Think Beyond NPS: Why Common Customer Experience Scores Fall Short

A customer scoring their experience with a B2B technology and services vendor gave an exceptional score for recommendation likelihood: 10 out of 10.

In a follow-up conversation, the customer explained, “The service team’s responsiveness is very good. Whenever you need them, they’re almost always there. The overall experience is good.”

This would be considered a resounding victory for any CX leader who’s tracking performance based on Net Promoter Score® (NPS).

But that perfect score doesn’t tell the whole story.

In fact, that same customer was failing to reach their desired results with the solution.

Why? It started with the sales team. “The transfer from the sales team to the service team is one of the biggest disappointments,” the customer said. “The information mismatch is huge between service and sales.”

Despite the diligent efforts of the service team, sales’ inability to grasp the customer’s needs and match the appropriate solution prevented them from implementing on-time, at-cost, and with all the desired functionality.

Post-implementation, the problems compounded. The product hadn’t functioned as promised. And the customer completely missed one of two most important outcomes identified at the start of the engagement.

When it comes time to renew, the customer will almost certainly shop around.

Would the vendor have noticed the renewal risk had they relied solely on NPS to predict this customer’s renewal plans? Probably not. The customer’s score showed high satisfaction with the vendor’s service and overall experience, but the solution failed to deliver the promised results.

Such are the shortcomings of broad customer satisfaction metrics like NPS and customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores in the B2B space.

understanding NPS

NPS is a deceptively simple tool that captures customer sentiment by asking one question: “How likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?”

Respondents give a rating on a scale from zero (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely). Then, based on their scores, customers are categorized into one of three groups:

• Promoters (scores 9–10) are enthusiastic customers who are not only satisfied with your services but are also likely to act as brand ambassadors, recommending your product to others and driving your company’s growth.

• Passives (scores 7–8) are customers who are satisfied but unenthusiastic. And while they’re less likely to churn, they’re also not committed enough to promote your brand to others.

• Detractors (scores 0–6) are dissatisfied customers who are unlikely to purchase again and might discourage others from choosing your services, potentially hindering your company’s growth.

A company’s Net Promoter Score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. It’s purported to gauge your customer’s loyalty and is often paraded as a predictive metric for business growth potential.

But, customer data reveals a more nuanced story.

the gap between satisfaction scores and customer experience

The customer’s experience above isn’t an anomaly. Consider this:

• Our data from 1,500 B2B customers across industries reveals that despite providing a score of nine out of 10 in recommendation likelihood, one in five customers say they failed to reach their desired results with the vendor’s solution. 

• Additionally, we found only a 54 percent correlation between NPS and retention likelihood. That’s only slightly better odds than a coin flip!

Each of the customers in this dataset provided their recommendation likelihood and their perceived effort to value throughout the customer experience. Customers also indicated the results they achieved with the vendor’s solution, which served as the basis for determining if they were successful.

With this data in mind, how can you reconcile the simplicity of NPS with the complexity of actual customer experience?

a better way to measure customer experience

Companies often assume their top Promoters are also their top achievers, but that’s not what customer data says.

While a customer might provide a high score, it doesn’t guarantee that they’re achieving their desired results. In fact, nearly 15 percent of Promoters in our study failed to achieve business outcomes on average.

These “failing promoters” reveal a breakdown in the practical use of scores like NPS. For example, you might be tasked with compiling a list of customer references for potential clients. Even if you handpick reference accounts from your list of Promoters, there’s a good chance those references would not be able to articulate their success with your company’s solution. Unintentionally, you could end up selecting customers with poor experiences to represent your brand!

So if NPS isn’t a consistently reliable source of success stories, what is?

The answer might lie in the effort required of customers to achieve value.

When customers rated their ease of value at a promoter equivalent (nine out of 10), the risk of failure was reduced by half compared to their NPS counterparts. In fact, only seven percent of customers who found it easy (low effort) to get value from the vendor’s solution failed to reach their business goals.

These “effort promoters” were 28 percent more likely to achieve exceptional results compared to NPS Promoters.

If your goal is to increase renewals and reduce churn, effort plays a crucial role. While NPS is a useful measure of sentiment, effort is a stronger indicator of customer success.

don’t place your confidence in a coin flip

Clearly, high-level experience scores like NPS and CSAT don’t tell the whole story around whether your customers will choose to renew. Nor do they tell you when your customers are primed for upsell or expansion opportunities.

That’s because these sources fail to account for the complexities of your customer’s experience, including how they define success and how they perceive the value of your solution over time.

Now you know. But how can you turn these insights into action? The path forward is twofold:

1. Align metrics to your customers’ goals: Ensure that sales and customer success teams are not only aligned but have shared objectives that focus on understanding and measuring your customers’ strategic goals—not just utilization or satisfaction.

1. Collect meaningful customer feedback: Beyond NPS, regularly collect feedback throughout the customer lifecycle to understand the real customer experience.

In light of these insights, isn’t it time for your business to re-evaluate its reliance on traditional customer experience metrics?

By moving away from the limited view provided by NPS and CSAT, and instead focusing on detailed customer feedback, you can build a more accurate picture of customer satisfaction and the health of those relationships.

Ready to get meaningful insights from your customers? Learn more about TruVoice.