Alternatives to the standard NPS question

Published on the 25th of July 2020

We're all too familiar with the standard NPS question. "On a scale from 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend X to a friend or family". Now we don't want to say that NPS is wrong, we just think that often there is a more natural and friendly way to ask your visitors and customers for feedback.

NPS measures loyalty

A net Promoter Score measures customer loyalty. And if that is specifically what you want to measure, then definitely use NPS. In our experience you can get a lot better actionable feedback if you ask customers questions in a more natural way. Which brings us to a joke.

A horse and a duck are sitting in a bar

"Why the long face?" asks the bartender to the hor... No just kidding, we might do a jokes post later.

The bar part is actually essential, because it's an environment where you would talk to your friends, which brings us to the point of crafting good survey questions. Just pretend you're talking to a friend. In a bar, in the sports club, while on a walk.

Do you ask them: "On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you...". Probably not. Instead you ask questions like "What do you think about that surfboard you bought last week?" or "How was your first week on the new job?". Real questions from and to real humans.

Good survey questions

Take that as a starting point and good survey questions become a lot easier. Not "If you would give our new pricing a rating..." but "What do you think about our new pricing?". Here's a few more:

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Check out our examples page for more examples and in which scenarios you would use these.

So when should I use NPS?

In our product management past we have used NPS for tracking the Net Promoter Score over time. And later on we noticed that tracking loyalty was just part of what was important and eventually we moved to a homegrown solution. That's why we wanted to share this with you to make sure you understand what's what. Always feel free to reach out, we love discussing any topic around getting customer feedback.

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