Checklist · 4 min read

Customer Satisfaction & NPS Checklist: 12 Steps Before You Commission a Study

A 12-step checklist for planning a customer satisfaction & nps project in India, from objectives and audience to sampling, quality control and reporting.

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Quick answer

Before commissioning customer satisfaction & nps, define the decision it will inform, the audience, the cities, the sample, the method, the timeline and the budget. Then agree quality-control and reporting standards with your agency.

At a glance

Guide type: Checklist · 4 minute read
Method covered: Customer Satisfaction & NPS
Research family: Quantitative research
Typical timeline: 3–5 weeks for a benchmark study; continuous once the programme is live
Typical sample: 200+ responses per segment you will act on, with the response rate reported alongside
Written for: Project managers running the study · In-house teams doing it themselves · Reviewers signing off a vendor plan

Key takeaways

Start from the business decision, not the questionnaire
Fix the audience definition early
Agree QC and deliverables upfront
Plan how findings will be used

Reader intent

Who this guide is for

Three readers arrive here with different problems. Each should be able to act on this page without reading all of it.

Project managers running the study
A working sequence for a customer satisfaction & nps project, from brief through field to debrief.
In-house teams doing it themselves
The quality controls an agency would apply, written so that you can apply them yourself.
Reviewers signing off a vendor plan
Read it as an audit list against the proposal currently on your desk.

The 12-step checklist

Write down the business decision
List the information gaps
Define the target audience precisely
Choose cities and the urban/rural split
Set the sample size and key segments
Pick the method (nps programmes, csat surveys, touchpoint analysis, closed-loop feedback)
Agree languages and translation
Draft and pilot the questionnaire or guide
Agree quality-control checks
Set the timeline and milestones
Define deliverables and format
Plan the debrief and next actions

Why the order matters

Each step constrains the next. Changing the audience late, for example, can reset sampling, cost and timeline.

How Market Research India can help

Market Research India designs and runs customer satisfaction & nps projects across 50 Indian cities and 30 industries. A senior research director leads every study, and our own supervised teams handle the fieldwork. You get clear recommendations, not just data tables.

Share your objective and we will send a scoped, fixed-fee proposal within 24 hours, with a recommended method, sample and timeline.

What goes wrong

Common mistakes in customer satisfaction & nps

Most disappointing customer satisfaction & nps studies fail for reasons that were visible in the design, not in the fieldwork. These are the ones we see most often, and what to do instead.

01
Surveying only the customers you can reach
Contactable, recent and happy customers answer first. If the sample is not drawn from the full base, the score flatters the business.
02
A score with no drivers
An NPS number on its own gives you the temperature, not the cause. Five to seven driver questions turn it into an action list.
03
Making the score a frontline incentive
The moment pay depends on it, staff coach customers at the point of asking and the measure stops describing reality.
04
No closed loop
Customers who raise an issue and hear nothing stop responding. Route detractors to a named owner within 48 hours.
05
Significance claimed on thin bases
A gap between two sub-groups of forty respondents is rarely real. Agree the minimum reportable base before field and grey out everything below it in the tables.
06
A questionnaire nobody piloted
Routing errors, ambiguous scales and a 35-minute runtime are cheap to find in a 30-interview pilot and expensive to find in the full dataset.

Run through this before sign-off

Your checklist before you brief anyone

A working sequence for a customer satisfaction & nps project. Most of it costs nothing, and it saves the two weeks a re-field would take.

1
Draw the sample from the full customer base, not from the list that is easiest to reach.
2
Ask at a consistent point in the journey so the numbers stay comparable over time.
3
Add five to seven driver questions and one open verbatim to every survey.
4
Route detractors to a named owner within 48 hours and record the resolution.
5
Report drivers and response rate beside the score, every time.
6
Agree the minimum reportable base before fieldwork, and hold the line in the tables.
7
Agree in writing who acts on each finding, and by when, before the debrief ends.

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Answers

Frequently asked questions

The questions buyers ask us most often before they commission customer satisfaction & nps.

Can an agency help with the checklist?

Yes. A good agency will workshop these steps with you before it quotes.

From guide to project

Where customer satisfaction & nps actually gets commissioned

If this guide has settled the method, these are the pages worth opening next: the service itself, and the markets where customer satisfaction & nps is most often run for our clients.

Keep exploring

Customer Satisfaction & NPS Checklist: 12 Steps Before You Commission a Study

Who this guide is for

The 12-step checklist

Why the order matters

How Market Research India can help

Common mistakes in customer satisfaction & nps

Your checklist before you brief anyone

Frequently asked questions

Where customer satisfaction & nps actually gets commissioned

More reading on customer satisfaction & nps

More on customer satisfaction & nps

Other checklist articles

Customer Satisfaction & NPS city by city

Related research services

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