone, and reps acting like a human – not a machine.

When customers reach out to you, they want to be heard and to feel like you are on their side. Apologizing and relating with simple phrases like “I’d be upset too if that happened to me,” can do the trick. Overall, the tonality should express that they as a customer matter to you and that you both are facing this challenge together.

Listening is another crucial element of showing that you care. You should get a sense of how your customers feel by paying attention to the tone of voice and punctuation – are they stressed, angry or frustrated? Knowing this information can help you choose the right approach.

Here’s a quote that best illustrates why actively engaging with upset customers is an asset:

“When customers share their story, they’re not just sharing pain points. They’re actually teaching you how to make your product, service, and business better.”

4. Don’t Overpromise and Underdeliver

Sometimes, it can take time to implement the suggestions or feedback received from your customers, so it is important to inform them that their feedback is being considered and used to improve. 

And if you can’t fix the issue, make sure to explain why. Be honest with them. Honest business practices motivate customers. That means employees will work harder and consumers will buy more of your product.

Never make promises you can’t respect. It’s better to come clean and admit what limitations you’re dealing with than to overpromise and underdeliver. If you do that, you’ll lose their trust for good – not to mention it’ll make your brand look bad.

And whatever you do, don’t tell Detractors there’s nothing you can do to help them. Instead, focus on what you can do for them – even if that means issuing a refund. Always make sure that the interaction you have with your customers will leave behind a good memory.

5. Set Up a Prioritization System

This is one of the most efficient ways to optimize your support team’s workflow. Asking for and collecting feedback is a good start, but if your support reps get flooded with tickets, and don’t know which ones to handle first, you’ll just end up losing the Detractors for good.

You could use a FIFO system (First In First Out), which pretty much means your support teams help customers in the order they sent the inquiries in.

However, that can be an issue when dealing with Detractors. After all, should your support team handle a lead’s question about your product just because they sent in the ticket first, or should they focus on a Detractor who is having trouble with the product instead?

So what approach works better then?

It’s best to use customer support software that allows you to use automation to directly assign priority levels to customer tickets based on their severity (which you do by creating rules). Also, one should look into applying the escalation rules, that will redirect it to other staff in the operational hierarchy.

6. Close the Feedback Loop

Responding to Detractors fast, doing that in a calm and polite manner, acknowledging their frustrations, and properly prioritizing issues is very important.

But that alone won’t be enough to fully turn Detractors into Promoters.

To do that, you also need to provide a solution – basically, act on the received feedback. Start by sharing it across departments and discussing recurring problems with stakeholders.

And don’t be afraid to collaborate with Detractors throughout the whole process if they’re willing – they can provide valuable insights, and you show them how much you value their opinions.

Once you have a clear idea of which issues should be handled first, share the key takeaways with your team.

Finally, you also have to follow up with Detractors to let them know what actions were taken following their feedback, and what the results were. That’s the only way you will manage to close the customer feedback loop, which is essential to offering a better customer experience.

7. Learn From Your Mistakes

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. If all you want is for your NPS score to be high – you are wrong. The Net Promoter System is not about who gets the higher score. It’s about addressing the issues reported by customers, closing the loop and building trust.

Treat each piece of feedback as a chance to become better, create a better experience for your customers, and distinguish yourself from the competition.

A customer who had an unpleasant experience but was overjoyed by the way you handled their complaint is more likely to become a passionate advocate for your brand than someone who is indifferent.

By truly listening to your Detractors, you can turn unfavorable feedback into an opportunity to drive growth for your business.

8. Make Them Feel Special

When dealing with a Detractor, the first thing you need to do is come up with a solution. Every piece of feedback is unique, so your solution should be unique as well. 

You can show your customers that you are truly sorry by giving them a discount, free shipping, or even offering your product free of charge.

But this step is tricky – solving the problem might not be enough for some Detractors. In those cases, you need to go out of your way to make them feel important and respected.

Do something they will remember. You can surprise them by sending a personal “apology” note, a gift card, or even something related to their interest. That increases the likelihood of them sharing the positive experience with others.

Having someone from the management reach out to this person will make them feel good too. As a customer, they will feel that their concern is a top priority.

Most successful companies know that great customer service is the key to winning the customer back. And this goes beyond the “great” to which most companies aspire. 

For example, Zappos once sent flowers to a woman whose feet were damaged by medical treatments. Amazon is known for refunding small balances of 16 cents to customers when the price of an item they’ve previously ordered went down.

Customer service at this level isn’t cheap. But it’s very effective. It increases customer satisfaction and the likelihood that they will tell others about your product/service, leading to positive word-of-mouth.

You don’t have to do it for every Detractor. Start with just a few customers and then make a decision based on their reactions.

9. Tap into Customer Data and Targeted Outreach

If you want to turn Detractors into your biggest fans, start by mapping your customer journey and collecting data at key touchpoints. Think of it as creating a roadmap with every step a customer takes with your brand – from the first impression to the final interaction. This way you can identify exactly where things might have gone wrong – like a frustrating checkout process or a confusing onboarding experience.

