February 2026 Closed Workshop

For this insurance company, it is essential to carefully consider the objectives of the surveys before designing the form: the order of the questions and how they are worded have indeed a significant impact.

Is the objective to focus on KPIs (NPS, satisfaction, etc.) or is it more about collecting customer feedback and gathering enough actionable data to understand what the customer took away from their experience?

For this energy supplier which sends three different types of surveys, two cases are possible:

1. A customer who contacts customer service + receives a visit from a technician at his home + makes a written complaint, is likely to receive all three surveys, even within the same month.
2. A customer who does the same type of action several times within a less than three months period, receives only one survey.

Originally, one of the participants asked several closed questions at the beginning of his surveys, before asking a question about overall satisfaction and customer recommendation. Afterwards, this participant tested a version in which these questions were reversed. Afterwards, this participant tested a version in which these questions were reversed.

After these changes, the NPS increased significantly! When the global question is placed at the beginning of the questionnaire, customers tend to respond spontaneously with a good rating because they are globally satisfied. However, when the order is reversed, customers become less spontaneous as they are reminded of specific aspects of their experience and tend to revise their overall rating downwards.

Significant discrepancies between the ratings and the content of the verbatim are regularly noted by workshop participants, who put forward several explanations:

1. The customer made a mistake in the rating (e.g. using the rating scale backwards).
2. The customer describes his (bad) experience in the verbatim and rates the quality of the people he spoke to, in the rating.
3. In the verbatim, the customer emphasises that his experience was very successful but does not give a very high rating because he believes there is always room for improvement.
4. Even though the customer recently had a bad experience, he does not necessarily reflect this in his rating because he still has a very good image of the brand, based on his history and all his previous (good) experiences.
5. The customer had two contrasting experiences in quick succession at two points of contact with the brand: he describes one of them in the verbatim and the other through his rating.

This insurance company noticed a drop in its NPS score. It first tried to find the cause of the problem by testing all stages of the customer journey, but to no avail. The problem was finally identified thanks to a test carried out by someone who was unfamiliar with the questionnaire.

The visual appearance of the surveys had changed slightly, resulting in a new display that only showed the numbers 1 to 5 immediately. The other numbers (6 to 10) were only visible after scrolling. Even though the questionnaire stated that a score of 1 corresponded to ‘not at all satisfied’ and 10 to ‘very satisfied’, many customers gave a score between 1 and 5!

This banking and insurance company recalls dissatisfied customers (customers who have given a NPS score of 4 or below) as part of its immediate surveys When customers are recalled almost immediately after giving their score and completing the survey, the response rate is almost 100%. Indeed, while the customer is available to complete the questionnaire, they are likely to be available to take the call.

This insurance company decided to remove all satisfaction-related bonuses in order to avoid side effects. They were spending much more energy removing these side effects from the bonus calculation than tracking indicators, analysing verbatim comments or supporting employees in the improvement of customer satisfaction.

A mixed remuneration system including both individual scores and global team scores was also tested by this company but it was not chosen either. Some highly effective employees felt disadvantaged by the overall score, despite the balancing mechanism.

This participant considers that competition between agencies and paying employees based on scores mainly creates negative biases in the customer satisfaction system.

He also points out that if a bonus based on NPS or another indicator was to be awarded, it should be part of the objectives of all employees in the company.