How to Use NPS to Increase Growth for your SaaS

NPS is the newest metric that SaaS teams and leaders love because it tells so much about how your product is currently performing to increase growth from the perspective of your customers; the most important factor. Your Net Promoter Score gives you a clear idea of customer loyalty satisfaction with your product and how likely those customers are to help you with organically reaching new customers. It’s a measure of both satisfaction with your and customer success. If customers are finding value within your product and it’s helping them solve pain points, they are more likely to promote your product. NPS is a big opportunity for teams to learn how to improve their product to reduce churn, increase customer retention, and market and sell better.

“NPS creates a view of customer loyalty. The absolute score is less important than the trend. We learn from both promoters and detractors. Most importantly, we have been able to associate NPS improvement with growth.”– Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric in a letter to stakeholders

How do you calculate NPS?

Through simple SaaS customer surveys that ask something like “How satisfied are you with this product?” and give them an option to score your product 1-10.

• Customers that give you a 1-6 are detractors
• Customers that give you a 7 or 8 are neutral on your product
• Customers that give you a 9 or 10 are promoters and are most likely to spread the word about your product.

To get your NPS score just subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters.

There are plenty of ways you can leverage your NPS score to increase the growth of your SaaS, customer loyalty and the success of your sales and marketing efforts. Here are a few:

Follow up with promoters, neutrals, and detractors for direct feedback:

One of the greatest parts of NPS is it gives your team a clear view of how your users feel about your product overall and it helps you identify who is where on the scale so you can get better feedback. One thing you can do to help the growth of your product and make better decisions on how to improve your product is to reach out to those in the detractor, neutral, and promoter groups and ask for further feedback either via email or push notifications. Your messaging can change for each group to get the information you want. For example, you will want to ask detractors what they dislike about your product and what they want to see improved. You can ask neutrals the same questions and ask them to identify their favorite feature. You can ask promoters what are the “winning” features for them to better understand your product’s strengths. With this information, you show users that you care, you know what strengths to capitalize in your messaging for sales and marketing and what your team needs to improve to ensure that customers don’t bounce. It’s more specific and targeted in getting what information you want from customers than just asking for “feedback” or “questions and concerns”.

Use NPS to re-engage customers and keep them in the loop:

Asking customers for NPS and feedback is an opportunity to engage them and let them know that your team is working hard to help make their experience with your product better. When customers feel connected to your product and they feel like your team cares about their experience, they are more likely to stick around. Your team can re-engage them by following up and letting them know you hear their points and are working to implement their suggestions. Beamer is a great way to ask for both NPS and update users on progress. Beamer is a changelog that sits within your website or app where you can share updates for new features, bug fixes, new content, news, etc. You can ask for NPS with Beamer within your product and then follow up with users by sharing news about updates and new features on your Beamer feed where users can leave comments and reactions. You can also flip on push notifications to bring users back when you post updates. Beamer is the perfect way to boost engagement and let users know you are taking their suggestions to work. Showing customers you are about their satisfaction keeps churn low and engagement high.

Work with detractors to improve your product and reduce churn:

Detractors are a bummer but can really tell you a lot about your product because you’re essentially identifying a customer before they bounce and you get an opportunity to determine why they are leaving and unhappy with your product. It is good to target detractors specifically and ask to work out what is not meeting their expectations, deliver extra customer service, and try to turn detractors into happy customers. You can learn a lot about how to improve your product to reduce churn and knowing who is about to churn out gives your team the opportunity to step in and keep them on board with exceptional customer service. Without tracking NPS, it’s hard to identify this point in the customer cycle.  

Target sub-par scorers with feature discovery and customer service to ensure customer success:

With that, you can use this information and the identification of detractors and neutrals to target these customers with feature discovery and better service to ensure their success before they bounce out. Feature discovery is where you show customers within your product new or existing features to keep them engaged and show them value in your product that may not have experienced before. Sometimes customers are unhappy because they haven't learned to use the product of its full potential yet or are missing key value points of the product or new updates. Product discovery helps with this to reduce churn and turn the opinion of customers. You can also step in and send a specific customer service representative to chat to email with detractors and neutral to support them in adopting the product so they do not bounce.

Use promoters’ feedback in your marketing and sales process:

Promoters are not only an indication of what your team is doing right but also an opportunity to capitalize on very-valuable peer to peer marketing. 84% of consumers say they trust recommendations from family, friends, and colleagues, making peer recommendations the most trusted source for information on new products. Having your top customers recommend your product is very valuable to your marketing team. After identifying your promoters, it’s important to ask them specifically why they like your product and use that information in your sales and marketing process. They know what the valuable parts of your product are and what sells it for them, they know what will sell it for others as well. You can better refine your messaging, focus, and offers with their help and feedback. A great example is getting quotes for your homepage and other marketing material from your promoters on your product’s best features, impact on their business, and overall value.

Use promoters as case studies:

Most directly, you can use your promoters as your case studies. Case studies are very important and many SaaS B2B customers will be looking during their research phase of the buying process for proof of success and reviews in the form of case studies. You will want to ask the promoter if you can write a case study to display on your website and use throughout your sales process. You can work with promoters to get testimonials, important internal data to show their success with your product, and more to build strong case studies. Being able to identify promoters through NPS is perfect because you already know who to work with for case studies and more.

Offer internal rewards to promoters who share your product with other leads:

Your promoters are very useful on social media as well. As they are most likely to promote your product, you may want to incentive them to do so on social media or to their own networks by offering perks for sharing. For example, Dropbox used to give extra storage space for free when you shared a dropbox landing page and signed up with your peers. You can offer internal perks like this to get your promoters actively sharing with their networks and peers. Credits, discounts, and free trial extensions are other examples of rewards you can offer to promoters for sharing on social media or email.

Offer affiliate programs for your promoters to boost loyalty:

The most direct way to really reward your promoters and even let them in on your business is to make an affiliate program and invite promoters to them so they can make money while helping you grow. You can offer promoters to sign up, add a blog or landing page to their site and promote your product to their networks with email, etc. and make money for converted leads they bring in. This is an easy, hands-off way to build sales and reach hot leads with a trusted and authoritative voice from your already-happy customers. If your product is visible, you can even offer to simply have promoters keep your logo and a CTA on your product and when leads come in from their site, they can be rewarded without even having to do any work. It’s easy for both you and them. NPS is a great tool for not only gauging how our product and team are doing at satisfying customers but also looking for opportunities to improve your SaaS product and reduce churn. NPS also helps to seek out marketing opportunities within your current user base and increase engagement. For an easy way to track NPS and boost engagement, try Beamer today. Learn about the importance of NPS for PLG companies in The Ultimate Guide to Tracking NPS for PLG Teams.