How to Create a Customer Loyalty Survey That Actually Drives Change

The 0-10 recommendation question has become the gold standard for measuring customer loyalty. By asking "How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?" it becomes simple to categorise users into promoters, passives and detractors.

It's true that one simple question can yield powerful insights. However most survey tools won't tell you that a score without context is just a vanity metric.

What is a Recommendation Score Survey?

A recommendation score measures customer loyalty on a 0-10 scale. Respondents fall into three groups:

• Promoters (9-10): Your biggest fans
• Passives (7-8): Satisfied but unenthusiastic
• Detractors (0-6): Unhappy customers at risk of churning

Your score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from promoters. Simple, powerful, and used by companies worldwide for both customer experience surveys and sometimes even employee engagement surveys.

This methodology is sometimes known as Net Promoter Score®, developed by Bain & Company, Inc.

The Problem With Scores Alone

You run your customer satisfaction survey and your loyalty score comes back at +32. Is that good? And more importantly, what do you do about it?

This is where most free survey tools fall short. They give you the number but leave you guessing at the story behind it. Why did that customer give you a 6? What would turn that passive 7 into a loyal 9?

The Fix: Always Enable Comments

When you create surveys with Sunbeam's free survey maker, every recommendation question can include an optional comment field. This is where the magic happens.

Turn on comments and suddenly that 6 comes with context: "Love the product, but support response times have slipped lately." Now you have something actionable.

Go Deeper With AI-Powered Surveys

Sunbeam's Asklet feature takes your loyalty survey to the next level. Instead of a static comment box, Asklet uses AI to have a natural follow-up conversation with respondents. It asks the questions a skilled interviewer would:

• "What specifically influenced your score?"
• "You mentioned support - can you tell me more about that experience?"
• "What would we need to change to earn a higher rating?"

It's like having a voice of customer researcher built into your online survey creator, automatically extracting insights that a simple customer feedback form would miss.

When to Use Recommendation Score Surveys

This question works brilliantly for:

Customer Experience

• Post-purchase feedback
• Quarterly relationship surveys
• Customer satisfaction benchmarking

Employee Experience

• Employee loyalty measurement
• Pulse surveys after company changes
• Annual employee satisfaction surveys

Create Your Free Loyalty Survey

Ready to move beyond vanity metrics? Sunbeam is a free online survey tool that makes it easy to create recommendation surveys with built-in comments and AI-powered follow-ups.