Product-led Growth

Net Promoter Score (NPS): Product Led Growth Explained

Yves Delongie
Yves Delongie
September 18, 2023
Net Promoter Score (NPS): Product Led Growth Explained

In the realm of product-led growth, understanding customer sentiment is paramount. One of the most effective ways to gauge this sentiment is through the Net Promoter Score (NPS). The NPS is a simple, yet powerful tool that measures customer loyalty and predicts business growth. This article will delve into the intricacies of the NPS, its role in product-led growth, and how to effectively utilize it to drive business success.

The NPS is a customer satisfaction benchmark that measures how likely your customers are to recommend your business to others. It is a valuable metric that provides insights into your customer's overall perception of your brand and their loyalty to it. By understanding your NPS, you can identify areas for improvement and strategize on how to create a better product or service experience for your customers.

Understanding the Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a metric that measures customer loyalty by asking one simple question: "On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?" The responses to this question are then used to classify customers into three categories: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors.

Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others, fueling growth. Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offerings. Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth.

Calculating the NPS

To calculate the NPS, subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. The score can range from -100 (if every customer is a Detractor) to 100 (if every customer is a Promoter). The higher the score, the better your company is doing in terms of customer loyalty and satisfaction.

For example, if you have 100 responses to your NPS survey, and 60 are Promoters, 30 are Passives, and 10 are Detractors, your NPS would be 50 [(60-10)/100]. This means that you have a healthy NPS, as anything above 0 is generally considered good, 50 is excellent, and 70 is world class.

Importance of NPS in Business Growth

The NPS is a powerful tool for predicting growth and customer loyalty. It provides a clear measure of your customers' overall perception of your brand and their willingness to recommend it to others. This is crucial in today's competitive business environment, where word-of-mouth recommendations and reviews can significantly impact a company's reputation and bottom line.

Furthermore, by identifying your Promoters, Passives, and Detractors, you can target your marketing efforts more effectively. You can focus on turning Passives into Promoters and reducing the number of Detractors by addressing their concerns and improving their experience with your product or service.

NPS and Product Led Growth

Product-led growth is a business methodology where the product itself is the main driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion. In this model, the customer's interaction with the product is central to their experience with the company. Therefore, understanding how customers feel about your product, as measured by the NPS, is critical to driving product-led growth.

By leveraging NPS data, companies can gain insights into what features or aspects of the product customers love, what they dislike, and what they wish was different. These insights can then be used to improve the product, enhance the customer experience, and ultimately drive growth.

Using NPS to Drive Product Improvements

NPS can be a powerful tool for driving product improvements. By understanding why customers are Promoters, Passives, or Detractors, you can identify areas of your product that need improvement. For example, if a significant number of Detractors cite a specific feature as their reason for dissatisfaction, this is a clear indication that this feature needs to be improved.

Similarly, understanding why customers are Promoters can help you identify what aspects of your product are working well and should be maintained or even enhanced. This can help you prioritize your product development efforts and ensure that you are focusing on the areas that will have the most impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Using NPS to Drive Customer Acquisition and Retention

In a product-led growth model, customer acquisition and retention are driven by the product itself. Therefore, a high NPS, indicating high customer satisfaction and loyalty, can lead to increased customer acquisition through word-of-mouth referrals and increased customer retention as satisfied customers continue to use and advocate for your product.

Conversely, a low NPS can indicate potential issues with your product that may be hindering customer acquisition and retention. By addressing these issues and improving your NPS, you can increase both acquisition and retention, driving growth for your business.

Implementing NPS in Your Business

Implementing NPS in your business involves more than just sending out a survey and calculating a score. It requires a commitment to listening to your customers, understanding their feedback, and taking action to improve their experience with your product. Here are some steps to effectively implement NPS in your business.

First, decide on the frequency of your NPS surveys. This could be after a specific interaction with your product (such as a purchase or a customer support interaction), or at regular intervals (such as quarterly or annually). The frequency will depend on your business and your customers, but it should be often enough to provide timely and relevant feedback, but not so often as to annoy your customers.

Interpreting NPS Results

Once you have collected your NPS data, the next step is to interpret the results. This involves understanding the distribution of Promoters, Passives, and Detractors, and the reasons behind their scores. This can provide valuable insights into what your customers love about your product, what they dislike, and what they wish was different.

It's also important to look at trends in your NPS over time. If your NPS is improving, this is a good sign that your efforts to improve your product and customer experience are working. If your NPS is declining, this could be a warning sign that there are issues that need to be addressed.

