Introduction

Net promoter score, or NPS, is a key performance indicator that measures or tracks the propensity of a customer to recommend a product or service to others. In other words, NPS measures customer satisfaction.

There are two main types of NPS called Transactional NPS and Relationship NPS. Transactional NPS gathers customer feedback at various stages and touchpoints in the customer journey. In contrast, relationship NPS collects feedback repeatedly over a period (monthly, quarterly, annually). 

What Is Transactional NPS (tNPS)?

Transactional NPS(NPS) is a customer satisfaction metric used to measure satisfaction immediately after interacting with a brand, product, or service. The interaction points could be a purchase, courier delivery, a visit to a brick-and-mortar or online store via a website, a call from customer service, or an interaction with a business’s social media handles. 

tNPS is usually used in any of these instances to gauge customers’ feelings or emotions concerning a specific reaction. The feedback garnered through tNPS surveys is instant, as it is carried out almost immediately after an interaction is initiated and completed. The essence is to gain insight into the pain, gaps in service delivery, and the consumers’ expectations in the customer service journey.

The goal of this is to carry out the following;

Capture the consumers’ satisfaction level, especially regarding immediate interaction with a brand, across any of the earlier highlighted touchpoints.

It gives immediate insight into specific moments, highs/lows in the customer experience journey.

Narrow to customers’ specific experience with a process, service, or product.

For example, after onboarding a new customer for, say, your catering business, to understand how fluid or seamless your process was from the customers’ point of view, tNPS can be used to gain insight by asking the following question:

Based on our current onboarding process, how likely would you recommend our service to someone on a scale of 1-10?

 A tNPS question is usually flexible and can be adapted to fit numerous interactions, and you can outline the areas of strengths and weaknesses of your brand.

What Is Relationship NPS (rNPS)?

Relationship NPS is a performance indicator that measures a consumer’s customer experience and overall brand satisfaction over a long period. rNPS focuses on a continuing relationship with the customer and measures their experience during the period. 

The surveys for rNPS are carried out quarterly or annually. It aims to observe a customer’s journey with your brand as they progress through the customer journey. With rNPS, you can get insight into a customer’s level of satisfaction and subsequent loyalty to your brand.

This way, you can measure their emotions and perceptions about your brand, which would invariably provide information on your brand’s growth, the status of your brand personality, and its relationship with your customers. The information from rNPS surveys equips you with data to compare your brand’s progress yearly.

How NPS Works

NPS means Net promoter Score, an indication tool that shows and measures a customer’s willingness to recommend a brand, product, or service that they have patronized to other people. It is used to measure customer experience satisfaction and brand loyalty.

It works by using a scale rating system from -100 to + 100. Customers are asked a question during a survey using a rating scale. For instance, 

On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this catering service to your friends and associates? 

The result of their rating can help you deduce their various levels of satisfaction based on either of these categories:

Detractors

They show their unwillingness to recommend your brand. (Usually rates your brand 6 and below).

They are mostly unsatisfied and could leave bad reviews about your product.

Passives

This category depicts their indifference to recommending your brands and their propensity to switch to competitors offering similar products. (Usually provides a score from 7-8).

Promoters

They display their willingness to recommend your brand enthusiastically. (Usually from a 9-10)

Promoters are loyal to your brand and promote it via word of mouth or other means to people within their reach.

The Net Promoter Score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of those who are promoters. The result is now the NPS score for your brand. With this, you can tell how well or poorly your brand is doing.

The NPS score of any brand is the key indicator that depicts your brand’s growth level and insight into your customer experience and overall brand satisfaction. One of the greatest perks of the NPS score is its simplicity, making it easy for everyone in a business to understand and tell how a  business is doing.

Explore: 25 Great NPS Survey Question Examples

When Should You Send Transactional NPS Surveys?

Ideally, tNPS surveys are administered immediately after a customer completes a transaction with your business. Accurate timing in tNPS is vital to receive appropriate feedback. That way, clear insight into your customer experience at a specific touch point is received. 

The essence is to get your customers’ attention when your brand influences them. Delaying the survey may affect the result because the customer’s experience might have waned, and the customer may be distracted or outrightly forget what the experience was like, due to the delay.

 The goal of tNPS surveys is to proactively manage your business and its processes.

On the other hand, the result you are trying to achieve may sometimes impact your ability to carry out tNPs surveys immediately.

This is true, especially for new products or features. In this case,  you should wait to ensure the customer has tried it out before conducting a survey.

What Are The Types of Transactional NPS Surveys?

There are various transactional NPS surveys based on the kind of feedback sought.

Here are some examples of the various types of tNPS surveys:

Post Purchase Surveys

These surveys are used to gauge the ease of your purchase process flow. This way, show stoppers can be instantly identified and eliminated.

Any hitch experience in your buying process could lead to a high abandoned cart rate and loss of sales to a competitor. Hence, having your customers share their feedback would expose flaws that would easily have been missed.

With this survey, you can have a seamless purchase process.