Use sentiment analysis to dive deeper into how your customers feel about these interactions. By analyzing conversations and survey data while monitoring social media and reviews, you can uncover the emotions behind their feedback, whether they’re slightly annoyed or seriously considering switching to a competitor.

With these insights in hand, the next step is to personalize your response. Instead of sending a generic apology, craft a response that shows you’ve truly listened. If a customer is frustrated with slow delivery, offer expedited shipping on their next order. If someone feels ignored during a support call, reach out with a personalized message that addresses their exact concern and perhaps includes a special discount as a gesture of goodwill.

By combining these insights you can transform negative experiences into positive connections. In fact, a Salesforce research shows that 73% of customers now expect better personalization as technology advances. This proactive approach helps rebuild trust and loyalty, turning Detractors into enthusiastic supporters of your brand.

10. Use A/B Testing to Refine Recovery Tactics

A/B testing is your go-to tool for fine-tuning how you handle customer recovery. Want to know if a heartfelt apology works better than a tempting discount? Test it out! By trying different approaches – like tweaking the tone of your emails, changing the timing of your follow-up or adjusting the offers you make – you can uncover what truly resonates with your Detractors.

Some customers might respond better to a quick, straightforward apology, while others might be swayed by a little extra incentive to stay loyal. A/B testing takes the guesswork out of the process, providing real data on what actually works to win back customers. This way, every move you make is backed by hard evidence.

Over time, this iterative process sharpens your approach, helping you turn more Detractors into loyal customers. And the beauty of A/B testing? You can apply it across all aspects of your recovery strategy – whether you’re experimenting with different communication channels, like email vs. SMS, or testing the effectiveness of personalized offers.

By continuously optimizing based on what works best, you’re not just resolving issues – you’re creating positive experiences that turn Detractors into dedicated advocates of your brand.

What About Detractors That Give No Feedback?

Here’s a common scenario: a Detractor gives a low score in a Net Promoter Score survey. They don’t leave any text feedback, and they don’t respond when you reach out to ask what’s bothering them.

For a retention-focused business, this type of customer feedback should raise a red flag. You know they’re unhappy, and you know they’re likely to cancel in the future, but you don’t know the cause of their frustration or what you can do to make things right.

Instead of contacting the customer again to ask what’s bothering them, use the data you already have to learn the root cause of the customer’s frustration yourself.

Dig into the customer’s engagement and behavior metrics to find out what’s causing their low score:

• Did they abandon your product at a certain point in the setup or configuration process?
• Did they run into a confusing section of your app?
• Did they start using your software, only to abandon it at a bottleneck?
• Did they stop using your software after they discovered a feature they needed was only available in a paid (or more expensive) version?

It takes surprisingly little time to discover the root cause of most customers’ frustrations. In doing so, you completely change the dynamic of your follow-up emails, increasing the chance of a good response in the process.

The “What’s wrong?” follow-up, which usually goes ignored, becomes “We know what’s wrong, and here’s how we’re going to make it right.”

Like most aspects of the customer success processes, offering a solution to unhappy or frustrated customers can be, to some extent, systematized. Over time, you’ll notice common situations that affect a large percentage of your customers, all with their own solutions:

• Confusion over how to use your software, which can be solved with a personal “how-to” walkthrough session over hangouts, live chat or email.
• Frustration or concerns about pricing, which can be solved by reaching out with a special discount or offer.
• Worries that your software isn’t exactly what they’re looking for, which are often solved in a short hangout or phone call.

Once you identify the most common frustrations and concerns, and create unique, systematized solutions for each one, assisting an unhappy customer turns from a daunting task into a rewarding opportunity.

The next time you receive a low score from a Detractor, don’t go in aiming to learn what’s wrong and ask how you can help.

Instead, dig into your data to discover what’s affecting the customer and contact them with a solution. Instead of leaving the loop open, you’ll close the feedback loop and learn more about how you can further improve your product.

Can You “Save” Every Single Detractor?

Well, no – it’s not realistic to think you can turn every single Detractor into a Promoter. But you can retain them as customers or leave them with a positive impression of your business at the very least.

Still, sometimes, you will need to make a judgment call – is the Detractor in question worth “saving” at all?

Some customers are just not compatible with your business model. 

It can be hard to accept that, but you have to understand – in those situations, it’s not really your fault, and there’s not much you can do about it.

Maybe the customer is just plain rude, and verbally abuses your staff with every chance they get. Or maybe they have unrealistic demands from you – like expecting you to offer 24/7 phone support when you just run a small business.

And maybe their complaints and demands are theirs alone, and other customers don’t complain about them at all.

In that case, it just wouldn’t make sense to implement the feedback from a difficult client. If you were to do that, it might actually upset all your loyal customers.

Now, something like this shouldn’t happen often at all and would be just a worst-case scenario.

But if you do end up dealing with a very difficult customer, it might be worth thinking about whether or not all the time, money, and effort you will waste on them will actually be worth it.

Also, try to be courteous when terminating the relationship with the customer. Don’t be rude about it – just politely let them know you feel like this isn’t working out for them, issue a refund, and recommend some alternatives to your service.

