This is Part 2 of a 5-part series about credit union NPS. Read Part 1 here to learn what NPS is!
If your credit union is curious about Net Promoter Score NPS) surveys, this guide will show you several key concepts. It will introduce how to:
- Deliver your NPS surveys;
- Calculate your score;
- Interpret your score; and
- Determine whether your score is good, average, or needs work.
Finding and interpreting your credit union’s NPS is a major step toward improving your member experience. Read on to learn more!
How to Send Out NPS Surveys
While sending a survey might sound simple, your credit union actually has two options for how to deliver it. Choosing one of the two options—or finding a combination of both—can affect how you interpret and act on your score.
First, you can send your surveys all at once. This doesn’t necessarily mean sending the survey to your entire member base. Rather, send it to an appropriate portion. This will give you large amounts of data periodically by which to measure your progress.
This “bulk send” option is good for establishing a baseline NPS. It may also help you see if member satisfaction increases or decreases after making a major change at your credit union.
Second, you can send “drip” surveys. Instead of sending a bunch of surveys at once, send out a handful periodically. This provides an ongoing, steady stream of data that alerts you immediately if things start going south.
Drip sends are often more useful once you have an established NPS program. They may also be easily integrated into automatically triggered (rather than preplanned) surveys.
How Do I Calculate My Score?
Any survey platform or program will calculate your score automatically for you. However, if you’d like to know what goes into the calculation, it goes like this:
On the 0 to 10 scale of the Net Promoter Question…
Detractors contribute negatively to your overall score. They rate your credit union at a 6 or lower.
Passives don’t contribute to your score at all. They rate your credit union a 7 or 8.
Promoters contribute positively to your score. They rate your credit union a 9 or 10.
To calculate your NPS, simply subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. Don’t include the passives in your calculations at all.
So, if 50% of respondents are promoters and 20% are detractors, then your NPS is 50% minus 20%, or 30% total. That’s an NPS of 30.
If 20% are promoters and 50% are detractors, then your NPS is 20% minus 50%, or -30% total. That’s a negative score!
Scores can range from -100 to 100.
How to Interpret Your Score
You’ll hear this a lot in our ultimate guide to NPS for credit unions:
You can learn very little from your NPS on its own. The best way to understand your score is by measuring against your previous results. Doing so will give you an idea about whether you’re making progress in the right direction or not.
While many experts will tell you that you can learn a lot from your number on its own, that simply isn’t the case. There are too many variables. Even determining whether your score is “good,” “average,” or “bad” is very complex.
To interpret your score, you will need to see how your score has changed over the last quarter or two. Then, analyze any policy, product, or process changes you’ve made. You can then see the effect those changes have had to your member satisfaction.
Further analysis and interpretation is difficult and varies on a case-by-case basis.
What Is a Good, Average, and Bad NPS for Credit Unions?
Again, this varies incredibly. Who you ask, when you ask, and how you phrase your question affect your score. Your member base, demographics, and more will also affect things.
All things being relative, are good score is any score higher than your previous score. An average one is about the same. A bad one is worse than the last score you recorded.
The following numerical values are loose guidelines only. Please don’t take these numbers as official in any way:
A good credit union NPS is anything over 60. Most credit unions tend toward this—especially if they have a member experience program in place. Some credit unions have NPS scores in the 80s.
An average credit union NPS is around 45–50. This is still considered high compared to most industries, but there’s room to grow.
A bad credit union NPS is below 40. Generally, scores this low indicate that your credit union may not be in touch with member needs or wants as well as they’d expect.
But remember, each credit union’s scores are necessarily different. Comparing scores to other institutions—and even peer benchmarking—is difficult and often inaccurate.
Next Steps for Credit Unions
In Part 3 of The Ultimate Guide to Credit Union NPS, we’ll explore how to improve your credit union’s NPS.
Subscribe to our blog to stay tuned! Or, if you’d like to explore other survey types—and when to use them—then download our short ebook for getting started with credit union surveys:
