Your online reputation is a major influencer in your business success. More than 80% of customers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.
What is a good NPS for B2B SaaS?
Google and Yelp reviews are one thing, but one of the most powerful indicators of how your customers really feel about you comes from your Net Promoter Score (NPS).
How to measure NPS
Your NPS is a tool that is used to gauge your customers’ loyalty and willingness to recommend your business or services.
To calculate your company’s NPS, you send a survey to your customers asking them to rate you on a scale of 0 to 10.
- Detractors rate your business from a 0-6. These customers feel wronged by you for some reason. Whether it’s poor customer service, a product that didn’t work, or another factor, this group had a negative experience with your business.
- Passives give your business a 7-8. This group is content and happy with your brand, but most likely won’t go out of their way to recommend you. Passives are not considered when calculating your NPS.
- Promoters rank you 9-10. These are your most loyal customers and are your biggest brand advocates.
You would then subtract the percentage of promoters from the rate of detractors to determine your final score.
Assume you send 500 surveys and 70 people are detractors, 50 people are passives, and 100 people are promoters. You would subtract 45% (100 divided by 220—the total number of people who took the survey) by 32% (70 divided by 220) to come up with a score of 13. Even though you are subtracting percentages, your NPS is always given as a whole number.
Your NPS can range from -100 (all detractors) to 100 (all promoters). Anything above 0 means you have more promoters than detractors.
According to the Temkin Group, the average NPS of software companies in the US is 41.
Age matters
There’s an interesting trend that’s consistent across almost all industries when it comes to NPS. In nearly every case, younger customers are the most likely to be detractors, while older customers will rate your business more favorably. For software companies, the lowest NPS came from people between 18 and 24, while the highest NPS was from customers between 55 and 64.
Source: Temkin Group
Keep this stat in mind when surveying your customers. If you serve a younger crowd, be prepared for a lower NPS.
Does it really matter?
Your brand reputation is everything. Customers are checking reviews and ratings before making big purchases, especially if it’s a long-term B2B contract. Companies who are failing at referral marketing lose thousands of dollars from negative reviews and feedback.
Your NPS gives you a real-time assessment of how your customers feel about your business. Aside from looking at your overall NPS, you can analyze certain figures in your data to find trends about groups and demographics that are not satisfied with your business. You can then make educated decisions about how to better serve these detractors, like added them to a segmented group and targeting them with specific messaging to get back on their good graces.
What now?
Now that you know what is considered a positive NPS for B2B software companies, your next step is to survey your customers to see what score they’ll give you.
If you’re getting something back in the 20-40 range, then you’re doing well. If your score is lower, that means you need to take a look at where you might be going wrong and make adjustments to better satisfy your customers.
This solution might not be directly related to the marketing team, but you should always be looking for signs that you’re doing something that your audience doesn’t like. When you notice a trend, such as a poor landing page conversion rate, you need to take steps to fix it.