Yes, we know that recommending a competitor feels very counterintuitive. But it’s not something that will work against you. The Detractor will likely stop doing business with you anyway since you probably can’t meet their unreasonable demands. Plus, we’re talking about a customer you wouldn’t mind losing.

Also, if you do that, the Detractor can’t complain that you didn’t at least bother offering them a solution for their issue – the issue you can’t help with.

And recommending services similar to your own might actually leave a better impression on the problematic customer. They might expect you to act rude or unprofessional, so it might catch them off guard. In fact, they might not even leave a bad review.

The Bottom Line

By acting quickly and providing a solution, you can win back almost any Detractor and improve your retention rate – all while reducing lost revenue and avoiding the high churn that can affect a large number of SaaS and other subscription-based businesses.

Even if you don’t win back every Detractor, acting quickly and showing that you care can help you avoid the other negative effects of unhappy customers, such as bad product reviews and negative public feedback on message board posts and blog comments.

Ready to improve your customer retention? Try Retently with a free 7-day trial and start turning feedback into growth opportunities.

The post The Complete Guide to Detractors – How to Turn Them into Promoters appeared first on Retently CX.

Table of Contents

• A Great Product Is the Ultimate Growth Hack
• Retention and Referrals Drive Growth, Not Acquisition
• NPS Puts You in a Retention Mindset
• NPS Closely Correlates With Strong Word-Of-Mouth
• NPS-Focused Growth Hacking Is Sustainable
• Put NPS to Work and Grow Your Business

As a Customer Success Manager, Net Promoter Score® is the most important metric you have access to for retaining customers. As a Growth Hacker, it’s an even more valuable metric for fueling your business’ short and long-term growth.

Pay close attention to the second term: long-term growth. Since NPS® measures the level of satisfaction and loyalty your customers have for your product, it’s the key difference between a hockey stick-style growth chart and temporary growth followed by a gradual decline.

Smart growth hackers like Sachin Rekhi (former Director of Product Management at LinkedIn) have made NPS a key part of their retention and growth strategies. Here’s why (and how) you should, too:

A Great Product Is the Ultimate Growth Hack

As Kyle Wild of Keen.io says, “product is the ultimate growth hack.” Many startups put all of their attention on customer acquisition while spending less time than they could to create a great product.

The end result is a product that attracts customers in the short term but ultimately fails to keep them. The quality of a product versus the customer’s expectation is the most important factor in determining retention. Underdeliver and you’ll lose customers even faster than you earn them.

No amount of growth will help your business develop if you’re losing customers because of poor product or service quality. Since retention is fueled by product quality, keeping track of it is by far the most important aspect of growth.

Net Promoter Score is the single metric you can rely on to learn how customers really feel about your product. It’s also a metric that you can use to identify any weaknesses that could hurt your product’s long-term growth.

The better your product is, and the more closely it matches customer expectations, the easier it is to retain customers and fuel growth. As the ultimate metric for assessing customer loyalty, NPS is a great shortcut to understanding how satisfied your customers are with your product.

Retention and Referrals Drive Growth, Not Acquisition

While online marketing gurus might tell you otherwise, there’s a vast difference between user acquisition and growth. Acquiring a customer doesn’t guarantee you’ll retain him, meaning there’s no direct correlation between acquisition and growth.

Customer acquisition is more glamorous than retention, so it gets far more attention from online marketers and growth experts. This is likely because it’s far easier to showcase acquisition in an investor-friendly graph than it is to show a great retention rate.

Despite this, retention is far more important for increasing your company’s revenue for a longer period than acquisition alone. Keeping customers for longer creates two huge benefits for your business’s ability to grow:

• First, you generate revenue from each customer over a longer time period, especially if your product is monetized via a monthly fee or advertising.
• Second, the longer customers stick with you, the more likely they are to refer friends and colleagues, producing long-term, organic growth for your business.

Dave McClure’s Startup Metrics for Pirates breaks down startup growth into five super-metrics: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue. The first two items are prerequisites for; retention and referrals are the sources of your startup’s growth over the long term.

Remember, it’s far cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire a new one. It’s also way cheaper to win over a customer through word-of-mouth than it is to market aggressively, whether through paid advertising or direct sales. When you use NPS for your startup, it greatly helps do both.

NPS Puts You in a Retention Mindset

Focus on growth metrics like your conversion rate or average cost per acquisition and it will be easier to build your marketing around acquisition, not growth.

Focus on Net Promoter Score and it will be easier to get into a retention mindset, where keeping your customers is just as important as acquiring them in the first place. This shift in priorities has an immense effect on your ability to keep making your product better.

Instead of asking yourself, “How can I acquire more customers?”, you’ll start thinking how you can retain more customers.

It also affects your users. Since NPS measures the enthusiasm people have for your product and groups them into Detractors, Passives, and Promoters based on their feedback, it’s an excellent tool for identifying and mobilizing customers who want to market for you.

