Find your Net Promoter Score with these survey questions

You have probably encountered the basic NPS question (“How likely are you to recommend us on a scale from 0 to 10?”) as a customer yourself—but when you’re the one doing the asking, you need to get maximum value out of the survey.

Below you’ll find a list of NPS question examples, plus ideas for tailored follow-up questions: you can use them as a template to run your own NPS surveys and find out how many happy customers you really have, and how to create more. We’ve also added a quick write-up at the end about where and when you should ask the NPS question.

8 example NPS survey questions

The standard NPS question is “How likely are you to recommend us on a scale from 0 to 10?” That said, you don’t need to limit yourself to asking it verbatim. You can also customize the open-ended questions that follow the rating scale to collect different types of customer feedback.

You can optimize the NPS questions depending on when in the customer journey you’re sending the survey, ask them more than once, and pose follow-up questions to gain more insight into why customers feel the way they do.

We’ve split these sample survey questions into two groups: quantitative and qualitative. Use them as templates to write customized NPS questions that match your business.

Sample quantitative NPS questions

The standard NPS question is quantitative, meaning it has a numerical response:

❓ On a scale from 0-10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?

The standard NPS question

There’s not much wiggle room with this question, but you can make a few small tweaks to tailor it to your audience and the type of data you want to collect.

❓ Considering your experience with us so far, how likely are you to recommend [company name] to a friend or colleague? (0–10)

This simple re-wording of the standard question allows you to pose it earlier in the customer journey. For example, you can ask for customer feedback when an order is placed, and again when it has been fulfilled.

❓ Now that you’ve received your [product], how likely are you to recommend [company name] to a friend or colleague? (0–10 )

An NPS survey from bespoke jewelry e-commerce site Taylor & Hart

Asking about the complete experience will help customers rate you based on all aspects of your service. For example, for an ecommerce business that might include website usability, product range, the delivery process, and the actual product.

❓ How likely are you to recommend… to someone like you?

Sometimes, asking about a recommendation to ‘family or friends’ or a ‘friend or colleague’ isn’t relevant, for instance, if the product or service does not have mass-market appeal… and family and friends would never be interested in it in the first place!

One of our favorite examples of an alternative solution is from MasterClass, an e-learning platform, which occasionally asks for the likelihood of recommending a class to ‘someone like you’.

An example NPS follow-up question with multiple-choice from MasterClass

Example qualitative NPS questions

NPS is a numerical benchmark—a great snapshot of your current success, but less useful when it comes to knowing what changes to implement. This is where follow-up qualitative questions come in handy to help you find out the why behind your customers’ numerical ratings.

You can ask follow-up questions based on answers to the standard NPS question: if a customer scored you 8 or below, you need more context to learn what you can do to improve the score; if they scored 9 or 10, you’ll want to understand what you need to do more of.

❓ Why would you (not) recommend us?

This open-ended question allows customers to justify their numerical grades with more contextual information so you can find out the specific actions that led to their happy or unhappy responses.

❓ What did we do well?

An example NPS follow-up question with multiple-choice from MasterClass

Multiple-choice questions like this example from MasterClass can make it easier (and quicker) for respondents to give you feedback. Warning: they may also lead to false results if your options don’t cover everything—which is why, if we were to tweak this form, we’d add an ‘other’ field that people could fill in with their own thoughts.

❓ What can we improve on?

An example question about improvement from MasterClass

You can ask for improvement suggestions from all customers, or just those who gave a score of 8 or below (your NPS detractors and passives). As in the previous example, if you go with a multiple-choice format, bear in mind that you might get an incomplete picture because you’re forcing people to choose from a limited range.

❓ What can/should we do to WOW you?

An NPS survey that lets users weigh in on what impresses them

You can use an open-ended question to ask what would WOW or impress your users the next time around. It’s still asking for improvements, but the change in wording makes the question about the customer, not your business.

3 ways to improve NPS response rate

Not every customer you ask will fill out your NPS survey. Not exactly a shocking fact—how many survey requests have you ignored over the years?—but here are a few pointers to help improve the response rate and get more customers sending you that all-important feedback.

1. Segment your audience

If you’re sending an NPS survey by email, conduct customer segmentation and tailor different questions to each group. By triggering surveys at certain key stages of the customer journey (e.g., after placing an order, one week after product delivery, after abandoning a shopping cart), you’ll gain a better understanding of why they are making their scoring choice.

2. Keep it simple

Ask questions using a single sentence and use simple, everyday wording. You want to make answering your questions a pleasure, not a chore.

3. Keep it short

Less is more: keep questions short and the number of questions to a minimum. You’ll get valuable insight from just three questions and your response rate will go up if everyone on the survey sees it through to the end.

💡Pro tip: you may have heard about using incentives (like a 10% off coupon, prize draw, or freebie) to increase survey response rates. In most cases, this will introduce bias into your NPS responses, due to the nature of the incentive or customer motivation. If you value the integrity of your NPS data, stay away from incentives unless absolutely necessary.

Where and when should you ask your NPS survey questions?

An on-page NPS survey from booking.com

You can ask NPS questions online in two ways: by emailing a survey to your customers, or presenting them with a survey while they’re on your website (more on this below).

As for when you should ask customers the NPS question(s), there’s no right or wrong answer, but there are some guidelines to look at depending on your business type—for instance, if you are a marketplace (think Booking.com) that owns the buying process but not the end product (the hotel), you can ask customers an NPS question straight after a transaction has taken place. If you manage an e-commerce website and also own the product/service people purchase, you can wait a bit longer and ask the NPS question after it has been delivered.

In-app and on-page surveys

An in-app NPS survey from Asana, a project management software company

On-page surveys are a great way to get customer feedback in real time while people are interacting with your website.

If you’re managing a SaaS product, you can use in-app surveys to present the NPS question while people are using the product and the experience is fresh in their mind; if you own or manage an e-commerce website or blog instead, you can trigger NPS surveys on specific website pages (such as a landing page or article) or at certain times, for example, as an exit-intent survey before users leave the site.

Email surveys

An example NPS survey email from payroll software company Gusto

You can also send an NPS survey to your customers via email. Be warned: this method requires customers to put in more effort upfront (they first have to open the email, read it, and click through to the survey), which could lead to a lower response rate.

On the plus side, email surveys sent after a specific timeframe allow users to spend longer using your product or service and reflect on the customer experience as a whole, so what you might lose in response rate, you can gain back in detailed answers.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.