My 5 Tips for Using NPS in a
CX Framework

NPS can be a great methodology for better understanding your customers, but it can also cause problems. Everything depends on the team’s ability to interpret the data generated and properly plan the action plan.

With that in mind, I decided to bring together my experience to write my five tips on how to use NPS within a Customer Experience framework. However, these tips are also applicable to Customer Success structures, especially in B2B contexts, as well as to product teams. I want to emphasize that my recommendations are based on my personal experiences within customer support structures.

I’m listing them in the order they came to me, without ranking their importance.

#1 — Properly Map the Entire Customer Journey

For illustration purposes, I will divide the customer experience journey into three stages: pre, during, and post. I use this breakdown to highlight that a product or service is interconnected from end to end, and examining all these touchpoints is crucial. Even if the acquisition phase has a high satisfaction level, issues in the final stages of the journey can generate enough detractors to hinder product or company growth.

If you have a broad view of NPS, great! This gives you more room to take effective action. Collaborate with key people within your organization and create campaigns for the clearest stages of the experience. Monitor each stage separately and structure your surveys in a way that allows customers to provide precise feedback on what you are measuring. Don’t be overly rigid with the methodology—make small adjustments to optimize your results.

For example, when evaluating customer support, be explicit in the question that you are assessing the support experience, not the product or company. Instead of asking a generic NPS question, phrase it as:
"Based on this support experience, on a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend Company X to a friend or colleague if they asked you?"

I like adding "if they asked you" to make the question more natural for different ways of thinking, though the methodology doesn’t require it.

If your focus is more micro—limited to a single stage of the experience—engage with those responsible for the other stages. Find allies to standardize the methodology or, at the very least, align the different methodologies in use to converge toward a unified result.

#2 — Don’t Neglect the Continuous Improvement Cycle

Be careful—NPS is not just about sending out surveys and calling it a day. Sending the survey is just the first step; the real work lies in acting on the results.

If your NPS is good, analyze your promoters to identify strengths the company can further leverage. Invest in what’s working and use it as an opportunity to recognize the good work of your teams. If your NPS is poor, thank your promoters but focus on your detractors and passives. What’s missing? Take a sample, reach out, and dig deeper. Gather more information.

Establish review cycles to build a habit of documenting actions taken. This is important not only for tracking improvements but also for demonstrating your work. Create case studies to share with the company and senior leadership. Use the voice of the customer to drive engagement with the problems the product or company is facing. Customer feedback can (and should) be used to course-correct projects already in motion.

#3 — Secure the Right Sponsorship Within the Organization

It’s very difficult—if not impossible—to manage NPS effectively without sponsorship, especially from decision-makers.

If a significant portion of customers are saying the biggest problem with the app is on Screen X, but the product team is prioritizing Screen Y, use data to highlight this discrepancy. There may be a valid reason for the different priorities, but if you’re managing NPS, it’s your responsibility to raise the issue—even if it’s just to say later, “I told you so. Maybe listen to me next time.” Sometimes, pushing for engagement is just as important.

Support from the C-Level and the formal inclusion of NPS as a company-wide metric are critical. Even though managing NPS comes with challenges, the methodology can help amplify the customer’s voice within the company.

#4 — Beware of Perverse Incentives

Whenever we work with data, there’s always room to manipulate it to present a more favorable version of reality.

Some companies use acquisition NPS as a showcase metric to suggest they are in great shape, without even looking at what happens to customers during or after their experience. Even if you believe these customers matter less (I don’t), the methodology itself is about a company’s ability to grow organically—in other words, the cheapest way, through word-of-mouth marketing. You might convince new customers and investors that the NPS is high, but you can’t prevent detractors from “stealing” potential new customers.

Ignoring perverse incentives can drive up CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), lead to unnecessary expenses, trigger lawsuits, and even result in viral scandals over neglected customer service issues when a company gets complacent and assumes customer support is optional.

#5 — Don’t Let Data Management Spiral Out of Control

Maybe you work at a company with a massive customer base, and handling NPS data from all those customers is a significant challenge. In that case, pre-campaign planning becomes even more critical. Know in advance how you’ll receive the data, plan the categorization of responses, and define a clear objective for what you’re evaluating. If possible, start with A/B tests or a smaller sample at a specific touchpoint in the journey.

If you don’t pay attention to this, you risk losing control of the results, which may force you to start over. And starting over is never fun.

These five tips are ones I wish I had received when I first started working with NPS—they would have made my life much easier. But even without them, I was able to create meaningful improvements for customers. In one experience, we lost control of the responses and had to start over. I may have lost some points internally, but by then, NPS had already become a corporate metric, and we were seeing growing interest from different teams within the company.

If your company is already using NPS or planning to implement it, these insights will be valuable. I hope my experiences help you in some way! 😉