How to build

your first
transactional
NPS project
A beginner’s guide to launching transactional
customer experience research
 Table of 3 Introduction

contents
4 What is NPS?

6 Value of transactional feedback

7 Designing your transactional NPS project

8 Determine your touchpoints

9 Choose your distribution channels

10 Design your survey

13 Calculate your performance

17 Conclusion

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Introduction Customer centricity is critical to the growth of your organization. No company can become a leader without listening to
customers. But overall customer preference and loyalty is built on the smaller interactions between your company and
your customer – from learning about your products, to purchasing, to fixing a support issue. These transactional moments
demand transactional feedback.

Much like it sounds, transactional feedback is the practice of soliciting feedback after customer interactions. Transactional
feedback is not a full CX program, but it’s a good place to start. Done well, transactional feedback can help you:

yy Measure and optimize customer interactions

yy Improve customer experience

yy Identify which parts of the customer journey need improvement

yy Build more loyal customers and capture more market share

We’ll show to get started with one of the most common types of feedback: transactional Net Promoter Score® (NPS).
This ebook will cover:

yy What is NPS?

yy Value of transactional feedback

yy Designing your first transactional NPS project

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What is NPS? Net Promoter Score®, commonly referred to as NPS® is a well-known metric used to evaluate customer loyalty. NPS was
developed by Fred Reichheld, a Bain Fellow and founder of Bain & Company’s Loyalty Practice. NPS uses a simple question
and rating scale.

Based on your most recent support call, on a scale from

(score 9-10)
0-10,how likely are you to recommend COMPANY to a
PROMOTORS
are loyal enthusiasts
who will keep buying
and fuel growth by
friend or colleague?
referring others.
Not at all likely Extremely likely

PASSIVES (score
7-8) are satisfied 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
but unenthusiastic
customers who
are vulnerable to
competitive offerings.

DETRACTORS (score
0-6) are unhappy Based on the rating, respondents are divided into three groups:
customers who can
damage your brand
yy PROMOTERS are respondents who provide a score of 9 or 10.
and impede growth
through negative word
yy PASSIVES are respondents who respond with a score of 7 or 8.
of mouth.
yy DETRACTORS are respondents who respond with a score of 0 to 6.

- = NPS To find your score, subtract the percentage of promoters from the percentage of detractors. For example, if 10% of our
% %
respondents are detractors, 20% are passives, and 70% are promoters, your NPS score would be 70-10 = 60.

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What is NPS? ROI OF NPS

NPS is a popular metric for customer experience for good reason. Organizations that have long-term profitable growth have
Net Promoter Scores that are double those of the average organization.1 Industry leaders like Southwest Airlines and American
Companies with long- Express have an NPS of 50% while the average company has an NPS of only 5%-10%.2

term profitable growth Companies who use NPS often create better products, as they are more in touch with the customer. For example, Logitech
have average NPS scores learned about design flaws in the their MX 5000 keyboard and mouse which were fixed during the next iteration of the product.3
twice as high as typical
companies.

1. http://www.netpromotersystem.com/about/how-is-nps-related-to-growth.aspx
2. https://www.bain.com/insights/nps-the-next-six-sigma-the-net-promoter-score/
3. https://www.bain.com/insights/one-number-that-says-it-all-linkedin

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Value of Capturing transactional feedback is critical. Unfortunately, even the best designed products and services encounter problems,
and these problems can occur with every customer interaction. While such issues are unavoidable, your response can be the
transactional difference between retaining a loyal customer and losing them to a competitor.

feedback Negative customer experiences are costly. At best, your customers may tell others about their negative experience, damaging
your brand. At worst, they will leave altogether. In fact, 95 percent of dissatisfied customers tell others about their bad
experience4 and 67% of customers who switch brands cite negative experiences as a major factor.5

95% of dissatisfied Poor experiences cost US businesses $62 billion of revenue each year.6 On the other hand, improving customer loyalty can
customers tell others help recoup these costs. Attracting a new customer can be upto 25 times costlier than retaining an existing one.7 Capturing
about their experience. transactional feedback via helps you measure and grow customer loyalty, ultimately saving your organization money and
protecting your brand.
67% of consumers cite
a negative experience
as one of the primary
reasons for switching
brands.

4. https://d16cvnquvjw7pr.cloudfront.net/resources/whitepapers/Zendesk_WP_Customer_Service_and_Business_Results.pdf
5. https://www.slideshare.net/ekolsky/cx-for-executives
6. https://www.newvoicemedia.com/blog/the-62-billion-customer-service-scared-away-infographic
7. https://hbr.org/2014/10/the-value-of-keeping-the-right-customers

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Designing your Transactional feedback gives you vital insights about each touchpoint - including knowledge of what you are doing well and
where you have opportunities to improve. We’ll walk through the steps you need to put together a transactional NPS project
transactional in four steps:

NPS project yy Determine your touchpoints

yy Choose your distribution channels

yy Design your survey

yy Calculate your performance DETERMINE CHOOSE DESIGN CALCULATE

TOUCHPOINTS DISTRIBUTION SURVEY PERFORMANCE

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 ST E P 1 D E T E R M I N E YO U R TO U C H P O I N TS

Depending on your organization and industry, you may have several customer interactions or only a handful. During this
step, decide which touchpoint will give you the most value. It may be helpful to map out the touchpoints. Some potential
touchpoints could include:

yy In-store purchase yy Social media

yy Online purchase yy Industry events

yy Online cart abandonment yy Client meetings

yy Returns process yy Direct mail

yy Service installation yy Billing

yy Help center call yy Loyalty program

yy Chat support

To illustrate this process, let’s use retail as an example. We’ve heard some complaints about the the purchase process,
which makes this an ideal touchpoint to explore with further research.