When a customer responds with a score of 9-10, they’re not just indicating that they’re satisfied with your product — they’re stating that they’re actively interested in promoting it. Mobilize these brand advocates and you’ll get a valuable asset for expanding your growth.

There are several ways to put your Promoters to work. You can send a follow-up email to your Promoters with an incentive for referring their friends and colleagues. You could also encourage them to talk about your product or business on social media.

You can ask them to write or film a public product review, reach out to their customers (if you offer a B2B product or service) or link back to your website. Depending on your goals, you could benefit from several of these potential actions.

Develop a process for following up with your Promoters and you’ll get more than just information from NPS – you’ll also get real, measurable value from your most enthusiastic customers.

NPS Closely Correlates With Strong Word-Of-Mouth

Net Promoter Score correlates very closely with the word-of-mouth. This can be good or bad: a high NPS is closely linked to positive word-of-mouth from Promoters, while a low NPS could be an indicator that your product is generating negative word-of-mouth that hurts acquisition.

This is particularly important if your business is small. Research from Verizon shows that up to 85% of new customers acquired by small businesses result from word of mouth. Focus on maintaining a high NPS and you could open up a valuable source of new customers.

Genuine referrals and recommendations from customers will outperform any share button or social media campaign over the long term. Focus on gradual improvement to your product to increase your NPS and you’ll develop the type of word-of-mouth that creates exponential growth.

NPS-Focused Growth Hacking Is Sustainable

While it’s great to have a viral product, viral buzz can only be sustained for so long before users lose interest and move on to the next big thing. Likewise, paid advertising and acquisition works while you have the budget, but fades quickly if and when you don’t.

As your product’s customer base expands and the low-hanging fruit disappears, acquiring each new customer costs more than the last. When your growth model is acquisition-focused, you’re forced to spend more cash on user acquisition the bigger your business grows.

NPS-focused growth, on the other hand, grows in scale and shrinks in cost the larger your user base becomes, as more users become Promoters and start recommending your product to their friends, colleagues, and acquaintances.

This results in the same hockey stick-like growth of viral user acquisition, but without the costs that exponential growth typically requires. It’s a slower, more deliberate form of growth hacking, but in the long term, it’s both more sustainable and more effective.

Put NPS to Work and Grow Your Business

NPS isn’t just a backward-looking metric that tells you how you’ve performed in the past. It’s forward-looking. A high NPS indicates a healthy future pipeline of opportunity, driven by customer loyalty and referrals. When customers love your brand enough to recommend it to others, you’re essentially creating a chain reaction of organic growth.

Use Net Promoter Score to your advantage and create more sustainable growth for your business — one that lasts for the long term, not just as long as you can afford to fund it.

Retently lets you track and analyze customer satisfaction using a simple one-question survey sent to your customers. Learn more about how Retently works and start your free 7-day trial to put NPS to work and fuel your business’s growth.

The post Net Promoter Score as an Ultimate Growth Hacking Metric appeared first on Retently CX.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• NPS and Word-of-Mouth
• Understanding Statistical Significance
• When Are Your Results Reliable?
• Ideal Timing for Different Business Scenarios: Key Pointers
• Start Using NPS Early and You’ll Quickly Discover its Value

In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries describes the four ways customers drive sustainable growth for businesses.

The first is word-of-mouth through recommendations and referrals. When people get value from your product, they’re likely to talk about it.

The second is due to the product itself. A product like a MacBook, with its glowing Apple logo, is a constant advertisement.

The third is advertising, whether digital or in print, television, radio, or in public spaces via a billboard or banner.

The fourth is repetition. Some products, like shampoo and cooking oil, need to be replenished if and when they run out. Others, like magazines, are sold on a monthly subscription and are only as relevant as the latest issue.

As a SaaS business, two of the four growth strategies listed above – word-of-mouth and repetitive use – are ideally suited to continual growth. They’re also closely linked to each other: customers who like your product enough to keep using it are the most likely to recommend it to their peers.

In short, you can achieve methods one and four above using a single metric.

What we haven’t discussed is when you should start using Net Promoter Score®. When should your company begin to pay attention to customer sentiment? When should you start quantifying sentiment using NPS®?

Key Takeaways

• Start early. Begin measuring NPS as soon as you have a stable product and a steady stream of customers to get valuable feedback early on.
• Ensure you have a sufficient number of customers for accurate and reliable NPS results.
• Have the resources and processes in place to respond to NPS feedback effectively.
• Commit to ongoing improvement. Regularly measure, analyze, and adjust based on NPS feedback to keep improving your business.

NPS and Word-of-Mouth

For growing businesses, word-of-mouth is more important than ever before. Actually, 64% of marketers agree that word-of-mouth is the most effective form of marketing, with about 48% of businesses heavily relying on it to improve their bottom line. Product-sharing platforms like Product Hunt have made it easier than ever for people to share your business with the world, helping you acquire customers and fuel revenue growth.

At the same time, the potential for negative word of mouth to damage your business has also grown. Websites like Reddit give potential customers a platform to share their experience with your product – good or bad – with their peers.

At no point is your company more vulnerable to negative word-of-mouth than in its earliest stages of growth and development.