Taking Action on NPS Feedback

The final, and perhaps most important, step in implementing NPS is taking action on the feedback you receive. This could involve making changes to your product, improving your customer service, or addressing other issues that are impacting your customers' experience.

Remember, the goal of NPS is not just to get a score, but to understand your customers better and improve their experience with your product. By taking action on your NPS feedback, you can drive improvements in your product and customer experience, leading to higher customer satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately, growth.

Conclusion

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a powerful tool for measuring customer loyalty and predicting business growth. It provides valuable insights into your customers' perception of your product and their willingness to recommend it to others. By understanding and acting on your NPS, you can drive improvements in your product and customer experience, leading to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and growth.

In a product-led growth model, the NPS is particularly important as the product itself is the main driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion. Therefore, understanding how customers feel about your product, as measured by the NPS, is critical to driving product-led growth. By leveraging NPS data, you can gain insights into what features or aspects of the product customers love, what they dislike, and what they wish was different, and use these insights to drive product improvements and growth.

Keep reading...

Built for B2B & B2C SaaS, simultaneously

Changing the way you do business, case by case.

Sales

Detect which signups are most likely to buy. Sell more with less effort.

Automatically surface product qualified leads.

Prioritize PQLs call lists and engage with quick actions.

Add tasks and full PQL context to existing CRM and other engagement tools.

Automated sales playbooks and collaborative inbox.

Success

Onboard. Monitor. Get expansion signals. Reduce churn, proactively.

Automatically detect churn & expansion candidates.

Accelerate onboarding and product adoption.

Align activities around 360° customer view, with health and onboarding scores.

Automated CS playbooks and collaborative inbox.

Growth

Build revenue workflows, based on how people use your product.

Use machine learning to uncover new sales opps.

Add slow accounts to nurturing campaigns.

Optimize engagement playbooks for maximum conversion.

Leverage any data without needing engineering.

Product

See which impact your product features have on revenue, expansion and churn.

Analyse feature importance, usage and impact.

Build key product metrics without SQL, nor coding.

Easily create customer segments based on any product interaction.

Comply to GDPR and CCPA.

Check out our use cases
Build revenue playbooks based on how people use your product
Stop crunching CRM records and data sheets once a month, to find risks and opportunities. Organise your workflows around real-time PQL signals, playbook actions, and customer data from across your stack.

Work in the tools you already know and use
Give easy access to product data
PQL intelligence and actions, the moment it happens
All point'n'click, no SQL or coding needed
Check out our use cases
Share Customer Data
Detect which leads are hot. Sell more with less effort.
Stop wasting time on unqualified leads. Look out for promising product qualified leads that trigger specific buying signals, and make more meaningful calls, knowing which features they're interested in.

Get prioritized call lists, sorted by likelihood-to-buy
See unified view of each account and their users
Get cases with follow up tasks in your team inbox
Get tasks and product data in your existing CRM
Check out our use cases
health score
Easily test new PLG strategies and improve conversions
Try out new PQL conditions, assign different engagement variations, and monitor how conversions progress over time.

See which features are most frequently used
Quickly test new PQL conditions and actions
Prove which engagement playbooks work best
All point and click, no code required
Check out our use cases
PQL Experiments
Onboard. Monitor product usage. Reduce churn, proactively.
Keep track of each individual user and account at scale, and get notified on expansion and cross-selling opportunities. Identify those who are at risk of churning, and pro-actively reach out to them.

Get notified on churn risk and expansion opportunities
Get cases with follow up tasks in your team inbox
See all account and user activities in one place
Collaborate with sales and marketing thru quick actions
Check out our use cases
journy.io customer success use case
Convert more through hyper-personal automations
Target the right audience at the right time with the right message. Your existing automations get power-boosted with customer engagement metrics.

Automatically add PQLs to engagement automations
Get product usage data in your existing marketing tools
Lower customer acquisition costs
Check out our use cases
journy.io marketing use case

Set up journy.io
in under one hour

Create your free account and start driving a product-led growth strategy with the tools you're already using.

Get Started 
journy.io white logo
© journy.io BV 2023 — All rights reserved.
The names and logos of third party products and companies shown on the website and other promotional materials are the property of their respective owners.

Email

Email

Post

LinkedIn

Tweet

Twitter

Share

Facebook

Ebook

Ebook

Back

Blog