I do agree with wanting to make people think, and I understand where you are coming from, but I think the difference between what you are saying and what I was referring to is you want them to think “do I want to recommend this product to someone else” and my reference to not thinking is “what is the difference between 6 and 7?” I think asking more direct questions like “would you recommend this product” with a simple yes or no answer causes people to think even on some level, but making the process of answering a puzzle into itself where you aren’t even thinking about what you would choose but what are my choices is a problem.

As far as analyzing the data without a definition of what those numbers mean relative to the product it is like asking a person “do you like vanilla ice cream” and then giving 10 customers a different vanilla ice cream, one soft serve, one with real vanilla, one low fat, etc … and then thinking that the vote is real comparative data.

As far as being a standard I do agree with that, I understand and do support the use of standards, even flawed standards for standards sake, as I said my disagreement is more with the NPS system in general and not your specific use of them. I do think that if you are really concerned about providing real quality feedback to your customers (companies) that the NPS doesn’t really provide them anything in terms of a single ranking for so many factors (price, features, support, customer service). As a user of get satisfaction from a company sense (I have 3 projects currently using getsatisfaction for support) I would love to be given the option of using NPS (maybe the default choice) and a more question based option. I of course understand the draw backs of the more clicks the less likely people are going to do it, but in my case NPS doesn’t tell me anything… did they like my product? Was the price point acceptable? Do they want it supported on more platforms? Not sure how this would effect the ranking in your system, but it would be a nice option.

Anyway, keep up the excellent work! Love the product and will continue to use it!

1) Though I get where you’re coming from regarding intuitiveness, the issue for us, and the reason we decided to go with NetPromoter, is one of *standardization*. NetPromoter has taken off in the business world in recent years, and has become a meaningful and more importantly *credible* measure by which businesses can gauge customer loyalty both for themselves and in a reliable and standardized way against other businesses in their category. Standards, as anyone who’s ever coded a Web site can tell you, are really freaking important if you want to achieve something larger than just a bunch of ratings collected on one site in one place on the Web.

So, yes, we could roll our own approach in the manner you suggest above, but we would lose access to the larger ecosystem of value that participating in NetPromoter gives us and the companies who use us. Not denying that there might be (and often are) significant trade-offs that come with using a standardized approach — one size fits all means something rarely fits perfectly — but, simply put, there’s still a huge gain in using something that other people also use that more than makes up for the lack of tailoring. I consider this a critical piece of the argument that’s missing from the conversation above.

2) The other thing, and I wonder if Steve (who I consider a good acquaintance, as we’ve met many times through the other company I started) might not actually agree with me on this: I *want* people to have to think before they answer this question. I don’t want it to be immediate and intuitive. I would *like it* if they paused for a moment to consider what those numbers mean to them, and relatively where they end up on the scale, as you’ve done here in this post. Certainly there are times, when developing a Web interface, where you want it to be easy, mindless, effortless, intuitive — but this is one where I’d prefer a little bit of thought. “Don’t Make Me Think!” isn’t a blanket suggestion for the entire Web — it’s about making certain I don’t have to put thought into things I shouldn’t have to waste time thinking about so that I can instead focus that thought in those areas where it matters. Like, say, my thoughts about whether or not I’d actually recommend a product I use to a friend.

Frankly, too much of what passes for reviews or ratings on the Web lacks coherence, and falls into the “1-5 stars” or” Definitely like/Sort of like” category. But here, with the very important question “How likely are you to recommend this to a friend or colleague?” the approach gains significance — it gains context that then makes the measurement of those numbers against each other have real value. It’s quantifiable, measurable, comparable, meaningful, and scalable. We like it a whole lot for all those reasons.

All that said, it’s unlikely we’re going to remove NetPromoter as the fundamental base on which we consider and rank companies in our system; it’s just got too much value to us both within and outside the confines of our own site. But, I’d be *really* interested to hear if you could think of ways we could improve the intuitiveness/usability of the NetPromoter system, instead of replacing it outright. We’re on our second rev of it since we introduced it (we removed the “I’m a customer” button in favor of just assuming you’re a customer in those cases where you rank something, as in the screenshot above) but I still don’t think we’ve quite nailed it. Thoughts? Suggestions? Ideas? Your (and everybody’s) help much appreciated.