Ask Abby Nicely: How Fast Can I Start Sending NPS Surveys?
Learn the Essentials to Start Sending NPS Surveys Within 24 Hours
Dear Abby,
My boss wants to start sending NPS surveys yesterday. What do I do now?“I’d like to go live ASAP!”“If it were up to me, we would’ve started emailing clients yesterday!’“I’d like to start sending surveys by the end of the week.”These are some of the more popular responses when our Customer Success Team asks new clients when they would like to put AskNicely into production.The truth is, yes, you can go live with AskNicely in as little as a day — but, if you want to truly build a bullet-proof NPS strategy, it requires coming to the table prepared.
Here are the essentials you’ll need to start sending meaningful surveys in as little as 24 hours:
Be Prepared.
Understand the state of your data.
First and foremost you need to understand the who behind your survey program. Who are you going to survey and why? Where is that data going to come from?Hopefully, you have a solid CRM in place with clean information on your customers. We all want perfect data, but we also understand that no one is perfect. But, the closer you get to that, the bigger impact NPS surveys can have on your business. Knowing the state of your data can help you better segment and set expectations on the outcomes of your program. Also, clean data will make it easier to understand who to talk with to capture your customer journey and trigger points — the next step in preparing to send your NPS surveys.The more granular, more accurate, and more complete your customer data is the bigger your NPS business impact will be.
Map your customer journeys using one on one interviews.
Find your most recent enthusiasts and your most recent critics. Schedule one on one interviews with at least one of each. In the interview, walk the participant through each touchpoint in their journey: from the problem they wanted to solve, to how they chose you to solve it, through to results and any other relevant post-sale engagement points. The idea is to map out everything from their point of view from before they even got to know you up until now.As they recall these major events and triggers along the way, help them articulate how responses from NPS surveys could inform their actions and potential CX improvements at that moment-of-truth. Keep in mind that these moments might be from other channels such as a review or a referral from a friend or even a blog post or advertisement.
Here are some tips to ensure you are making the most of your time and theirs:
- Before the interview, draw your assumed customer journey and trigger points. Then during the interview, pay attention to the gaps between what you think your customer’s journey looks like and what these customers experienced. Dig deeper into those gaps to find out why they exist.
- Be prepared with memory triggers such as brochures, website pages, registration forms, etc. Your interviewees might need some guiding. But keep it to a minimum as you don’t want to lead them to your conclusion.
- If they are having trouble with creating a step by step timeline (some customer journeys take months) then focus on the most salient and memorable events to them.
- Focus on the facts and the customer’s actual behavior rather than your or their opinions.
Create customer drivers
Once you’ve completed a few of these interviews, you’ll have a clear list of triggers and events. Take these lists and organize them into broader categories. Here’s an example: if you are in telecom and your customer said, “I had an issue with my service. It took three calls, a thirty-minute wait, and two redirects to get to speak to a human being.” This may be grouped under service call system. Try to stay relatively granular. For example, grouping it under customer service might be too broad as it could include the way the call connected, the way the person answered, or the outcome of the service call.You can now use drivers to help you create categories of customers to survey daily. For example, one company ensures they survey highly-active, active, and dormant customers every day.You can use these customer drivers to inform workflows that create business results.
Have a plan for closing the feedback loop
Know at least generally what you are going to do with your responses. Are you going to personalize some or all of your reactions to surveys? Who is going to be notified when a promoter comes in? What will you do with your passives? Will you only address your detractors? You can read one company’s plan for addressing their respondents here.AskNicely provides you with the tools to not just collect feedback but to take action on it. From workflows that can automate following up on blank comments, to our Salesforce Chatter workflow and Slack for internal workflows, we can help you better action feedback received from your NPS surveys. You can even set certain criteria to alert an internal employee of a score based on data entry points. For example, if there was a customer service issue and you integrate AskNicely NPS with Freshdesk, then you can get to the right customer service employee at the right moment to address the issue immediately.Or you can have certain responses trigger a workflow in Salesforce that notifies an Account Executive to follow up on a problem with a key account.Reach out to promoters to thank them for the positive feedback and ask for a review or referral. Knowing how you’re going to close the loop before you put your surveys out there will give you the greatest business impact.
Connect your integration, or have a CSV file ready
Get your technical resource to assist in connecting to your CRM integration. Here’s a list of our integrations. We also have a variety of help documents to ensure your integration goes smoothly. If you don’t have a CRM we can integrate with, you can always prepare a CSV of clients you would like to survey. Once you have this piece of the puzzle set, the AskNicely team can assist in showing you how to send surveys.
Set up your domain
By default, all of your surveys will be sent from a no-reply AskNicely domain. While this often works, our most successful clients send from their own domains. Think about it this way, all of your customers know exactly who you are. By using your company’s domain, you’re not only getting that inbox recognition to ensure that your surveys are being delivered, but you’re also getting client recognition.
Customize your survey
One of the greatest things about NPS is that it’s a great ROE tool: return on experience. We can optimize this by customizing the details of your survey. Having your surveys come from a customer-facing name often leads to a higher response rate, for example. AskNicely makes it as easy as possible to get customer feedback in the hands of the right person at the right time and in a way that makes sense to each customer.Remember, AskNicely is as easy as you make it — and it’s pretty simple. By having these essentials ready to go, you’ll be more than reaching out to your customers in no time. You’ll be better able to action your feedback for real business impact.Speaking of reaching out, don’t hesitate to send your questions on over!