Once you’ve built a steady base of customers, you can “afford” most of the negative feedback. A bad review from an unhappy customer can and likely will hurt your growth, but it’s unlikely to cause your existing customer base to give up on you.

When you lack that customer base, all it takes is one bad review to squash your growth potential.

This means that understanding and responding to customer sentiment is even more important for early-stage startups than for established businesses. Not only do you have growth potential to lose, you also have incredible growth potential to gain from positive sentiment.

The earlier you bring Net Promoter Score into your customer retention efforts, the greater you’ll experience its benefits, both in retaining customers and fueling word-of-mouth marketing for your brand.

Understanding Statistical Significance

Like all business metrics, Net Promoter Score becomes more accurate and effective the more data you generate. A Net Promoter Score calculated from a sample of 100 customers is less accurate, and thus less useful, than one calculated from a sample of 2,000.

This has several implications for small startups with few customers. The first is that your initial NPS data will give you valuable insight into what your customers think about your startup, but it’s not the only metric you should pay attention to.

The second is that because NPS is both a quantitative and qualitative metric, you can make use of its qualitative aspects while your sample audience is small, then transition into paying attention to its quantitative aspect as your sample audience grows and your data becomes accurate:

• When you first start using NPS, pay less attention to your score and instead focus on the comments customers leave. Are there specific aspects of your product they don’t like? Is there a single thing you could change that would improve their level of satisfaction?
• As your sample size grows, focus on both the quantitative aspect of NPS and the overall trends you observe in qualitative feedback.

Your score will be wobbly when you first begin tracking customer satisfaction. This is totally normal, and it’s something that every business with a small customer base should expect.

When your audience is small, a sudden increase in your NPS is just as likely to be noise as a real improvement. Don’t celebrate too early. On the other hand, a sudden decline in your NPS is also likely to be noise and certainly doesn’t warrant an emergency meeting.

When Are Your Results Reliable?

We have a simple rule for calculating an accurate NPS score: the more customers you have, the more responses you need.

From a purely statistical perspective, Genroe’s guide to calculating NPS error margin will help you determine an appropriate sample size for your survey. For a gut estimate, the more people you receive responses from, the more reliable your Net Promoter Score will become.

There are several other factors that can affect the accuracy of your Net Promoter Score, as well as the qualitative feedback you receive from customers:

• Does the customer segment you survey accurately represent your entire customer base, or is it biased toward a specific type of customer? A diverse customer base requires a larger, more inclusive study than a relatively uniform customer base.
• Are there external factors that could affect how customers respond? For example, do you survey customers right after they pay their monthly invoice, or do you survey them in the middle of their billing period, when cost isn’t as much on their mind?

Measuring Net Promoter Score is an Ongoing Process

Now that we’ve covered the benefits of NPS for an early-stage startup, the best time you should start tracking your NPS and the most important aspects you must focus on, it’s very important to keep in mind that you should conduct Net Promoter Score campaigns continuously.

The market changes very rapidly and in order to keep up with customer needs and overcome competition, you will have to keep improving your product on a regular basis. For this same reason, measuring NPS and gathering feedback should be an ongoing process in your company.

And there are two main unwritten but commonly accepted rules that will help you efficiently receive and act on the received feedback without annoying your customers during this process.

Do Not Collect Too Much Feedback

It’s not uncommon for startups to have a large customer/subscriber base early in their lifecycle. And it might sound reasonable to survey all those customers right away – the more feedback, the better, right? Not necessarily.

Make sure you have enough manpower to cope with the number of responses you will be receiving and more importantly, make sure your team can efficiently act on that feedback.

Startups usually work in small teams and there’s only one person assigned to deal with the customer feedback, among other tasks and responsibilities. Keeping this in mind, it’s highly advised to set a daily limit of surveys that can be successfully dealt with. And instead of surveying the whole customer list right away – break it into small groups and send the surveys on a daily basis over a period of up to 3 months. If your list is very big, then feel free to expand the sending schedule to 6 months.

Do Not Survey Too Often

The regularity of your NPS campaign mostly depends on your business model – how often you update your product and how many customers you have. But there are a couple of milestones 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 product and had enough time to give it a good try. Running NPS campaigns at an early stage of your customers’ lifecycle will help you understand if your product meets their expectations. You will also be able to better comprehend the onboarding process – how easy it was for your customers to get started with your product. Try sending the survey within the first 7 to 30 days after the customer’s initial interaction with the product. If you wait longer, your customer will most likely have forgotten that first experience and you would miss the opportunity to track their first sentiment.

The second – and all the following surveys – can be sent in 30 to 60 days after the initial NPS survey. If your company updates and improves the product regularly, then it makes sense to survey quarterly and check if your customers’ satisfaction has changed during different versions of your product.

If you do not improve your product often, then it’s advised to send surveys once in 6 months, mostly to check on your customers’ happiness. The received feedback will also give you some insights about where your product stands among competitors and what’s new in the market that you can offer.

