Setting up an NPS® survey

Two types of NPS survey

When you decide to run an NPS survey, you can:

• Run an on-site survey that shows up directly on your website

• Create a standalone NPS survey that you can share with your customers via email

To do both, you'll need specialized feedback software like Hotjar to collect the answers, store the results, and calculate your final score. Let's take a look at both methods.

Method 1: create a survey to send via email

Following the 6 steps described below can help you create an NPS survey that looks like this:

Editor's note: take a look at our NPS survey template.

You can then share the URL with your customers via email and start collecting their feedback.

Start here: create a new survey

Click on ‘Surveys’ in the sidebar menu, then ‘New Survey’.

STEP 1: give your survey a title

We’ll call ours Hotjar NPS survey. You can customize this field by choosing whatever name you prefer (the more descriptive, the easier for you and your teammates to refer back to it).

STEP 2: add a description to help your customers understand what you need

The Hotjar survey template has a space where you can add a short description with instructions or information for your customers. A fairly standard sentence that you can re-use or edit as you need could be:

At [XXX], we use your feedback to improve our product, so thank you for taking the time to fill in this survey. It should not take you more than 1-2 minutes to complete it.

STEP 3: add your thank you note

In the template, this field is pre-filled by default with the sentence Thank you for filling out this Survey. Your feedback is highly appreciated!. As always, you are free to edit and customize the sentence however you like.

STEP 4: add the NPS question

• Click ‘Add question’

• From the drop-down menu, choose the ‘Net promoter score’ option

• Write the standard NPS question, replacing the [X] in this example with your company’s name:

   

  How likely are you to recommend [x] to a friend or colleague?

   

  If you need/want to word the question differently, you can take a look at our NPS questions chapter

Remember to toggle the ‘required’ switch on to green, which makes the answer mandatory.

STEP 5: add the follow-up questions

• Click ‘Add question’

• From the drop-down menu, choose ‘Long text answer’

• Write in the first follow-up question,

   What’s the main reason for your score?, and toggle the ‘required’ button again

Repeat STEP 5 for any other follow-up question you may want to ask, for example: What should we do to WOW you?. Leave the toggle on grey if you want to make any further question optional—and take another look at our NPS questions chapter for more ideas on what to ask and how.

STEP 6: activate your NPS survey

Use the “Preview” option if you want to see the final survey ahead of sending it out to your customers. Once you’re happy with the survey, set the status to ‘Active’, click on ‘Create Survey’, and you’re done!

Once the survey has been filled in, you can view the survey responses and your Net Promoter Score will automatically be calculated.

Method 2: create an on-page NPS survey

With Hotjar, you can also create an on-page survey that shows up directly on your website pages, like the example below. Here are the 6 quick steps you need to add them to your site:

Start here: create a new survey

Click on ‘Surveys’ in the sidebar menu, then ‘New Survey’.

STEP 1: give your survey a name

We’ll call ours Hotjar NPS poll. You can customize the field by choosing whatever name you prefer (the more descriptive, the easier for you and your teammates to refer back to it).

STEP 2: add the NPS question

From the drop-down menu, select the Net Promoter Score option and the standard NPS question will appear.

STEP 2b: add your follow-up questions

• Click ‘+Add question here’

• From the drop-down menu, choose the type of answer field you require (e.g. ‘Long text answer’, ‘Short text answer’)

• Write in the first follow-up question (e.g.What’s the main reason for your score?)

Repeat this step for any follow-up question you might want to ask.

STEP 3: customize the appearance of your on-page survey

In this section, you can modify the position of the pop-up on your page and its background color. If you are on a Business plan, you can also hide the Hotjar branding.

STEP 4: select page targeting

Here, you can select which page(s) your NPS survey will show up on. If you need more in-depth information, read our quick Page-Targeting for Feedback Tools article.

Note: if you are on a PLUS plan, you can select how many visitors should see this survey as a percentage of your total visitors.

STEP 5: customize the behavior of your on-page survey

From this final section you can:

• Set when the NPS survey should launch on the page (for more information, How to Setup your NPS® Survey read our article)

• Set how persistent the NPS survey should be (for more information, Persistence Behavior Explained read our article)

STEP 6: activate your NPS survey

Set the status to ‘Active’, click on ‘Create Survey’, and you’re done!

NOTE: after a survey is created and data is collected, any edits to the survey will alter the results. To make edits, it is best to create a new survey.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.