A Mixed-Methods Investigation into Customer Understanding of NPS
Abstract:
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a widely used metric of measuring customer satisfaction through intention to recommend. Despite its widespread adoption, the debate surrounding it’s capabilities continues throughout academia. Many of these studies aiming to disprove the worth of NPS focus on the way the metric is calculated however, few have sought to understand how the customers themselves may comprehend the scoring system. That is the aim of this study which was investigated under three main research questions. RQ1: How accurately do individuals perceive the classification criteria for their NPS responses? RQ2: Is there a correlation between traditional online rating systems and NPS? and RQ3: To what extent can the language and tone of customer reviews correlate to NPS ratings? This study adds valuable contributions to the literature through its human-centred approach to understanding the limitations of NPS, specifically in the UK banking space. This industry was selected due to prior scandals that have faced banks in countries such as Australia who over relied on NPS as a customer satisfaction metric and later faced investigations of misconduct regarding their treatment of customers.
Through the use of a questionnaire and the collection of publicly available data scraped from Trustpilot this study found that demographics which could be linked to length of experience in the workplace had significant influence across all three of the research questions. It suggests that understanding of how to most accurately respond to NPS is embedded in first-hand experience of its practical use. Furthermore results suggested that demographical information plays a key role in how each individual answers the question. Overall, this study highlights the importance of understanding the customer on an individual level in order to understand their NPS scores and be able to improve them.