The familiar principle “First Do No Harm” should be applied when it comes to offering incentives to customers to participate in your NPS surveys, or other customer feedback surveys. Will customers be offended? Will incentives skew your results? Could the time, effort and cost involved be better directed elsewhere? The answer often varies depending on business type.

Regardless of business model, keep in mind:

• Incentives of any kind introduce bias.
• Some incentives are more likely to offend than others.
• The resources required to run an incentive program can be significant.

In a B2B model, the use of incentives to encourage survey participation by your customers should be unnecessary. Respondents understand that your VOC program is an ongoing dialog, with you listening and making continuous improvements based on what customers say. There is a clear benefit to participation. When this perception of mutual benefit is lacking, you may feel offering an incentive is the best short-term option.

Keep in mind however that many of your contacts in a B2B context are not allowed to accept anything that might be considered a gift. Even where that is not the case, the idea of any kind of monetary offering is likely to offend especially at the senior management level. We recommend a commitment of a charitable contribution as the preferred motivator for B2B customers.

Encouraging consumers in a B2C model to participate in surveys is more challenging. Again, a self-benefit is the best motivator. That being said, consumer response rates tend to be low and you may struggle to achieve adequate response without some kind of incentive.

Your choice of incentive should be guided by both the demographics of your audience and the value of the product or service you provide. For instance, a $5 coupon offered to a college student purchasing coffee at the campus Starbucks makes sense. For higher value products or services, a sweepstakes offer is a better option. Technology prizes such as tablets have been shown to be particularly enticing.

Customer survey feedback has standalone value, of course, but for visionary NPS programs, the deeper value comes from its utility for calibrating an AI-driven understanding of the customer experience. Treat your feedback execution as a critical element for building your complete data set, but don’t make the mistake of stopping once you have data from direct customer feedback. To get there, download our guide, take our comprehensive training course, or read about the future of NPS.