[tinco]

No, the goal of tracking NPS is to find out whether the customer enjoys the product enough that they would recommend it. Whether the customer would recommend it to other potential customers is almost completely irrelevant. The article is the author realizing what NPS is meant for, not some hot take.

Asking "How did you learn about us?" is a question that helps evaluate your marketing and sales pipeline. Asking "Would you recommend?" is about helping your product development process. Your sales / marketing team can't effectively influence the NPS (only thing they could do is divert marketing from customers that wouldn't be satisfied by the product).

[superjan]

Ok. I am clearly out of my comfort zone here. So NPS is not a proxy for organic marketing success, but for customer satisfaction. Is the article’s point then that the question is sometimes too hypothetical?

I still think that it is useful to track actual reccomendations when that is expected to happen.

[tinco]

The article is literally just not on point. They're confused about what NPS is for, and wrote a confused article about it.

I agree that it's very useful to track where your leads come from, and I love the short radio button lists that allow you to select a source.

If you feel like you should only ask one question, and it's either that or the NPS question, then it really depends on what your goals are at that point. Are you trying to figure out if your customers are happy with your product, or are you trying to figure out which of your marketing channels is most effective?

I think tracking NPS over time is really powerful, so then you're tracking not an absolute number, but you're tracking if customers have recently changed their opinion of you.

[conductr]

Also it’s something you can track over time. It’s not meant to market really, it’s meant to gauge how your customers view your company and areas of operations that may need improvement.