What if your product has been around for a long time, but you don’t know how users perceive it in terms of usability?
You can start to find out what customers think with a survey.

This article will be more useful for small companies that have just started their journey to obtaining user data.

This will help in such cases:
- you have not yet collected and tracked such metrics as NPS, CSS, CES;
- you want to understand which part of the product should be improved;
- want to prioritize improvement tasks;
- clients are not very open with you in interviews;

In this article, I have put together a quick guide to collecting three main metrics that can be obtained through a survey:

• Net promoter score;
• Customer satisfaction score;
• Customer effort score;

• System usability scale.

These metrics can be collected using questionnaires sent to your customers. The more customers you survey, the better.

Ask support to prepare Intercomm, or create a new poll in Google Forms, Typeform, Survicate, etc. and start creating questions:

Net promoter Score (NPS)

“How likely is it that you would recommend [product\service] to a friend?”

Format: a rating between 0 (not at all likely) and 10 (extremely likely).

How to measure results:

Depending on their response, customers fall into one of 3 categories to establish an NPS score:

• Promoters respond with a score of 9 or 10 and are typically loyal and enthusiastic customers.
• Passives respond with a score of 7 or 8. They are generally satisfied with your service but not considered promoters.
• Detractors respond with a score of 0 to 6. These are unhappy customers who may discourage others from buying from you.

Calculating the NPS score is simple: you subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters.

How to analyze:

NPS shows how many of your customers are promoting your service to other people. This is a very important indicator since active promoters are a marketing channel, thanks to which your business can take off because a satisfied client is the best advertiser.
To increase the rating, try to find out what exactly the user does not like about your service, why would he recommend a competitor? Further qualitative research is needed to improve the metric. Set the trigger to a low score so that a company representative can contact the person and inquire about him in more detail.

Also, make sure to collect this metric every 6 months to keep track of how is your service doing.

Customer effort score (CES)

“On a scale from ‘very difficult’ to ‘very easy’, how easy was it to interact with [product/service]?”

Format: a rating between 1 (very difficult) and 7 (very easy).

How to measure results?

(Total sum of responses) ÷ (Number of responses) = CES score.

Let’s say you received 50 survey responses and the total sum is 200. Here is how you would calculate your CES score: 200 ÷ 50 = a CES score of 4.

How to analyze?

A good result is more than 5. If you are lover than 5, it is not good =)
Research in The Effortless Experience found that “96% of customers with a high-effort service interaction become more disloyal compared to just 9% who have a low-effort experience.”

A low score indicates that users find the service difficult or inconvenient. It is difficult for them to fulfill their task in your service.
Consider identifying where pain points arise along the user’s journey and addressing them. Use analytics tools to look for places in the process where the client is lingering for a long time.
And of course, collect qualitative data.

Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)

“How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the [goods/service] you received?”

Format: Respondents use the following 1 to 5 scale:

1. Very unsatisfied
2. Unsatisfied
3. Neutral
4. Satisfied
5. Very satisfied

How to measure results?

Take the number of satisfied customers (those who rated you 4 or 5), and divide by the total number of responses. For example, if 62 of your 100 responses have a rating of 4 or 5, your score would be 62.

How to analyze?

Firstly, it is a quantitative characteristic of satisfaction with a product, the measurement of which allows you to keep your finger on the pulse. But it is much more useful to use it to evaluate specific touchpoints in a product.
For example, a questionnaire can be shown after completing certain flows to understand their effect on satisfaction. Also, the questionnaire can be shown to users shortly before debiting money for an annual subscription in order to quickly fix problems that may cause unsubscribing.
In any case, don’t forget to add a free text box to get qualitative data.

System usability scale (SUS)

There is a quick and dirty method for evaluating your product — System Usability Scale (SUS).

It consists of 10 questions:

1. I think that I would like to use this system frequently.
2. I found the system unnecessarily complex.
3. I thought the system was easy to use.
4. I think that I would need the support of a technical person to be able to use this system.
5. I found the various functions in this system were well integrated.
6. I thought there was too much inconsistency in this system.
7. I would imagine that most people would learn to use this system very quickly.
8. I found the system very cumbersome to use.
9. I felt very confident using the system.
10. I needed to learn a lot of things before I could get going with this system.

Format:

You can find tons of articles on this method, but I suggest using it in a slightly different way.
Define a list of the most important sections or flows of your site, and come up with questions about these sections, using the examples from the questionnaire.

For example, after the user finished the checkout, you can show him this question in Intercomm:

“I felt confident during the checkout”

You can create questions, based on examples from SUS to get usability insights from your users. Other examples:

1. I found the calendar very cumbersome to use;
2. I found the checkout unnecessarily complex;
3. I would imagine that most people would learn to use the dashboard very quickly.

All that remains is an action!

It’s not hard to start collecting metrics in a small product! You are 30 minutes away from a more objective look at the product in Google Forms. Just send the questionnaire to your users and wait for the result, the conclusions from which can be drawn up into a presentation for stakeholders.
Good luck!

Thanks for reading and good luck!

My name is Viktoria, and you can find me on Facebook, Dribbble, LinkedIn.
Here is my website.
My article about adding to cart, a guide to nn/g ux conference and tutorial on XML animations.