NPS Real Estate: Net Promoter Benchmarks & Best Practice
by Ian Luck
Referrals are one of your best growth mechanisms as a real estate professional.
Due to the in-built trust, the sales-cycle is always much shorter when a new customer has been referred to you.
But creating customers who are so happy that they're willing to put their own reputation on the line for you is tough. This is where the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and program are here to help.
Developed by Fred Reichheld and Bain & Co., NPS measures customer loyalty and their willingness to refer. The feedback collected through NPS surveys is an invaluable resources from which to improve your customer experience and develop champions willing to pass on referrals.
To make sense of NPS in the real estate sector, we've written a beginners guide to get you started.
We'll cover:
Table of contents
- The essentials
- Building a successful NPS program
- The future
What is a Net Promoter Score (NPS) in Real Estate?
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a metric used to measure customer loyalty by asking how satisfied home buyers are with your services and whether they’d be happy to recommend you to their friends, family, and colleagues.
NPS surveys ask clients to rate your service and the likelihood of recommending you on a scale of 1-10. We’ll look at the average net promoter score for real estate and teach you how to calculate your own score a little later in this guide. But, needless to say, the more high ratings, the better.
One key aspect of Net Promoter Programs is that their ultimate goal is to unlock customer-value based growth. Many use NPS as a research tool to understand customer feedback and identify issues to fix that could help.
But this approach often fails to win buy-in from senior management who are revenue focused—and often lack an understanding of the vision that customer experience leads to better growth.
To overcome this, we like to think of the Net Promoter Score as an action-based metric. With our Account Experience methodology, we teach you to act fast on customer feedback to unlock upsell and referral opportunities that lead to measurable revenue increases.
We also teach you to tie NPS to operational and financial metrics so that you can tackle drivers of customer disloyalty and detraction that are MOST impacting your bottom line.
Why is NPS in Real Estate Important?
Real estate net promoter scores are a great way to quantify trust, and effective NPS strategies allow you to build a strong referral network.
This is particularly important in the real estate industry, where most people tap into recommendations from their friends and family circles before settling on a service.
Real estate NPS surveys can benefit firms of any size, but are particularly helpful for larger companies that do business B2B and B2B2C in addition to dealing with clients directly.
Why?
Because surveys can assess the loyalty of their customers and wholesalers too, which could have a significant knock-on effect on your business.
For example, let’s say you’re a realtor working with several property developer clients. You don’t want any of them to leave you, because they list hundreds of houses a year that can add up to millions in revenue for your company.
So, insights into loyalty in the B2B space are often even more important than in B2C.
Who can use NPS?
Real estate NPS survey scores can be leveraged by many players within the sector.
Homebuyers work with several different entities throughout their journey. With an investment this big, they need to be confident they will receive optimal service and professionalism at each stage of the process.
NPS for Realtors
Buyers, and especially first-time buyers, look for knowledgeable and professional realtors with a track record in providing excellent advice and closing deals. Sharing NPS survey results is one of the best ways to demonstrate your competence and past successes.
NPS for Mortgage Lenders
Lenders who can provide statistical proof of performance regarding rates, accuracy, and speed are likely to be the most successful in onboarding new clients. NPS scores paint an accurate picture of the service customers can expect to receive.
NPS for Insurance Agencies
Top-rated insurance agencies know that providing exceptional customer service and fostering trust are vital. After all, a home is usually a client's biggest and most significant investment. Achieving a high net promoter score in real estate insurance signifies that your firm responds quickly, communicates well, and helps customers get the best coverage.
NPS for Title/Settlement Service Providers
Title and settlement providers with high NPS scores prove they understand the implications of a problem with a home’s title thoroughly, and will do everything possible to provide a smooth and speedy service.
How to Run an NPS Survey and Collect Data
The best way to run a survey is to use dedicated NPS software to help you design, create, and implement it. Before you get started or commit to a solution that may not be right for your business, we recommend you check out our full range of CustomerGauge NPS resources, which includes field guides, tool kits, eBooks, podcasts, webinars, and whitepapers.
You’ll need to decide how to send out your survey—SMS and email are popular in real estate. Then, it's just a matter of designing a survey that will provide the best quantitative and qualitative data—more on that in the following sections.