Whatever schedule you choose, follow the golden rule: Do not over-survey customers and get them annoyed. Otherwise, your score will drop down, even if you have the best product on the market.

Ideal Timing for Different Business Scenarios: Key Pointers

By starting to measure NPS at the right time for your business stage, you can gather valuable insights that drive customer satisfaction and loyalty. For startups, it means beginning as you stabilize and grow. With growing businesses, it’s about leveraging NPS to guide expansion efforts. For established companies, it’s integrating NPS into existing feedback mechanisms to drive continuous improvement. Let’s look into some key pointers:

Startups

For startups, timing is everything when it comes to measuring the Net Promoter Score. In the very early stages, your primary focus should be on developing and refining your product or service. Once you reach a point where you have a stable product and a small but steady stream of customers, you’re approaching the right time to start measuring NPS. This typically happens after you’ve validated your product/market fit and are beginning to see repeat customers.

Look for milestones such as:

• You’re making regular sales and have a baseline of customer interactions.
• You’ve started receiving organic customer feedback through product reviews, support queries, or social media.
• Your team can handle and act on feedback without being overwhelmed by other startup tasks.

Starting NPS measurement at this stage can provide critical insights to guide your growth and help you make customer-centric decisions. And if you didn’t start in a timely manner, still go for it; there is so much more to NPS.

Growing Businesses

As you scale your operations and customer base, the diversity of feedback becomes more valuable. This stage is ideal for implementing NPS because you can gather insights from a broader range of customers and identify trends across different segments.

Consider starting NPS measurement when:

• You have a substantial and growing number of customers.
• Your operations are stable, and you have systems in place to manage and respond to feedback.
• You’re continuously improving your offerings based on feedback and market demands.

At this stage, NPS can help you prioritize improvements, enhance customer experience, and maintain customer loyalty as you expand.

Established Companies

Established businesses should already have some form of customer feedback system in place. NPS can complement these efforts by providing a focused and actionable measure of customer loyalty.

To effectively integrate NPS:

• Implement regular NPS surveys to keep a pulse on customer sentiment.
• Segment your customer base to get detailed insights into different groups and tailor your strategies accordingly.
• Ensure feedback is shared across departments (marketing, product development, customer service) to drive holistic improvements.
• Use NPS to benchmark your performance against industry standards and set internal goals for improvement. This helps adapt to changing customer expectations.

Start Using NPS Early and You’ll Quickly Discover its Value

Even the most successful startups are full of regrets. Sales-driven startups regret not investing in a large sales team earlier. Startups that acquire customers through PPC regret not carrying out a CRO process earlier. It’s natural to look back and see opportunities for improvement.

The earlier your company begins implementing Net Promoter Score, the faster you’ll understand the way your customers feel about your product. You’ll gain insight into your unique selling points, your weaknesses and your strengths earlier.

Better yet, the data you generate and the feedback you receive will get more accurate as you continue to survey your customers, giving you valuable retention data far earlier than most of your competitors.

Get started today with Retently and see the difference NPS can make for your business!

The post When Should You Start Measuring Net Promoter Score? appeared first on Retently CX.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• NPS Surveys Are Short and Perfect for Departing Customers
• NPS Surveys Allow for Direct, Honest Feedback
• NPS Surveys Help You Identify New Weaknesses
• NPS Surveys Can Help You Anticipate and Avoid Bad Reviews
• NPS Surveys Can Help Track Retention Efforts
• Crafting Impactful Exit Surveys with NPS
• How to Harness Customer Exit Survey Data
• Start Sending NPS Surveys With Retently

Exit surveys — surveys you send to customers when they cancel their subscription or don’t upgrade after a free trial, ceasing to use your service — have grown massively in popularity over the last few years, as an increasing number of businesses realize the tremendous value of feedback from departing customers.

Done right, they can provide valuable insights into why customers quit using your product, giving you a grasp of the customer experience and the issues they dealt with along the way. Used properly, Net Promoter Score surveys can serve as highly effective tools for learning more about the perception of your product, service, or business as a whole, letting you use the unlocked data to drive improvements.

While it might seem pointless to survey departing customers on their likelihood of talking about your product to friends, doing so can yield some fascinating insights and a surprising amount of actionable data to help your business grow. For example, the help desk software company Groove experimented successfully with exit surveys, generating insightful responses from around 19% of their canceling customers.

Below, we’ll explain why you should consider using NPS® as your exit survey, from the unique benefits a short and simple survey provides to the discoveries you can make about improving retention using the collected data.

Key Takeaways

• The simplicity of NPS surveys leads to higher response rates from departing customers, encouraging direct and honest feedback.
• Open-ended responses in NPS surveys reveal unknown product weaknesses, providing insights beyond standard exit surveys.
• Identifying highly dissatisfied customers through NPS surveys allows proactive issue resolution, mitigating potential negative publicity.
• Tracking NPS scores over time helps identify trends and informs decisions to enhance customer retention efforts.

NPS Surveys Are Short and Perfect for Departing Customers

Response rates for exit surveys tend to be on the low side — actually, very much on the low side. In Groove’s example, the company’s exit survey achieved a 1.3% completion rate, meaning just over one out of every 100 canceling customers bothered to provide feedback.

