The value of an NPS survey is not the score. It is the routing: promoters go to your review profile, detractors go straight to you before they go anywhere public.
TL;DR One question, sent 24 to 48 hours after the job. 9 to 10 gets a review request, 7 to 8 gets a thank-you, 0 to 6 gets a phone call from a human within the day. The routing is the whole product.
The question
“How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague? 0 to 10.”
Then one open follow-up: “What is the main reason for your score?”
Do not add more questions. Every additional question drops the response rate, and the open text gives you more than a rating scale ever will.
Timing
24 to 48 hours after job completion. Long enough that they have lived with the result, short enough that the experience is fresh.
Not immediately on site. Asking in person inflates scores and produces useless data, because people are polite to your face.
Not a week later. The detail is gone and you have lost the window to fix anything.
The routing, which is the point
| Score | Label | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 9 to 10 | Promoter: Thank you, then the review link. This is your review engine | |
| 7 to 8 | Passive | Thank you, and one question: what would have made it a 10? |
| 0 to 6 | Detractor | A phone call from a human, same day. No automated anything |
The detractor call is non-negotiable. An automated apology to someone who just rated you a 4 is worse than no response.
Never send a review link to a detractor. This should be obvious and it is a common configuration mistake.
The promoter path
Thank them first, ask second.
Thanks Sarah, glad it went well. If you have thirty seconds, a short Google review genuinely helps people find us. Here is the direct link: [link]
No worries either way.
One link, to one platform. Choose the platform that matters most for your business and send everyone there. Splitting review requests across three sites means three thin profiles instead of one strong one.
Time the ask. Send the review request as a separate message a few hours after their score comes in, not in the same breath.
The passive path
Passives are the most useful and most ignored group.
Thanks for the 8, appreciated. Genuinely curious: what would have made it a 10? Even a one-line answer helps.
Passives answer this honestly because they are neither angry nor obligated. The answers are consistently the most actionable feedback you will get.
The detractor call
Same day. Phone, not email.
Hi Mark, Tiff from Sicc Heating. I saw your feedback come through and I wanted to ring rather than email. Can you tell me what went wrong?
Then run the complaint framework. Listen, apologise, solve, thank.
A detractor who receives a same-day personal call frequently converts to a promoter. A detractor who receives an automated “sorry to hear that” converts to a public review.
Closing the loop
Feedback you collect and ignore is worse than feedback you never collect, because now they know you are not listening.
- Reply to every open-text answer, even one line.
- Tell people when their feedback caused a change. “You mentioned we did not confirm arrival times. We now text a two-hour window the night before. Thanks for flagging it.”
- Log the themes, review monthly.
The “you said, we did” message is disproportionately powerful and hardly anybody sends it.
Calculating the score
Percentage of promoters minus percentage of detractors. Passives count in the total but not in the calculation.
30 promoters, 15 passives, 5 detractors from 50 responses. That is 60 percent minus 10 percent, so +50.
The absolute number matters less than the direction. Published benchmarks vary widely by industry and by how the survey was run, so comparing your figure to a headline number from a vendor report is not meaningful. Compare yourself to yourself, quarter over quarter.
Practical setup
Minimum viable
- A trigger on job completion, delayed 24 hours.
- A one-question form, or just a reply-with-a-number text.
- Three follow-up branches based on the answer.
- A task created for any detractor.
Text often outperforms email for this, because a one-digit reply is almost frictionless.
Sicc Heating. Quick one: 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us? Just reply with a number.
What to avoid
- Surveying too often. Once per job, and not more than a few times a year for the same customer.
- Explaining the scale. If you have to explain it, people overthink it.
- Incentivising the score. It corrupts the data instantly.
- Chasing non-responders more than once.
- Sharing the score with the team as a target. It encourages gaming and score-begging on site.
Set up the three branches this week. Even if you never calculate the score, routing detractors to a phone call and promoters to a review link will pay for itself in the first month.
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