Is There Any Perfect Time to Send NPS Surveys?

While conducting Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys, the main importance must be given to timing. Timing is everything for NPS surveys, that is mostly done either through the NPS survey app or through any other survey tools.  

Selecting an appropriate time to get feedback from your customers can hugely affect the quality and amount of the reactions you get.

If you send the NPS survey to your customers very early, then they may not have sufficient time to tell their stories. Similarly, if you send the NPS survey too late, then you could lose your customer’s emotions, which they felt during the experience. Also, you may lose the important details that fade away over time.  

What is an NPS Survey?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys are a type of survey (done via the NPS Survey app or any NPS Survey Tool) that is done to identify your brand’s promoters and detractors – people who recommend your brand to others and people who would not. This survey further helps in finding challenges and in recovering from bad customer experiences.  

What’s the Right Time to Send NPS Surveys to Customers?

Your NPS Survey strategy can only be successful when you send it to your customers at the right time, not too early and not too late.   

You must send NPS Surveys to your customers after they have completely experienced the products or services which you have offered them. This is because an NPS survey measures customers’ loyalty and willingness to speak positively about your brand, which could happen only if they had the chance to interact with your brand.  

NPS Surveys are conducted by many businesses to understand and find out customers’ true sentiments towards a brand. And the most accurate and reliable feedback can be expected only after customers have had sufficient engagement with the brand.  

Key to Run a Successful NPS Program

To successfully run an NPS program you have to increase the quantity of individuals who give input, as well as the fulfillment of that feedback. Survey timing is the main thing that will influence these. 

Although the timing of your survey may depend on your brand’s products or services, or the type of feedback you want to collect, having a good understanding of when to survey your audience can be really beneficial.  

Every customer has a different journey with your brand since they interact with your brand at different touchpoints. The key is to identify at what stage of the journey your customers are at because only knowing this will help you understand when and where to send NPS surveys in a way that this survey is relevant to the customers.  

So, to do that, let us briefly discuss the different types of NPS surveys: 

Types of NPS Surveys

Transactional NPS Surveys

Transactional NPS surveys are surveys that are triggered after an interaction or transaction.  

Transactional surveys give in-depth information about customers’ loyalty based on that interaction.   

Transactional surveys should be sent only when the experience of the customer of a product or service is fresh in his/her mind. This will help them share genuine feedback. However, the time can vary depending on what you are offering.  

Few events where transactional NPS surveys fit best may include training, workshops, household services, product purchase, mobile apps, shipping, delivery, etc.  

Relationship NPS surveys  

Relational NPS surveys are a type of NPS survey that is sent to customers at predefined or regular intervals.  

Relational NPS surveys give in-depth information about customers’ overall loyalty.  

As relational surveys are sent to understand the complete relationship or experience of customers with a particular brand over a continuous journey, these types of surveys should be sent at predefined, regular intervals.  

Few events where relational NPS surveys fit best may include customer onboarding, subscriptions, subscription renewals, frequent purchases, banking, insurance, etc.        

NPS survey Timings for Various Businesses

The perfect time to send NPS surveys may depend on what you have to offer. So, to give you a clear idea, here we have explained a few survey events relating to different types of businesses. This will certainly help you to create a better NPS strategy.  

NPS survey Timings:- Retail and Ecommerce Brands

NPS survey timings for physical goods are relatively simple and straightforward. You must provide your customers with enough time to use the product so that they will come to an opinion and be able to give their genuine feedback.  

For some goods like foods, customers would generally like to submit their reviews as soon as they consume them. However, for some products like mattresses, or washing machines, customers would generally like to have a good experience with the product for a few days or weeks to make sure that the product is working fine.   

There are even customers who may not even unbox a package even after a few days of receiving it.  

So, for those products that get consumed by customers immediately, send the NPS survey 1 or 2 soon after the delivery date. And for those products that require a longer period of experience such as any electronic product or mattress, send the NPS survey after 10 days or even longer.  

In the retail or eCommerce spaces, the survey timings generally get varied as per the uniqueness of the products. So, try to categorize your products and identify the right timings.  

Always Remember: In retail and eCommerce space purchases may be frequent. So, try avoiding sending NPS surveys after all purchases are made. Remember that the main aim of doing the NPS survey is to understand customers’ relationship with the brand on different experiences.  

NPS survey Timings: – B2B and SaaS brands

The buying process is quite long when dealing with businesses selling SaaS products. Moreover, in such businesses, after making a purchase, ongoing support, updates, and suggestions get followed.  

So, for ongoing relationships, for example, subscriptions, feedback must be collected on a quarterly, semiannually, or annual basis.   

When the relationship with the customer is based on a project, ask for feedback once the project is completed.   

Always Remember: If the experience you deliver to your customer stays stable, then you do the NPS survey with them even after a longer period of time.  

However, if your delivery experience with your customer is all about making frequent changes and updates, then it is suggested that you collect feedback quarterly or after the updates. 

NPS survey Timings: – On-Demand Products

Remember:

For brands that are delivering products to customers based on their unique demands, NPS surveys must be sent to such customers, after they have fully experienced the product.  

Suppose, for example, a customer had booked a hotel for a two-day stay, then the experience manager can ask for feedback from the customer after he/she had checked out.  

This would be the right time because the customer has had the opportunity to experience everything from the stay to the food.   

In similar scenarios, it is ideal to ask customers to give feedback after 0 to 24 hours of their experience.  

Always Remember: When the product or experience to a customer is delivered on-demand, the surveys must not be sent out frequently. In the case of regular customers, it is important that you collect feedback only after their first experience, and then quarterly, half-yearly, and then annually.   

Conclusion

NPS score can be the crucial metric to measure customer relationships or customer loyalty to your brand.  

However, it is also important to watch out for how the NPS surveys, done via the various NPS survey software, a self-serve customer experience (CX) tool, play out with other customer satisfaction metrics such as customer Satisfaction Score and Effort Score.   

So, it is important that you develop a customer feedback strategy and retain customers efficiently.