SaaS Startups Benefit from Using Net Promoter Score

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October 2017

Are your customers satisfied?

SaaS companies are agile in evolving their products and processes. To help drive product development, you need customer feedback to uncover pain points and prioritize feature requests.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) empowers SaaS teams with the knowledge to propel customer satisfaction. Learning more about your customers starts with collecting accurate data. Simon Collin, founder of customer satisfaction platform SightMill, agrees:

“Choosing the right metric to focus on shouldn’t be about usage or click-through rate but about customer experience. Happy customers make great advocates, and NPS is a great metric for overall customer satisfaction that can be used as a focus point for all your teams.”

It’s time for your team to benefit from user feedback. Below are three reasons how NPS can help your SaaS team.

1. Gather Valuable Customer Insights
In business, you don’t want to leave things to chance. Guessing whether your users enjoy your platform doesn’t aid your team members or your customers.

Instead, your goal is to build a pipeline where you can capture real data from your customers. And that’s where NPS steps in.

NPS is more than just a random survey collector. It helps your team gather data at specific points in the customer journey. So, you can measure customer satisfaction after a new product launch or during a revamped rewards program.

Web-based NPS surveys can sit within a web application or site and provide instant feedback to a new feature or section of an app; this web-based feedback is useful for A/B testing and to see the impact of new changes before rolling out to your entire customer base.

Looking for insights about your improved checkout process? You can set up a web-based survey after a customer purchases.

As an alternative, email-based NPS surveys give customers the flexibility to offer feedback without leaving their inboxes. Plus, on-the-go users can easily answer a simple question from their smartphones and other mobile devices.

Avoid making wild assumptions about customer satisfaction. Let NPS provide your team with factual information to take your growth to the next level.

2. Measure Satisfaction Over Time
When referencing NPS, many SaaS teams implement the one-and-done rule. That’s when they accumulate data for a specific purpose and then deem the information worthless after one use.

It’s a flawed method that misses the primary objective of NPS.

Your aim is not only to measure customer satisfaction, but also to monitor the progress your business makes over a period of time. Rather than tossing your NPS data out, you should retain it to identify any substantial changes. With NPS, focus on the trend rather than the absolute score.

Spotting trends leads to better strategic decisions. Sophia Bernazzani, a content marketer at HubSpot, offers her perspective:

“[T]he qualitative NPS feedback you receive can start a conversation about new products and services, company policies, or promotions you could offer to improve customer perception—thus making them more likely to recommend you to a friend.”

Let’s say in early June your NPS is +60, but when you measure it in late August, the score falls to +45. It’s an indication that brand loyalty is dropping for your company and your team should investigate what’s behind the trend; analyzing verbatim feedback comments will help teams improve their service or product and start to address any underlying issues.

It’s essential to track NPS over time. You’ll give your business a competitive advantage.

3. Act on Customer Feedback
Most SaaS teams fall into a common trap. They collect a bunch of customer responses, and then the feedback sits in a folder on the supervisor’s desktop.

All the data becomes stale and the team must start the process again. As a result, your SaaS wastes both money and time—precious resources your team needs.

That’s because collecting user feedback is just the first step of understanding customer satisfaction. It’s important to transform that data into actionable solutions.

Using real-time data provides your team an opportunity to make improvements immediately. This ensures customers receive the best customer support and earn results from your application.

“Unless you take action based on the data gathered, you are unlikely to see any benefits. Your final Net Promoter Score is more of a barometer than anything else. It provides an ongoing indication of how well you are meeting the needs of your customers and responding to their feedback,” writes digital marketer Daryn Collier.

Support your team in taking action by creating a simple system for managing customer feedback. Decide what information is a priority and who will lead the project.

NPS is only as valuable as you make it. Encourage your teams to take action on the insights gathered.

Time To Take Control
NPS is an essential tool for any SaaS team seeking more growth. You’ll learn what satisfies your customers and, in return, help your team prioritize key product decisions.

Start understanding your customers better: sign up for SightMill today.