Factors Influencing the Net Promoter Score (NPS) : A Case of Funnel

Abstract: Net Promoter Score (NPS) is considered to be an important metric for measuring customer loyalty. The concept is widely popular and adopted in several established and emerging industries. This master’s thesis work is aimed to spot the factors influencing the NPS of a company and the score rated by an individual. The study is conducted at a SaaS company, Funnel. Starting with the exploration of NPS in Funnel, the thesis work goes on to deep-dive in the journey of Funnel’s customers who responded to NPS. Each customer journey is presented as an individual case study. There are five such case-studies that represent five customers belonging to three distinct behavioural groups marked by NPS (Promoter, detractors and passives). The cases are analysed together with formulation of a revised framework of customer loyalty. The framework demonstrates factors that affect the customer loyalty, individual NPS response, and consequently the customer behaviour. It is noticed that customer satisfaction plays an important role in the individual response to NPS survey along with multiple other factors that influence the customer attitude and behaviour in different ways. It is also observed that the customer behaviour in the cases differs from the expected behaviour of promoters, detractors and passives proposed by NPS.   The findings show that the loyalty behaviour could be manifested due to multiple industry-specific factors which are irrespective of company’s internal performance and satisfaction. Hence, the phenomenon of loyalty and satisfaction is addressed on an industry level. The analysis unfolds a theory that is demonstrated with a matrix to understand the impact of industry dynamic on satisfaction-loyalty relationship. This varying satisfaction-loyalty relationship calls for alterations in NPS practices as per the industry characteristics.