How NPS Empowers Customer Centricity Working as a Company-Wide Metric at Preply

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Five-star. 

That’s the experience you have when using the products or services of a customer-centric company. They know you and your needs, listen to your feedback, and try to improve daily. 

Preply is one of those companies. As “learner obsession” is one of their fundamental values, getting first-hand feedback is vital.

Read how Preply uses Survicate survey software to get one of its North Star metrics - the Net Promoter Score, across the organization to excel.

What is Preply

Imagine a language class, but not an ordinary one—the classroom is wherever you want it to be, and your teacher is a native speaker you instantly connect with. Oh, and it’s always about what you need, no boring word-filling. Can you see it? Well, that’s basically Preply.

More conventionally described, Preply is a global marketplace for online language learning. It provides services for everyone who wants to learn a new language, including working professionals, people who move to another country, or simply those who need assistance to progress. 

Why Survicate?

Preply needed reliable survey software to continuously measure one of its key metrics—the Net Promoter Score.

Choosing a new software for a company tool stack takes many stakeholders and in-depth analysis. It was the same at Preply. Kateryna and her team decided to switch to Survicate after a thorough evaluation in a multidisciplinary group consisting of members from CRM, Data, and Research teams.

After they identified the criteria, such as, for example, native integration with Braze, data export via API, or support for a minimum of 15 surveys, Kateryna went through demos with all of the potential providers. When they narrowed down the number, the key factor was the budget. 

“That’s how we decided to move on with Survicate,” Kateryna sums up.

Net Promoter Score survey for the continuous voice of the customer collection and analysis

North Star metric for customer centricity

Preply navigates the business with the help of some North Star metrics. Underlying its fixation on customer-centricity, the company uses a recurring NPS survey to measure and track customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Trends in customer sentiment

Preply tracks NPS over time to identify trends in customer sentiment. Regular surveys allow it to understand whether improving customer experience positively impacts loyalty.

Kateryna confirms that 

“We were looking for a long-term commitment because NPS is our ongoing story.”

The continuous analysis and work on the NPS insights from customers helped Preply increase its NPS by 37% in just six months in one of the groups of learners. What’s important to add is that the trend is recurrently rising. 

The quantitative data that Preply collects goes to Looker to build detailed sentiment dashboards. It serves to analyze the correlation between product changes and higher or lower NPS. As a bigger picture, it also helps to identify positive and negative trends that Kateryna shares with the key stakeholders. 

Investor Reporting

And while NPS is typically employed as a feedback mechanism rather than a direct revenue metric, it can be a valuable indicator of a company's overall health and potential for growth.

“Many decisions are made based on the NPS. We also report to our investors how NPS is changing and why.”

Kateryna Martynova, Head of Research at Preply

User sentiment for product feedback

Making survey insights a company-wide knowledge results in a better focus toward a common goal—to make a sticky product with a flawless user experience. Depending on the angle, the insights gathered with the NPS survey help build business trends but are also food for thought for other teams—for example, Product. 

Product teams on track with key trends

Customer-obsessed cross-functionally, Preply doesn’t only employ user sentiment in the business metrics. Product Managers in the company are up to date with the current state and use customer insights to continuously improve the product. 

“PMs are constantly informed about the main trends. They know where the challenges are and constantly user-test how we can change things,” Kateryna explains.

Apart from that, Kateryna shares weekly reports she gets from Survicate if there’s anything that may be valuable for the Product Managers. 

Slack integration to fast-forward product development

To make this connection between customer feedback and Product even stronger, Preply’s Product teams use Slack integration.

Connecting Slack to Survicate allows companies to redirect all incoming feedback to a dedicated channel. It lands there the moment it appears. Such a setup reduces the time from getting feedback to actually working on it—and you don’t even have to open Survicate to see it. 

It’s a valuable option for teams that want to stay ahead and use insights in daily work. 

“Our Product teams started a Slack channel to get sentiment about their product. They're discussing it on an ongoing basis and can comment on the feedback they get on the thread. This is really cool.”

Slack Integration invites the teams to collaborate and act upon feedback instantly. It also makes insights more visible so that knowledge is spread. 

Customer feedback triggering business changes

Preply measures the NPS within different groups of users to see both negative and positive trends. Their main segments for learners are “New” and “Active” users. There’s a separate taxonomy for the tutors, whose sentiment towards Preply is also carefully checked.

“With tutors, we wanted first to have the same kind of scenario—new and more active. But then we applied a bit more advanced approach. We had a new segmentation in place based on their engagement level. Now, we have around five segments: Power, Core, Casual, New, Dormant, and Never Active users.”

With all the insight gathered from the NPS surveys, Preply noticed its offer could better fit customer needs. That’s why the company introduced a new pricing model based on continuous sentiment analysis.

The users adopted it very well, as the trend line keeps rising. 

Wrapping up

Staying on top of customer sentiment is a priority for a deeply customer-centric company such as Preply. The company made Net Promoter Score one of its North Star metrics and used it company-wide by applying different angles. 

Continuous feedback collection with NPS surveys allows Preply to stay on top:

• Trends in customer sentiment - how users react to product changes or pricing. 
• Company's overall health and potential for growth.
• Product improvements, as Product Managers follow and participate in NPS data analysis. 
• Making tangible business changes, such as pivoting from packages to a subscription model.

Preply proves just how versatile Net Promoter Score can be—on the one hand, providing a strategic, bird’s eye view of the company and, on the other— very detailed customer feedback. 

Are you considering employing NPS surveys at your organization? Check how Survicate can help you with effortless customer feedback collection. Sign up today!