Is there a SurveyMonkey pro in the building?

Patrick Ruster

My org uses SurveyMonkey to gather general customer feedback, as well as CSAT and NPS. We have an integration that then pipes the results into Salesforce. 

It's not the best system, but it works.... 

Specifically with NPS, we are encountering customers who in their own words are fanatics of our software, which is expressed verbally to CSMs as well as in the free-text fields of any surveys they are sent. But when it comes to NPS, they consistently give us 8s, which is great, but according to NPS methodology, puts them in the 'passive' category, and creates all sorts of reporting overhead for the project teams working on these customers. When we reach out to customers to discuss the results of the survey, they are often confused. I gave you an 8, what are you worried about? 

It's also tricky because if I reveal to them that we have internal targets, and they are ranking us just shy of that, we run the risk of influencing their feedback, negating its value...

I believe the solution is two-fold; 
1) socializing customers better to what NPS scoring means, I think SaaS companies make the assumption that everyone is familiar with the distribution of how scores are interpreted
2) adapting processes internally to better respond to these exceptions to the rule, so the punishment fits the crime, so to speak

My question is; does anyone know how to build into a Survey Monkey survey, some visual representation of the standard NPS color bars, so that a customer understands that scoring us an 8, which in the real world would seem like a great score, actually places them in the passive category? 

I've not been able to find any settings that would leave me to believe this is possible, so I'm going to reach out to SM support, and see if I'm missing something, but figured I'd ping the GGR hive mind to see if anyone had any thoughts on how I might achieve this (outside of switching software providers).

Steve Bernstein

Hi @Patrick Ruster,
I guess I have 3 thoughts:
1. I'd listen to your customers... what's wrong with an 8? If you've not "earned" a 9 or 10 in the customers' mind then don't "beg" for a higher score.  It is what it is, and the important thing is that they are happy and engaged! I'd take the good news.
2. You have an admirable goal of creating more promoters, and it should be organic. In following up with your "passive" customers, consider asking a few questions gain some insight, such as, "Are there companies worthy of a 9 or 10? What would that look like for us?"
3. You mentioned that a rating of 8 "...creates all sorts of reporting overhead for the project teams working on these customers."  Not sure what that means and why it's onerous. You might consider a "real" Voce-of-Customer platform instead of just a simple survey tool.

/Steve

Alison Goodrum

Hi Patrick,
I can't speak to Survey Monkey or your internal processes that are dependent on Passive rankings but I find that I get my best feedback from people that give us 7s and 8s. I've tweaked my follow-up messages for 8s specifically to say "We get our best feedback from customers that really like but don't quite love our product, what do you think we can do better in the future?"

Best,
Alison