NPS for SaaS: Unlocking User Sentiments and Growth Opportunities

NPS (Net Promoter Score) has emerged as a vital metric for Software as a Service (SaaS) companies aiming to gauge customer satisfaction and loyalty. In the competitive landscape of SaaS, understanding user sentiments and their willingness to recommend the service is instrumental for growth and retention. Exploring the implementation and significance of NPS for SaaS specifically tailored for SaaS businesses is paramount for driving customer-centric strategies and sustained success.

NPS standards for SaaS companies

The theoretical range of NPS indicators is -100 to 100. Even if it’s rare, you want to maintain a score higher than zero.

When you have more detractors than promoters, your net promoter score (NPS) will be negative; when the contrary is true, it will be positive.

Different businesses use different NPS measurements, so finding out what the industry average is will help you understand what constitutes a good or bad score. This is the industry-specific average NPS score for 2023:

What constitutes a favorable NPS for SaaS?

NPS score developers Bain & Company stated that while a score above 0 is considered decent, a score above 20 is fantastic, and a score above 50 is exceptional. The top percentile is anything above 80.

What constitutes a poor NPS for SaaS?

To put it simply: anything bad. A low score indicates that you have more detractors than promoters. Customers don’t think your product is worth it. This could indicate any or both of the following:

The wrong audience is the one you should be targeting; 

Your product or service needs to be improved; 

Your long-term goal should remain to provide value so that your clients can use your product to succeed.

How to conduct and gather data for an NPS for SaaS survey

How to conduct an NPS for SaaS survey within an app

An in-app NPS for SaaS survey is one of the most popular ways to get user input on satisfaction levels.

It frequently appears as a tiny pop-up or slide-out. A survey’s format and location will vary, but to make it more relevant and contextual, use the two-question NPS survey.

You don’t want a legally required notice about cookies to have the same meaning as your surveys. If there isn’t a follow-up question, users could merely respond at random to end the poll. The tone of your NPS surveys should be consistent with your brand.

You can add your brand’s colors, typefaces, and logo to alter the modal, popup, or banner’s appearance and feel, depending on your NPS tool.

The ability to gather feedback at any point along the customer journey is the primary advantage of utilizing an in-app survey. Customers are already interacting with your product, so asking them to do a quick survey won’t be too difficult.

This implies that you can customize the NPS for SaaS survey to ask about a particular feature of your product or to ask about product behavior from your users.

If you wanted to find out what users think of a new feature, you could limit the survey’s presentation to particular app screens and ask them to complete the NPS survey when they use it.

How to use email for running an NPS for SaaS survey

Sending your consumers an email with the survey is another popular strategy. If your preferred tool permits it, you may attach the survey directly to the email or you can provide a link to the survey.

This is an Intercom email survey.

Email is generally less successful (lower response rates), even though it may seem less invasive because consumers choose when to open it.

The user is taken to a webpage with a qualitative question when they decide to reply to the survey through Intercom.

The quantitative NPS survey question is followed up on by the qualitative question.

But the primary problem is that you will have less data in the end.

Not every consumer will click the link or complete the survey, and not every customer will even receive the email. You won’t have as much information to base your selections on if there are fewer submissions.

Read more: How to Collect Customer Feedback Effectively

The NPS for SaaS analysis process

After gathering your NPS for SaaS data, how do you use it specifically? You can utilize the industry average as a starting point. Having a baseline makes it easier to assess the new information that is pertinent to your product.

The following steps will assist you in analyzing NPS data.

Step 1: Compare product usage metrics with each other

NPS ratings are merely one aspect of user information. Your options for comparing your data may vary depending on the tool you select.

With certain tools, the NPS score is displayed right next to your user analytics. With certain technologies, you can export user behavior data (such as the most frequently viewed pages, login frequency, etc.) as a CSV file and compare it via email to the user’s NSP score.

Product usage analytics data is significant on its own, but it becomes even more valuable when coupled and cross-referenced with your net promoter score (NPS) data.

Once your NPS data is integrated with your product analytics, you can begin to see important usage patterns.

Maybe the important characteristic of your product has escaped the notice of your detractors. Alternatively, perhaps your promoters share a particular action.

One example would be observing that a user with a low NPS logs in daily, but they are not taking advantage of a crucial feature that may simplify their life. You can increase their success rate with your product if you can persuade them to add that feature.

Step 2: Divide up your clientele based on NPS ratings.

Examine low scores in greater detail to find out why customers are not satisfied.

To learn more about your customers, think about segmenting your NPS respondents. 

Find out more: Boost Customer Satisfaction with Feedback Management

Step 3: Gain understanding from the further queries

Hopefully, if you take our prior advice to heart, you’ll also have answers for the follow-up inquiry.

This is where you may begin to understand the rationale behind your customers’ ratings. To find trends in the things that cause users to adjust their score over time, you must look through their responses.

Classifying text answers is one of the best ways to analyze them.

To accomplish this, create many “buckets” of user feedback. Put a feature in its “bucket” when an answer brings it up. Tag the answer. Place an answer in the “easy UI” category if it addresses how easy it is to use.

You may learn more about user satisfaction by examining the relationship between the NPS for SaaS score and the answers to the follow-up questions.

This is an analytics page that displays the percentage of promoters, passives, and detractors who highlighted particular items.

In conclusion, integrating NPS for SaaS models enables companies to gain valuable insights into user satisfaction levels, identify promoters, passives, and detractors, and foster long-term relationships. By acting on NPS feedback, addressing pain points, and emphasizing continual improvement, SaaS companies can enhance user experiences, boost customer loyalty, and drive business growth in a highly competitive market.