We see the issues with NPS as follows:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n\n- It\u2019s asking the wrong question<\/strong>: \u201cWhat do you mean, would I recommend this (b2b) tool to my friends or family\u2026 probably not! My friends and family don\u2019t worry about product management and I don\u2019t have many friends in this field\u2026 what\u2019s the point in recommending it?\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Some people just don\u2019t recommend things much<\/strong>: NPS specifically asks customers if they would recommend your product, and some people don\u2019t recommend things even if they\u2019re perfectly happy customers. \u00af\\_(\u30c4)_\/\u00af<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- You get false positives<\/strong>: Just because someone recommends it doesn\u2019t mean they are satisfied. And even if they give a low score, doesn\u2019t mean they are at risk or anything bad. Just less likely to recommend things, or might have something to vent about.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Your most at-risk customers won\u2019t bother responding<\/strong>: People who don\u2019t reply to NPS are your most at-risk customers\u2026 and with typically low reply rates (even with a good delivery system)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- It can be gamed<\/strong>: NPS can be gamed by asking only specific customers.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Scores vary regionally<\/strong>: For cultural reasons NPS scores differ from US and UK and probably other markets.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
![\"customer](\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/NPS.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThere is nothing wrong with checking in with your customers, and that\u2019s what NPS is for. But it\u2019s very easy to gamify NPS results and there are other ways to engage with your users that lead to much longer-lasting success. We\u2019ll get to that later…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2. Customer SATisfaction (CSAT)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
CSAT asks customers to rate their support experience. But the numbers are always muddled by customers who leave a negative review because they\u2019re frustrated with the product rather than the support. Bear in mind that CSAT only measures a single interaction, and the response to that interaction may be biased. The agent may have given a helpful response, but if it wasn\u2019t response the customer was looking for, it could be marked as a bad experience. Even a good interaction can be perceived as negative simply because of outside forces.
There\u2019s a story behind any poor ratings – there\u2019s a product issue that needs to be looked at – but CSAT scores hide them and penalize your support rating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
3. SLAs (Service Level Agreements)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
SLAs track the performance of your support when solving a problem. But it\u2019s important to understand the data within context.
For example, if you see a high handle time and you don\u2019t focus on why it took a long time, then the data can be misinterpreted.
There could be a number of explanations for high handle times, for example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n- Was the issue overly complicated and hard to explain?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Was the user too busy to jump on a call and didn\u2019t have the time to troubleshoot an issue with you?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Was it actually more convenient for the user to go through an email back-and-forth rather than get on the phone?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
And what about the time of day that tickets come in? We\u2019re a small team at ProdPad, so we need to plan our support and shift times so we get the maximum amount of coverage. All our clients can tell you we respond to every single ticket, and we\u2019re always available no matter what!
If you get too many tickets, it doesn\u2019t mean you necessarily need more people on your team, maybe you need to make product adjustments or adjust the documentation. If you\u2019re getting too few tickets, it doesn\u2019t mean support is doing great, it maybe just means people don\u2019t understand how to reach support.
It\u2019s important to understand the data within context. You can\u2019t just look at the data and think you\u2019re doing well because the numbers are low or high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What actually works for us?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
There are so many touch points where a customer can engage with your company. This might start with an exploratory visit to our website to see if we\u2019re what they\u2019re looking for, through to sign-up for a trial, on to being a long-term customer perhaps looking to upgrade their plan. So while we need to be clear that we\u2019re here to help, we also need to give customers as many opportunities for self-learning as possible.
So it\u2019s important to look at all the ways in which customers come to you with problems, because then you can create ways of dealing with their issues that are specific to their point on the customer lifecycle.
The way we onboard users through our emails is based on their in-app behavior (you can read more about this here<\/a>). If we focused on a single metric we wouldn\u2019t be looking at where in the funnel customers were getting stuck.