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 ST E P 2 C H O O S E YO U R D I ST R I B U T I O N C H A N N E L S

Now that you know which touchpoint you want to measure, you can decide on the best way to reach your customer.
There are several options to distribute your survey. Some of the most common include:

PHYSICAL WEBSITE EMAIL SMS

With this method, With this method, Depending on an action, like Similar to email, this
respondents would either respondents trigger a a purchase or a customer method is for sending
type in a URL, scan a survey based on some service call, an email would respondents a survey
barcode or QR code to behavior on your website. be triggered to respondents via text. For example,
capture feedback. This For example, if a website with the survey. This is you may want to solicit
method is most common visitor abandons their useful if you have the email feedback after an in-
on receipts, but could be shopping cart, you address of the respondent person event. Using
used in other ways, like could trigger a survey and they meet the criteria SMS texting, attendees
easy-to-remember URLs to solicit feedback. for the touchpoint you are could provide ratings
posted in store, feedback trying to measure. and immediate feedback.
cards with a code. You could
also use a tablet to create
a kiosk for customers to
submit feedback in store.

Going back to our retail example, let’s look at the different distribution options. We’ve identified that the purchase experience
is troublesome for customers. Based on distribution options, the most practical method is to use receipt surveys to better
understand that specific touchpoint.

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 ST E P 3 D E S I G N YO U R S U RV E Y

Now that you know which touchpoint you want feedback on, you’re ready to design your survey. While you can be more
elaborate, the basics of an NPS survey are composed of the NPS question and a few follow up questions about the rating
and anything else you want to include.

First, ask the NPS question. Include a second one-text question for additional context around ratings.

For our receipt survey, our survey might look something like this:

Pro tip: Shorter surveys

have higher response
rates. Based on your in-store purchase interaction, how
likely are you to recommend RETAIL STORE to a
friend or colleague?
Not at all likely Extremely likely

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Please share why you gave us that rating.

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 You may want additional detail about the rating or interaction. These results can help you delve deeper into what may be driving
high or low NPS scores.

Which part of your experience was most responsible for your score?

Availability of products

The overall process

Staff friendliness

Store Cleanliness

Other

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 Following up with respondents is a great way to defuse any service concerns and help your customers feel heard. For this
survey, customers get the option to request outreach.

Would you like someone from RETAIL STORE to contact you about
your experience with us?

Yes, please call me

Yes, please email me

No, there is no need to contact me

Respondents can include a phone number or email address for additional feedback.

Please enter the phone number where you would like Please enter the email address where you would like
to be contacted. (US and Canada only) to be contacted.

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 ST E P 4 CA LC U L AT E YO U R P E R FO R M A N C E

Calculating NPS is simple. You’ll categorize respondents into one of three categories based on their responses:

yy PROMOTERS are respondents who provide a score of 9 or 10.

yy PASSIVES are respondents who respond with a score of 7 or 8.

yy DETRACTORS are respondents who respond with a score of 0 to 6.

Your score is the percentage of detractors subtracted from the percentage of promoters. For our retail example, we have
10% of promoters, 30% are passive, and 60% are detractors. Our score would be -50% (10% - 60%).

Company:
In-Store Purchase NPS Report RETAIL STORE

12+38+50z
NPS VALUE

-50
-100 100

NPS GROUPS
10% 30% 60%
Promoters Passive Detractors

Based on your most recent interaction, on a scale from 0-10, how likely are you
to recommend RETAIL STORE to a friend or colleague?

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 Company:
In-Store Purchase NPS Report RETAIL STORE

NPS - PROMOTOR NPS - PASSIVES NPS - DETRACTORS

Please tell us why you gave us that rating on the last question.

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Continuing to run the Breakdowns of detractors, passives, and promoters are insightful. The percentage of detractors helps you know how painful
NPS survey provides this particular experience is while the percentage of passive respondents helps you know how many people are indifferent
about a particular experience. Insights from both groups as well as from your promoters can help you identify what is going well
valuable feedback to see
and what is not.
of implemented changes
impact NPS ratings. Based on the results, above, we’ve confirmed our theory that there are major issues with the purchase experience. Our next
steps would be to further analyze the data to determine any commonalities between responses.

The deepest insights of the customer experience are hidden within text comments. With NPS, you can view key topics that are
coming from your detractors and promoters. Depending on the amount of survey responses, reading through each comment
can be tedious. Solutions like Qualtrics Text iQ can automate this resource and categorize responses.

After analyzing the data, you may find a few significant themes. For our retail store, we found that most shoppers were
frustrated that there were never enough cashiers, and that the checkout process took too long. We can now take action on that
feedback to improve the customer experience through adjusting the amount of cashiers and retraining them on checkouts.

15 S E E H OW I T WO R KS W I T H T E X T I Q
Conclusion Transactional NPS surveys are valuable tools to dive deep into the customer experience for any touchpoint. If you are new
to customer experience, transactional feedback is a great place to start and then evolve your program.

Investing in transactional research has significant payoffs. Unhappy customers are costly from damaging your brand or even
taking their business elsewhere. Understanding critical interactions helps you save and retain your customers. When it costs
25 times more to attract new customers than retain existing ones, why not invest in customer research?

G E T I N TO U C H

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