If you are active on Twitter or read All The Product blogs and newsletters, you've not doubt observed the debate on the validity of using NPS (Net Promoter Score).

NPS has been called the "KFC of quality metrics." It's taken on a lot of complicated context to prove its usefulness. And I don't really disagree.

What I wish we we're doing, instead of spending our time debating the merits of NPS, was interacting with customers and bringing what we learn back to our teams. So it is, therefore, I hereby decree, more appropriate to spend less than two minutes (see what I did there?) musing on it. So we can get on with the good work of making our users rockstars.

I think the issue is that we, as Product People, are just approaching it wrong. We expect what is just one feedback channel to do everything. In my experience of running a quarterly NPS survey, I've found it to be critically important. It's important because it's something. A forced reminder to look away from the whiteboard or computer screen and remember who we ultimately serve and how they are feeling about how we go about doing that.

It's easy to rely on the NPS score itself. Quantitative numbers are easy. Run the calculation and TA-DA you know where you stand.

But the better, and more challenging, work is using both the number AND the qualitative feedback. Here we get specifics. Here we can find themes. Here we can validate assumptions or realize what we totally overlooked. But, perhaps most importantly, it is here our entire team (developers included) can have a regular input from real users.

Keep talking to customers. In a way that works for your organization. NPS is an easy way to do that. If it doesn't work for you, that's ok, just keep pushing for ways to keep talking to your customers.

Do you use NPS? Does it work for you and your team?

Meghan

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