When Should You Run an NPS Survey in the Real Estate Industry?
There are two types of survey you can use to get your real estate net promoter score. The best time to send your questionnaire depends on what type of survey you send:
Transactional surveys - Transactional surveys are sent following a specific event, like completing a sale, getting approved for a mortgage, or some other significant customer service interaction. It’s best to send transactional surveys out immediately to achieve the best response rate.
Relational surveys - Relational surveys measure overall satisfaction, and are typically sent periodically to track and improve satisfaction levels over time.
Whichever type of survey you’re sending, remember that:
If you send a survey too soon, respondents won’t be able to answer questions about satisfaction or whether they’d recommend you.
Leave it too long, and their experience won’t be fresh in their memory.
Nobody likes being spammed by feedback requests, so don’t send surveys too frequently - however badly you want/need the data.
In the real estate sector specifically, it’s a good idea to send an NPS survey before requesting a testimonial to ensure you only approach the most satisfied customers.
Learn more about ‘when to send an NPS survey’ in our guide here.
Real Estate NPS survey best practice
Creating your NPS survey needn’t be complex. To get the best response rate and net promoter score, real estate companies should follow this list of best practices:
Keep It Short
Asking just one or two NPS questions will produce data that has limited actionability, but making your survey too long leads to low response rates and inaccurate answers. At CustomerGuage, our best NPS survey results are based on asking just three questions, and we’d advise against ever using more than four or five.
Add a Comment Box
Adding space for additional comments means you collect even more data, plus it shows your respondents that you care about their experience and feedback beyond the scope of the survey. On CustomereGuage surveys, we’ve found 44% of respondents leave additional comments.
Add a Tick Box
By asking permission to contact people again in the future, you build a continuous feedback loop that you can tap into when you need it down the line.
Send Reminders
Without sending reminders, you won’t get as many responses. You don’t want to hassle people too soon or compromise accuracy by leaving too long. CustomerGuage clients typically send reminders within 3-7 days of the original send.
Test Before Sending
It’s essential to test internally to gather feedback and fix any layout or formatting errors, broken links, etc. Otherwise, your survey looks unprofessional and will likely garner poor-quality data.
Writing an Effective Questionnaire
Questions on NPS surveys should be worded simply to minimize confusion and gather as much actionable data as possible. A typical example would be:
“How likely are you to recommend [service or company name] to a friend or colleague?”
NPS surveys also include an open-ended follow-up question to collect qualitative data. This helps companies identify specific problems and adapt their processes to make the necessary improvements.
Examples of follow-up questions include:
Please provide a reason for your score?
What is the primary reason for your score?
How can we improve our service?
What did you like most/least about[service, company name]?
What features of [service, company name] did you value most/least?
One successful method of collecting more information without overwhelming the survey taker is to use cascading questions.
Cascading questions offer a more customized experience—showing only relevant follow-up questions to the score left by the survey taker.
How to Calculate Your NPS Score
NPS scores range between -100 and +100. To calculate your score, you’ll need to separate respondents into the following categories:
Promoters – Those who give ratings of 9 or 10
Passives – Those who give ratings of 7 or 8
Detractors – Those who give ratings of 0-6
Then, simply discount passive results and subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. For example, If 50% of respondents are promoters, 20% are passive, and 20% are detractors, your net promoter score would be 30.
Not that into maths and analytics? Don’t worry. The team at CustomerGuage made this handy NPS calculator in Google Sheets to help you calculate your NPS score quickly and easily.
It becomes more complicated when you want to tie your NPS score to account revenue metrics. For that, we recommend first reading our guide to AccountExperience and then talking to one of our advisors.
The Net Promoter Score Scale: Promoters
It goes without saying that:
The more promoters you have, the higher your NPS will be.
You want as many promoters as possible.
But that aside, promoters are great for your business because they are likely to leave good reviews and recommend you to potential new clients. Plus, because they’re already happy with your service, they’re also more likely to click ‘yes’ on your follow-up tick box and leave additional comments, making them a great source of additional data.
Net Promoter Score Scale: Detractors
Did you know that 95% of customers will give you a second chance if you handle their complaints quickly and successfully? Dissatisfied customers are bad for business, which is why identifying them early using an NPS survey is critical. By reaching out to offer support (called ‘closing the loop’, which we recommend you do in <48 hours) and solutions, you reduce the risk of poor word-of-mouth recommendations and reviews.