Now let\u2019s look at the ways we have found to improve customer success when using ProdPad.<\/p>\n\n\n\nInvest in Education<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Education is the key to customer success, and at ProdPad we\u2019re very confident in what we provide. We understand that everyone learns differently so we\u2019ve invested a lot of time in creating different ways for a customer to learn about how to use ProdPad:-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n- We have a set of two-minute masterclass videos that help you get the hang of basic functionality.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- We blog about best practices.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- We hold ProdPad demos twice a month where we take questions on product management too.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- We also maintain a help center with a super smart Algolia search<\/a> that tells us what our customers are searching for so we know where we need to beef it up.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- We give best-practice webinars that rack up as many as 500 attendees each time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
![\"Start](\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/hc-header.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nCreate a Community<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
One of our core values at ProdPad is transparency. We\u2019ve created a community in Slack where we can speak directly with our customers. This facilitates conversations, unlocks feedback, ramps up engagement, and help us to understand what our customers are looking for.
It has also helped our users to help each other!<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Slack](\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/slack-community.jpg\")
Don\u2019t worry, these two actually work together and are still friends \ud83d\ude1b<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nThere\u2019s much to be said for the power of direct contact in an informal environment. Our Slack community means we can:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n- Give users release notes hot off the presses<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Handle any bugs that pop up<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Create beta testing groups<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Ask users about their problems<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
We take care of the ProdPad Slack channel from 6am-10pm UK time, but the culture of the community is such that our members will happily jump in and answer questions when we\u2019re not around.
If you\u2019re looking for help to set up your own community, we recently hosted a webinar on the topic and you can watch it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFind the Root of the Problem<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
When customers message us for help or with a piece of feedback, we never tell them \u201cno\u201d. We work with them to understand what they\u2019re trying to do so we can find an appropriate solution or workaround.
We use ProdPad to capture and sort our customer feedback (of course we do!) As our CEO Janna says in our webinar on how to use ProdPad and Trello together<\/a>: \u201cWithin ProdPad we have an entire section called customer feedback where you can capture what individual users have asked for, then link the feedback to different ideas. What this allows you to do is understand the context of why someone asked for a feature. For example you could have a group of customers asking for colour coding on tabs and another set asking for hierarchy in tags \u2013 at this point it will give you the context that people simply want a way to organize their tags better.”![\"customer](\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Artboard-1-1.png\")
So you shouldn\u2019t be saying \u201cno\u201d, but instead listening to what people want and then finding a way to solve it. The solution might not be the one that was explicitly requested, but you\u2019ve spent the time finding the context of what they wanted and then let your product managers fix the problem.
It\u2019s also important to remember not everything has to be solved instantly. When we ship a feature that has been requested through customer feedback, I get back to who asked for it. (This has actually brought customers back who left while we were building it!)<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat we do track<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Of course, that\u2019s not to say that there isn\u2019t a place for some metrics and monitoring of trends, so at ProdPad we track trends in onboarding, feedback, product analytics and relative health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Onboarding<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
This gives us an understanding of why people are finding us and helps us with how we can show value to our users. Our onboarding has been personalized and gamified. By tracking time to value and time to subscription we get an understanding how long it takes for our users to get onboard and how we can shorten that time while providing value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feedback<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThere is nothing wrong with checking in with your customers, and that\u2019s what NPS is for. But it\u2019s very easy to gamify NPS results and there are other ways to engage with your users that lead to much longer-lasting success. We\u2019ll get to that later…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2. Customer SATisfaction (CSAT)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
CSAT asks customers to rate their support experience. But the numbers are always muddled by customers who leave a negative review because they\u2019re frustrated with the product rather than the support. Bear in mind that CSAT only measures a single interaction, and the response to that interaction may be biased. The agent may have given a helpful response, but if it wasn\u2019t response the customer was looking for, it could be marked as a bad experience. Even a good interaction can be perceived as negative simply because of outside forces.
There\u2019s a story behind any poor ratings – there\u2019s a product issue that needs to be looked at – but CSAT scores hide them and penalize your support rating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
3. SLAs (Service Level Agreements)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
SLAs track the performance of your support when solving a problem. But it\u2019s important to understand the data within context.
For example, if you see a high handle time and you don\u2019t focus on why it took a long time, then the data can be misinterpreted.
There could be a number of explanations for high handle times, for example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- Was the issue overly complicated and hard to explain?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Was the user too busy to jump on a call and didn\u2019t have the time to troubleshoot an issue with you?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Was it actually more convenient for the user to go through an email back-and-forth rather than get on the phone?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
And what about the time of day that tickets come in? We\u2019re a small team at ProdPad, so we need to plan our support and shift times so we get the maximum amount of coverage. All our clients can tell you we respond to every single ticket, and we\u2019re always available no matter what!
