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Customer-Service Survey Template using NPS

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As I mentioned last Friday, I attended a webinar, "The Ultimate Question: How to Measure & Build Customer Loyalty in the Support Center", presented by Fred Reichheld on the use of the Net Promoter Score® within customer support centers. Fred reviewed the thinking behind NPS and presented this questionnaire for use as a customer-service survey:

Considering only your most recent support experience, how likely would you be to recommend our customer support to a friend or colleague? (0 is least likely, 10 is most likely)
( ) 0  ( ) 1  ( ) 2  ( ) 3  ( ) 4  ( ) 5  ( ) 6  ( ) 7  ( ) 8  ( ) 9  ( ) 10

Please give your reasons for the rating above.
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________

Considering your complete experience with our company, how likely would you be to recommend our products to a friend or colleague? (0 is least likely, 10 is most likely)
( ) 0  ( ) 1  ( ) 2  ( ) 3  ( ) 4  ( ) 5  ( ) 6  ( ) 7  ( ) 8  ( ) 9  ( ) 10

Please give your reasons for the rating above.
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________

Fred described this as a bottom-up measure of NPS. He pointed out two sources of bias: the most recent transaction biases the respondent's thinking about the overall relationship, and the fact that the survey is sponsored by the firm gives scores an upward bias as respondents are less negative than they would be if the survey was anonymous.

In contrast to this, Fred described a top-down measure of NPS as a double-blind survey of customers of the sponsor and its competitors. This top-down average score will be different because of the biases inherent in the bottom-up method.  Just as accounting reports can legitimately differ, these two measures, to Fred's mind, have valid, legitimate differences.

Given Fred's advocacy of short surveys, I was disappointed that he didn't point out that customer-support surveys really shine when additional data is integrated behind the scenes into the survey. This preserves the survey experience for respondents while enabling the survey analyst to study performance across many additional factors that affect customer loyalty, such as demographics and product ownership. This provides a much richer source of information for the organization to use to adapt and grow.

[Net Promoter Score is a registered trademark of Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company and Satmetrix.]