Even by the already low standards of conventional email surveys, a 1.3% completion rate isn’t good. It’s particularly worrying for small businesses, which may not have enough customers to ever extract meaningful insights from such an insignificant amount of survey data.

For example, if your SaaS business has 1,000 paying clients and loses 10-20 every month, it could take years to generate enough data from your exit surveys to make considerable changes to your product and improve customer retention.

In short, conventional exit surveys aren’t very effective. However, for businesses with tens of thousands of paying customers, they’re acceptable. For smaller SaaS businesses, the low response rate makes them an ineffective source of information.

One of the reasons is the complexity of many online surveys. Customers leaving your business don’t want to spend more time on you, making it highly unlikely they’ll fill in one page after another of text fields, checkboxes and radio buttons.

NPS surveys, on the other hand, are short and simple. They only ask a single question — one that customers can answer in just a few seconds. And the feedback aspect of the survey is an optional extra, reducing the friction involved in completing the survey as a departing customer. This makes NPS valuable for businesses of all sizes and industries.

Instead of wasting 10-15 minutes on filling in a conventional survey, an NPS survey allows your departing customers to speak their minds without a significant time commitment.

NPS Surveys Allow for Direct, Honest Feedback

Have you ever found yourself filling in a survey and constantly choosing “none of the above” from the list of available options?

Many customer satisfaction surveys, including exit surveys, are built around multiple-choice questions. As a departing customer, there’s little room for you to deviate from the path the survey has chosen — a path that might not include the information you’d like to share.

Net Promoter Score is different. Instead of bombarding departing customers with one multiple-choice question after another — each with a drop-down field or series of radio buttons — it gives them a chance to say what they’re actually thinking.

It means that instead of being limited in their ability to provide feedback by the predefined options, departing customers can explain exactly why they left.

There are plenty of scenarios that can lead to customer churn. It might be the case that their trial expired before they were ready to commit, your marketing promises did not match the reality or they lacked proper guidance from your support team.

They might have thought a specific aspect of your product was poorly designed, making it a pain to use on a regular basis. Or, they might have found a better deal elsewhere (if you’re lucky, there’s a chance they might even tell you which competitor they switched to).

Perhaps they have experienced recurring software glitches or issues integrating your product with something they depend on to run their business. Or, maybe they don’t need your product anymore and canceled just because it was a sensible financial decision.

All of these examples of specific feedback create opportunities for you to improve your product and reduce the risk of losing customers for similar reasons in the future. They also give you a chance to reach out to lost customers and win them back.

Any survey that allows direct, honest and comprehensive feedback beats a series of radio buttons and drop-down menus. Since NPS surveys are so simple and open, they allow departing customers to provide a level of detail and insight that traditional exit surveys can’t match.

NPS Surveys Help You Identify New Weaknesses

Your product has weaknesses you probably just don’t know about. This is true no matter how successful your marketing is, how substantial your monthly recurring revenue might be, or how little churn you have.

While products tend to attract customers with similar needs, each of them has certain unique requirements that can make one solution better than a similar one. Often, the small differences between Product A and Product B are enough to make a customer leave one for the other.

We’ve covered the importance of using an NPS survey to quantify and prioritize known causes of customer churn above. But NPS exit surveys can also be useful in helping you identify new, previously unknown reasons for losing customers.

There’s a common belief in technology that people within a company — employees, founders, and others working on a product or service daily — are within a “bubble.” They live and breathe the product, giving them a viewpoint that doesn’t always match the customers’.

This means that consumers are often more aware of your product’s weaknesses than you are, including drawbacks you might have never thought of.

Provide a conventional, restrictive dropdown survey with the typical cancellation reasons, and you’ll understand why you’re losing some customers. Deliver an open-ended NPS survey, and there’s a chance departing customers will teach you new things about your own business.

NPS Surveys Can Help You Anticipate and Avoid Bad Reviews

Beyond helping you improve your product and increase retention, an NPS exit survey can also help your business identify departing customers that are most likely to spread negative reviews about your business.

Since NPS surveys are open-ended, they make it easy for highly frustrated customers to vent their feelings. Often, a long, detailed, and overly negative response to an NPS survey can be a precursor to a string of bad tweets, reviews, or social media coverage of your business.

Data shows that bad customer service experiences are more likely to be shared than good ones, making it essential to have a warning system in place if a departing customer leaves on bad terms.

This creates several opportunities for your business. First, suppose a customer cancels and leaves a detailed, highly negative response to your NPS survey. In this case, you have the chance to prepare for a negative backlash before it happens (if the customer decides to post on social media).

You also have the perfect opportunity to reach out and attempt to resolve the situation, giving the customer a chance to part on friendly rather than hostile terms.

This approach also keeps the door open to a frustrated or disappointed departing customer returning to your business in the future. As we outlined in our guide on converting Detractors into Promoters, winning back an unhappy customer can be surprisingly easy.

