NPS at Functional Level – What’s up with that?

The likely-to-recommend question was designed to work at the brand level – usually a company…

How likely are you to recommend ABC Corporation to your friends, family and colleagues?

It also seems to work well at business unit and product levels if customers recognize those as a brand.

I see companies asking this question at the functional level which makes no sense to me. I saw one recently where the question was asked at the company level, the division level, the business unit level, the product level and at every functional level imaginable.

How likely are you to recommend ABC Corporation’s tech support representative to your friends, family and colleagues? Really? My answer…

Well, it depends. Does my friend own ABC Corporation’s product? If they own the product, do they have a need for technical support? Does my friend have a support contract? Does my friend get to choose the tech support representative when they call ABC support? Since I don’t have the answer to any of these questions, it makes no sense to ask this question at this level, and my answer is likely to be 5 – a detractor. Even better, I might just quit the survey at this point. Why would you ask such a weird question?

If you wonder why your most specific questions don’t make sense when you try to roll them up to an overall company NPS, this is probably why.