When do you know it’s the right time to send an NPS survey?

Since it’s really only been a few years since proper “SaaS” tools for NPS have been accessible to the majority of companies, there is still a misconception that it’s only used when organizations reach 1000’s of customers.

The truth is, Net Promoter can be useful and impactful in the earliest of stages, even before your product goes to market.

Techstars, a business accelerator with programs all over the world (and client of Promoter.io), uses NPS to measure the impact of the mentors that are advising the companies they invest in. They run their surveys early and often during each session.

Many of the companies going through the Techstars program will initiate their NPS program while they’re still in session. Some are using it measure early customer satisfaction and others are using it to determine if their ideas have PMF (Product Market Fit).

Another Promoter client, Jet.com, began measuring their NPS as soon as they launched their site, sending surveys to their very first customers. The insights they gained early on lead them to grow from a few early adopters to serving millions of customers per month within just one year. And, after just 13 months Jet.com was purchased by Walmart for $3.3 billion.

As you can see from the examples I gave above, there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all right time to start sending NPS surveys, it really depends on your business model and customer lifecycle. With that said, there is really no reason for any company not to make NPS a part of your customer success strategy from day one.

My advice is to use an NPS tool that allows you to trigger, schedule and send surveys based on your customers actions (i.e. purchase) and lifecycle. This can start on the day your product goes to market. An example of a survey schedule may look something like this:

It’s never too early or too late to get started!