Adam WeisnerDitch the NPS.
A two-question customer survey that tells you what to fix.
We used to pay a million dollars a year to Gallup to do surveys. I was able to bring that in-house for a hundred grand a year.
Here's how it happened, and how you can build the same survey for your business. First thing to realize: this is not as complicated as people make it seem.
A million dollars for a pile of reports.
Gallup was charging all that because they did all these complex things. You got report after report and quarterly PDFs.
Most customer surveys are completely useless and a waste of time. So the first thing I did was ditch the Net Promoter Score.
Ditch the Net Promoter Score.
If you don't know what the Net Promoter Score is, it's really simple. You ask one question: on a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or family? A 9 or a 10 is a promoter. Anything from 0 to 6 is a detractor. A 7 or an 8 is passive. You take the percentage of promoters, subtract the percentage of detractors, and that's your score.
So let's say 70% were promoters and 20% were detractors. Your Net Promoter Score is 50.
"What's the difference between a 7 and an 8? I don't know."
It is so difficult to get any level of consistency from people. Grandpa versus grandma versus somebody here and somebody there: depending on their life and how they were raised, they're going to give wildly different scores. The only reason to use it is if you have benchmarking you want to do against people in your industry. It doesn't help you in your business.
Ask one question. Did you have a great experience?
I simply instituted the question: did you have a great experience, yes or no? When you bought our product, when you visited our center, when you went to our restaurant. Did you have a great experience?
The bar for great is different for everyone, but it's still great. If it was good, that's not good enough. I want great.
Our goal was to be above 90, and that was something we could actually work toward. Man, this percentage of people are not saying it's great. Let's get better. It sets your bar a lot higher than promoters and detractors.
Then ask why.
This is actually the most important part. If it was great: tell us more. Why? Make it a required field. If it wasn't: what could we have done to make it great? They can say anything they want.
"That's where the juice is."
Now you get back information that is valuable and that you can use. You know what is making you great from a client's perspective, and what would make you great for the people who maybe just had a good experience. That will actually move your business forward.
Two people instead of a million dollars.
I hired two people at 50 grand apiece, and all they did was surveys. We had the electronic surveys, and then they did the phone surveys. That's how a million dollars a year became a hundred grand.
When I first started doing this, in 2016 and 2017, we didn't have the AI stuff we have now. It was a bear to bring all of the words together and do a word cloud and an analysis.
It's easier today.
You can dump the results into any large language model, and it's going to tell you why their experience was or wasn't great. With technology, a lot of the phone work can be captured now through recordings and summaries.
- Replace your 0 to 10 question with: did you have a great experience, yes or no?
- Add a required "why?" and a "what could we have done to make it great?"
- Set the goal: above 90% saying yes.
- Read the why. That tells you what to get better at.
Your bar is no longer some arbitrary number or score. It's delivering a great experience.
Lead a company that serves people well.
I coach a small number of Christian business owners and CEOs who want to build companies that perform: work with Adam.
The full framework is in my book, Biblical Business.
More: Fear is a terrible master. · Cash flow pays the bills. · Christian business coach
FAQ
What is a good alternative to the Net Promoter Score?
Ask two questions instead. First: did you have a great experience, yes or no? Second, as a required field: why, or if not, what could we have done to make it great? You get a clear bar and answers you can act on.
Why is NPS a poor measure for a small business?
It's arbitrary. People don't score consistently (what's the difference between a 7 and an 8?), and the number is mostly useful for benchmarking against your industry. It doesn't tell you what to fix.
What percentage of customers should say they had a great experience?
Adam set the goal above 90% of customers saying yes, they had a great experience. Good isn't good enough; the bar is great.
How do you analyze open-ended survey comments?
Read the why. That's where the juice is. Today you can put the comments into any large language model and it will show you why experiences were or weren't great.