Automated post-purchase surveys and pop-up surveys after a sale are one of the ways to administer power purchase surveys, 

Customer Service Surveys

The customer service experience provided by your customer service team is a vital metric in customer satisfaction. A customer service survey gives you insight into what your customers feel each time they interact with your customer service team. The feedback gathered can be used to fine-tune your customer service operations.

tNPS surveys can be activated each time a customer interacts with your customer support team via any of the channels you adopt, like chat, email, or telephone,

Product Satisfaction Surveys

New products update can sometimes cause a glitch in the user experience. Hence, a product satisfaction survey is vital to check customers’ experience with the new features/updates.

The feedback would tell if the update was received successfully or if their appreciation declined.

Onboarding Surveys

A seamless onboarding process is an organization’s first chance to make a good first impression on new clients. Checking your process via a customer onboarding survey can give quality insight into your onboarding process.

When Should You Use Relationship NPS Surveys?

As earlier shared, the rNPS survey holistically measures a customer’s loyalty to a brand. However, the success of rNPS depends mainly on the time of administration of the survey.

Using an rNPS survey immediately after a transaction might be unable to accurately measure a customer’s brand’s perception, as the customer’s opinion might be influenced by a specific interaction instead of their overall interaction with your brand.

Hence, for rNPS surveys, the administration should be consistent over some time, say, yearly or quarterly.

Relationship NPS vs. Transactional NPS: Which Should You Choose?

We have already established that there are 2 main types of NPS surveys, each of which has its vital role in your customer experience. rNPS is configured to gather and analyze data on a customer’s relationship with your brand over time.

tNPS, on the other hand, gauges a customer’s preference for your brand and a customer’s experience after a specific transaction. Compared to rNPS, which measures the customer’s relationship with your product and how they feel about your brand irrespective of varying encounters or interactions with it.

rNPS focuses on customer relationships, which can be assessed at different times. While tNPS is designed to gauge a customer’s perception based on specific interactions to isolate experiences that impact a customer’s opinion about your brand.

This way, you have direct feedback on specific issues, which aids you in finding pain points in your customer journey and proffer solutions.

The rNPS and tNPS feedback would help you understand your customer journey and see areas of strength and shortfalls which would require your intervention to make the experience more pleasant. That said, both are valuable to your business, as their focus is different and a varied approach is a key to understanding your customer experience journey from a customer point of view.

The specific period in which they are used is outlined below;

Timing: tNPs are conducted as soon as a transaction is completed, which provides real-time feedback for each customer interaction. rNps are conducted at regular intervals to analyze the total brand value from a customer’s point of view.

Touchpoints: tNPS is activated automatically when a customer interacts with any aspect of a brand. rNPS, on the other hand, is part of an NPS strategy and is not aligned to any specific touchpoint.

Objective: rNPS analyzes customer loyalty and collects general feedback, while tNPS provides instantly actionable insights.

Survey Findings: tNPS provides feedback on specific interactions with a brand/product to allow for actionable interventions. rNPS provides a holistic view of your brand’s overall performance.

Benefits: Transactional NPS equips you to address negative customer experiences immediately and prevent a recurrence from maintaining your customer share. Relationship NPS focuses on retrieving relevant insights and developing strategies to convert hitherto unenthusiastic customers to promoters.

Both rNPS and tNPS are relevant to any business focused on creating an awesome customer experience. However, if your business model requires little or no relationship with your customers to flourish, the tNPS is the ideal survey type to adopt.

On the other hand, if NPS is a general customer metric and your want to benchmark your score against different parameters, then rNPs is the way to go.

What to Do With Transactional NPS Data?

With the tNPS data, you can achieve the following;

Identify the drivers of customer satisfaction:

Data collected from tNPS surveys can aid you in discovering the drivers of customer satisfaction by providing insights into what makes your customer happy. This information can be used to create custom-fit solutions that would thrill your customer.

Real-time customer opinions:

On-the-spot feedback from customers is one of the benefits of the tNPS survey. The data retrieved from the surveys can be used to identify hitches in your customer service solutions. That way, you can provide solutions in real-time.

Discover the cause of changes in opinion: 

By narrowing down on specific touchpoints in your customer journey, any pain points that can diminish the satisfaction ratio of your customers are exposed. With this insight, you can discover the reasons for the decline in repeat purchases and address them.

Identify areas for improvement: 

The data from your tNPS survey can give you deep insight into areas that need improvement in your customer journey. With this data, you can accurately provide bespoke solutions to your weak areas. 

Conclusion

Tracking and monitoring your customer experience in real-time is no mean feat. However, with tNPS and rNPS surveys, an accurate, holistic picture of your customer journey across all the touchpoints is achieved.

tNPS helps you gather customer feedback on specific interactions and their impact on your business. rNPS, on the other hand, is used to gather the cumulative customer experience across all touchpoints, ranging from annually to bi-annually, semi-annually, etc.

tNPS and rNPS help to get insights into the drivers of an incredible customer experience. Collecting actionable feedback from your customers is easy with Formplus. With this data, you can create a customer experience journey that exceeds expectations and ultimately helps you attract new customers and retain your existing customer share.