Net Promoter Score Scale: Passives
Passive responses may not count towards your net promoter score. But they’re still an important metric to manage. You don’t want people to feel indifferent about your services any more than you want them to be unsatisfied. When people are on the fence, they can easily be tempted by competitor offers, which puts your revenue stream at risk.
How to Use Your NPS Results
In terms of global benchmarks, SurveyMonkey reveals that:
The lower quartile (bottom 25%) or organizations have an NPS of 0 or lower.
The median NPS is +44.
The upper quartile (top 25%) of organizations have an NPS of +72 or higher.
But the answer to ‘what is a good NPS score’ really depends on how you collect it, who you compare to and a multitude of other factors.
NPS score benchmarks in the real estate sector vary by business type. That means it’s most valuable to compare your NPS to other businesses of a similar type and size.
Realtors typically have a high NPS. The latest NPS benchmarking studies suggest that the average net promoter score in real estate is 30.
The whole goal of determining your NPS is to assess and improve customer satisfaction so you can win and retain more clients. The most obvious use of your NPS results is to use your first survey as a baseline and work on improving it over time. But, there are several other uses too.
You’ll find the open response data from your follow up question(s) helpful in:
Mapping results into your customer’s file/profile so your support teams have a better understanding of their needs.
Organizing feedback into topics to pinpoint the areas most in need of improvement.
Recording sentiments (positive, negative, or neutral) to learn more about potential shifts between promoters, detractors, and passives.
Creating reports that incorporate your NPS results into market segmentation techniques.
Advertising your NPS score openly (assuming it’s higher than your competitors)to attract clients.
Tracking NPS trends over time to identify areas of strength and weakness as they appear.
How to Improve Your Real Estate Net Promoter Score
The best approach is to develop a systematic process that you follow uniformly after every survey you send. It’s a no-brainer that you want to reach out to detractors to appease them and fix their issues before they can slow your growth through negative word-of-mouth and online reviews.
By focussing on the problems highlighted by detractor responses, you can improve your service levels and business processes across the board. Both of these steps should lead to a decrease in detractors on the following surveys.
It’s not only about the detractors, though. You also need to invest time and effort into keeping your promoters happy, and turning more of your passives into loyal and satisfied customers. So it’s best practice to close the loop with customers in every category after each survey.
When contacting your promoters, always include:
A message of thanks for their input
Instructions on how to refer friends and family
Requests to leave online reviews
Directions to share their experience on social media channels
When reaching out to passive respondents, impress them and earn loyalty by:
Addressing their specific comments directly
Providing education and additional information about anything they misunderstood
Instructing them on how to use your services better
Detailing upcoming improvements and updates that may better meet their needs
In addition to conversations with respondents, there is also plenty you can do internally to help boost your NPS score. Investing in your customer-facing staff should be a priority, as every interaction shapes the client experience, and just one poor interaction can have serious repercussions.
A report by PwC surveyed 15,000 consumers and found that one in three will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience, and 92% would completely abandon a company after two or three negative interactions.
NPS Real Estate Trends Over Time
Realtors and other stakeholders in the sector should be up to date with industry trends and patterns to continue providing the stellar service that results in great NPS scores. We recommend downloading our NPS & CX Benchmarks Report for the most detailed and up-to-date analysis.
In the meantime, here are some trends that could affect your NPS in 2022.
It’s estimated there will be 4-5 interest rate hikes throughout the year, with more to come in 2023.
Mortgage rates are expected to rise to 3.6% by the end of the year.
These factors significantly impact the affordability of buying a house. As such, they will impact the service provision required of businesses and professionals in the industry.
Here are a few examples of how that could affect your NPS scores.
First-time buyers are likely to seek financial support from family and friends to make a down payment, meaning more people are involved in the customer service and satisfaction chain.
Realtors will need to excel in finding off-market opportunities with less competition to satisfy buyers with a limited budget.
With sellers having a distinct negotiating advantage, B2B relationships between realtors, mortgage brokers, and insurance providers, etc., will need to be strong and productive to maintain high satisfaction scores.
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