If you get too many tickets, it doesn\u2019t mean you necessarily need more people on your team, maybe you need to make product adjustments or adjust the documentation. If you\u2019re getting too few tickets, it doesn\u2019t mean support is doing great, it maybe just means people don\u2019t understand how to reach support.
It\u2019s important to understand the data within context. You can\u2019t just look at the data and think you\u2019re doing well because the numbers are low or high.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat actually works for us?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
There are so many touch points where a customer can engage with your company. This might start with an exploratory visit to our website to see if we\u2019re what they\u2019re looking for, through to sign-up for a trial, on to being a long-term customer perhaps looking to upgrade their plan. So while we need to be clear that we\u2019re here to help, we also need to give customers as many opportunities for self-learning as possible.
So it\u2019s important to look at all the ways in which customers come to you with problems, because then you can create ways of dealing with their issues that are specific to their point on the customer lifecycle.
The way we onboard users through our emails is based on their in-app behavior (you can read more about this here<\/a>). If we focused on a single metric we wouldn\u2019t be looking at where in the funnel customers were getting stuck.
Now let\u2019s look at the ways we have found to improve customer success when using ProdPad.<\/p>\n\n\n\nInvest in Education<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Education is the key to customer success, and at ProdPad we\u2019re very confident in what we provide. We understand that everyone learns differently so we\u2019ve invested a lot of time in creating different ways for a customer to learn about how to use ProdPad:-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- We have a set of two-minute masterclass videos that help you get the hang of basic functionality.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- We blog about best practices.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- We hold ProdPad demos twice a month where we take questions on product management too.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- We also maintain a help center with a super smart Algolia search<\/a> that tells us what our customers are searching for so we know where we need to beef it up.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- We give best-practice webinars that rack up as many as 500 attendees each time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nCreate a Community<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
One of our core values at ProdPad is transparency. We\u2019ve created a community in Slack where we can speak directly with our customers. This facilitates conversations, unlocks feedback, ramps up engagement, and help us to understand what our customers are looking for.
It has also helped our users to help each other!<\/p>\n\n\n\nDon\u2019t worry, these two actually work together and are still friends \ud83d\ude1b<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s much to be said for the power of direct contact in an informal environment. Our Slack community means we can:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- Give users release notes hot off the presses<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Handle any bugs that pop up<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Create beta testing groups<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Ask users about their problems<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
We take care of the ProdPad Slack channel from 6am-10pm UK time, but the culture of the community is such that our members will happily jump in and answer questions when we\u2019re not around.
If you\u2019re looking for help to set up your own community, we recently hosted a webinar on the topic and you can watch it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFind the Root of the Problem<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
When customers message us for help or with a piece of feedback, we never tell them \u201cno\u201d. We work with them to understand what they\u2019re trying to do so we can find an appropriate solution or workaround.
We use ProdPad to capture and sort our customer feedback (of course we do!) As our CEO Janna says in our webinar on how to use ProdPad and Trello together<\/a>: \u201cWithin ProdPad we have an entire section called customer feedback where you can capture what individual users have asked for, then link the feedback to different ideas. What this allows you to do is understand the context of why someone asked for a feature. For example you could have a group of customers asking for colour coding on tabs and another set asking for hierarchy in tags \u2013 at this point it will give you the context that people simply want a way to organize their tags better.”
So you shouldn\u2019t be saying \u201cno\u201d, but instead listening to what people want and then finding a way to solve it. The solution might not be the one that was explicitly requested, but you\u2019ve spent the time finding the context of what they wanted and then let your product managers fix the problem.
It\u2019s also important to remember not everything has to be solved instantly. When we ship a feature that has been requested through customer feedback, I get back to who asked for it. (This has actually brought customers back who left while we were building it!)<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat we do track<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Of course, that\u2019s not to say that there isn\u2019t a place for some metrics and monitoring of trends, so at ProdPad we track trends in onboarding, feedback, product analytics and relative health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Onboarding<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
This gives us an understanding of why people are finding us and helps us with how we can show value to our users. Our onboarding has been personalized and gamified. By tracking time to value and time to subscription we get an understanding how long it takes for our users to get onboard and how we can shorten that time while providing value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feedback<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
- We give best-practice webinars that rack up as many as 500 attendees each time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n