NPS Surveys Can Help Track Retention Efforts

Additionally, by using NPS as your exit survey, you can track changes in customer satisfaction and measure the success of your customer retention efforts. Apart from being a quick and simple surveying method, NPS results can be easily analyzed and reported on. 

By comparing NPS scores over time across different customer segments, you can identify any potential challenges or trends. With this information, you can spot the factors that impact retention, make informed decisions about your product and build stronger relationships with your customers.

A decline in NPS scores is a clear red flag signaling roadblocks in the customer experience. By addressing it quickly, you can prevent customers from leaving and tailor retention strategies accordingly.

Crafting Impactful Exit Surveys with NPS

Designing an effective exit survey that incorporates NPS involves striking a balance between simplicity and comprehensiveness. Here are some actionable tips to help you out:

1. Start strong with NPS

Begin your survey with the NPS question: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?” This straightforward question sets the tone for the rest of the survey and quickly engages the respondent. Starting with this question primes the respondent to think about their overall experience in a broad sense, which can inform their responses to subsequent questions.

2. Keep It Short and Sweet

The length of the survey is particularly impactful for customers who are already on their way out. Long surveys can feel burdensome, reducing the quality and completion rates of your feedback. Focus on asking only the most essential questions that can provide actionable insights.

Follow the NPS question with an open-ended question inquiring about the specific reasons behind their rating to capture nuances that a numerical score alone cannot convey.

Additionally, consider including questions related to key areas like overall satisfaction, specific experiences, or reasons for departure, but ensure these complement the NPS focus without overwhelming the respondent. While multiple-choice questions can speed up the process, it’s the open-ended questions that allow for more detailed feedback if the respondent wants to share more.

3. Enhance Relevance with Conditional Logic

Incorporate conditional logic into your exit surveys to make them more relevant to each respondent. This means adjusting questions based on previous answers to enhance feedback quality.

For example, if a customer cites pricing as a reason for leaving, follow up with, “What aspect of our pricing model did you find unsatisfactory?” In case service issues are cited, the next question might be, “Can you describe your recent interaction with our support team?” This targeted approach ensures feedback is specific to the customer’s experience.

4. Optimize with A/B Testing

Optimization shouldn’t stop once your survey is live. Regularly review and refine your questions based on the feedback received. Create different versions of your survey and test them with various customer segments.

For example, you can compare a version with open-ended questions to one that starts with multiple-choice questions. Analyzing the response rates and the quality of feedback will help you find the best format. Use these insights to refine your survey by removing redundant questions and adding new ones to fill any gaps.

How to Harness Customer Exit Survey Data

Collecting exit survey data is only the first step; knowing how to leverage this information effectively can make a significant difference in your business. Here’s how to put your exit survey insights into action.

Enhance Predictive Analysis for Churn Prevention

Predictive analysis can be a game-changer in spotting and reducing potential customer churn. By combining NPS with other metrics like engagement levels and customer lifetime value, you can develop a robust model to flag at-risk customers.

For instance, you might create a CLV-NPS matrix to identify customers who are both valuable and dissatisfied. If a high-value customer gives a low NPS score, it means they are unhappy and at risk of leaving. This should trigger an immediate follow-up from your team to address their concerns and improve their satisfaction.

To further refine your predictive model, cross-reference exit survey responses with your broader customer experience data. This approach can help you identify recurring issues that contribute to churn. Focusing on the feedback from high-value customers will provide insights into why these important users are leaving, allowing you to adjust your strategies to keep them around.

Implementing a Proactive Feedback Loop

Creating a proactive feedback loop based on exit survey data ensures that customer issues are addressed swiftly and effectively. This system starts with the immediate routing of survey data to your CRM, followed by a tagging and prioritization process. Your retention team then analyzes this feedback to craft personalized retention offers or solutions.

For example, if a customer cites poor customer service as their reason for leaving, your team can reach out with a special offer and a promise of improved support. If pricing is the issue, you might offer a discount or a more suitable pricing plan.

Promptly reaching out to the customer to discuss their feedback shows that you value their input and are dedicated to resolving their issues. By addressing the specific reasons for departure, you can significantly increase the chances of retaining the customer.

Building Long-Term Improvements

Using exit survey data isn’t just about short-term fixes; it’s also about long-term improvements. The insights gained from these surveys should feed into your broader business strategy, informing product development, customer service enhancements, and overall user experience improvements.

Regularly reviewing and acting on exit survey feedback helps create a culture of continuous improvement within your company. It ensures that you are always evolving to meet customer needs and expectations.

Start Sending NPS Surveys With Retently

The benefits of Net Promoter Score extend far beyond surveying departing customers as they leave your business. From quantifying the demand for new features to discovering how likely your paying customers are to recommend your company, NPS has a variety of advantages. It is a powerful tool for gaining a competitive advantage and driving success in a fast-paced business environment.

Ready to get started? Create your Retently account and start surveying your customers right away to learn more about how you can improve retention and fuel growth. Check our 7-day free trial, with no credit card or long-term contract obligation required.

The post Should You Use NPS For Your Exit Survey? appeared first on Retently CX.