As an e-commerce brand, you can’t expect to grow if you aren’t constantly checking in with your customers to see what’s working and what isn’t.

Most brands do this through NPS (Net Promoter Score) surveys that question customers about all aspects of the purchasing process—from ordering, to shipping, to the product itself, to the return process. This allows you to quickly solve any problems that pop up, especially before they impact your brand reputation. 

But because customers’ survey responses are usually quite varied, you’ll need enough data to confidently draw insights. That’s where a high response rate on your NPS surveys becomes essential.

What’s considered a good NPS survey response rate?

Convincing a high number of people to answer your NPS survey is easier said than done. 15% is considered a good average survey response rate for external surveys, and most surveys will see far lower response rates, closer to 5%.

Boosting your survey response rate isn’t just about creating incentives—although incentives do help. It’s also about sending tailored survey invitations to your customers, that allow them to respond across multiple channels, and that feel worth their time.

How to Get Higher Response Rates on NPS Surveys

Here are some survey design tips to increase your total number of responses:

Keep Your Questionnaire Short

The fastest way a customer will opt out of your survey research effort is if they see a long list of questions that they don’t have the time to answer.

Selecting just a few core questions—preferably under five—that feel directly relevant to the product or experience is the best way to make the survey feel worthy of their time.

Give Your Customers An Estimated Survey Completion Time

To show potential respondents their time won't be wasted, show them your survey's length and its approximate completion time. Customers are more likely to click on a survey that promises it will only take two minutes than one whose length is unknown.

Free Download: 24 Free Customer Response Templates to Help Improve CSAT Scores

Embed a Rating System in the Email

If you’re sending out your survey to email addresses, add a hyperlinked star rating option at the bottom of the message to drive clicks. When people click to select their star rating, you can take them to a brief external survey that cycles through your questions.

Wait a Week Until After the Purchase

Timing an NPS survey correctly can be tricky. You want to give your customer enough time to engage with your product and have thoughts they can share. Sending the survey as a follow-up the day the product arrives will almost guarantee a low response rate.

On the flip side, it shouldn’t be so long after the purchase that the product is no longer fresh in their minds. 7-10 days after purchase is usually a good range for when to send a survey.

Tailor Your Questions to Each Customer

Customer satisfaction surveys should feel personalized to some degree. If your questions resonate with any specific customer experience, they will see more value in completing the survey.

You should segment your customer lists, and use different survey templates depending on the demographic:

• A returning customer, for instance, might get a different type of survey than a first-time customer.
• Also, someone who is buying a hat from your company might get a different one from someone who is buying a sweatshirt.

You can also create questions that send customers on an off-ramp if their feedback won’t be as useful to you:

• If they say early on that they are an infrequent user of your product, their feedback might not be as helpful as that of a regular user.
• If they select certain answers, you can trigger a response that ends the feedback survey and thanks them for their time.

Offer Small Monetary Incentives

One study found that, for mailed surveys, offering monetary incentives can double your response rates. It doesn’t take much money either.

You can increase your online survey response rate with a raffle, where people who take your survey are entered to win a gift card or a free product. Pizza Pizza, for instance, enters survey respondents to win a free order of pizza.

Give Them Many Places to Respond

Email is no longer the only channel to survey your customer, social media is another channel to engage customers too. A higher number of survey respondents gives you a truly representative sample size from your target audience.

If you had to pick one social media channel to start - we recommend Instagram. The platform has a host of built-in tools that let you share survey questions with your followers, including Question Stickers, Poll Stickers, and Quiz Stickers that you can add to your Stories.

The paint brand Clare, for instance, uses Instagram Poll Stickers to gather customer feedback on which new paint colors are liked best.

Try Other Routes

If NPS surveys are taking time, there are quicker ways to get in touch with customer sentiment.

Sign up for a free 2-week trial with Chatdesk and get a consolidated view of customer feedback across your email and social media channels. We also automatically tag and categorize all the feedback so you can draw insights faster. 

And if you're getting good completion rates, you can access valuable market research metrics since Chatdesk even analyzes your NPS survey data.

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