Measurement / framework / Free to use
Customer Survey Checklist: Can You Trust the Results?
Check who was invited, who answered and what is still unknown before using an NPS score to change your marketing or customer experience.
Growthcraft Editorial · 2026-10-13. AI-assisted research and implementation. Examples are synthetic; Akshay's personal review is not claimed.
Copyable template
Select and copy the complete template below. With JavaScript enabled, you can edit, copy and download it in the interactive workspace.
CUSTOMER SURVEY DECISION REVIEW — original Growthcraft synthesis DECISION: action being considered; owner; deadline; target if relevant COHORT: customer unit; eligible invited count; invitation dates; survey close; exclusions INSTRUMENT: exact question/version; language; channel; incentive; relationship or transaction context VALID ANSWERS: one per eligible customer; deduplication rule; invalid/partial handling COUNTS: invited N; promoters P; passives S; detractors D; missing U=N-P-S-D RESULTS: respondent NPS; valid-answer coverage; finite-cohort lower/upper bounds CHECKS: groups underrepresented; unreachable invites; late answers; identity uncertainty CLAIMS: respondents versus invited cohort versus broader customer population ACTION: report with qualification / investigate / hold decision; evidence and responsible owner FOLLOW-UP: neutral outreach policy; customer support route; consent/privacy limits; review date
When this checklist helps
Use this before reporting a customer survey as evidence for a positioning change, lifecycle programme or service investment. It suits consumer brands, apps and startups collecting a 0–10 recommendation score from a known eligible list. Do not use it to certify an open-link poll, infer all customers' views from a convenience sample or evaluate an employee from a handful of responses. It does not turn NPS into a revenue forecast.
Prepare the evidence
Bring the invitation roster, question version, fieldwork dates, response snapshot and an aggregate count reconciliation. Keep customer identities in the approved research system. The unit must be consistent: a customer, account or household, not a mixture of people and orders. Resolve duplicate answers with a rule chosen before seeing the scores. Record invalid and partial submissions separately rather than silently converting them to zero.
Five checks before a decision
- Define the claim. The growth owner writes the decision and audience. “Respondents scored 60” is narrower than “our customers score 60.” If the broader claim is unnecessary, keep the narrower one.
- Reconcile invitations. The analyst confirms known eligibility and one unique unit per invitation roster. Separate not contacted, undeliverable and no valid answer. Unknown eligibility needs a fuller survey disposition method, not this simplified calculator.
- Verify scoring. Promoters are 9–10, passives 7–8 and detractors 0–6. Include passives in the denominator. Preserve missing scores as missing. Check counts against the raw authorized export.
- Expose missingness. Report coverage and the finite-cohort extreme range alongside the respondent score. Compare respondents with the invitation roster on relevant available groups. A difference is an investigation signal, not proof that weighting will fix it.
- Choose proportionate action. The research and commercial owners decide what evidence is sufficient. A broad range can justify better follow-up or a smaller reversible action. Do not delay resolving a credible service issue merely because the survey cannot estimate its prevalence.
Worked example
Of 1,000 eligible invited customers, 140 are promoters, 40 passives and 20 detractors. There are 200 valid answers and 800 missing. Respondent NPS is 60 and valid-answer coverage is 20%. Assigning all missing answers to detractors gives −68; assigning all to promoters gives 92. Both are possible completions of this roster, not likely outcomes or a confidence interval.
A target of 30 is not established for the invited cohort. Missing answers would need at least 180 more promoters than detractors to meet it. That requirement is a sensitivity calculation, not an instruction to find 180 happy customers. The owner publishes the respondent result with its denominator, holds the population-wide claim and asks the analyst to review invitation coverage by tenure and customer journey stage.
Make the review usable
Copy the worksheet into the decision brief. Assign the analyst the count reconciliation, the research lead the instrument and missingness assessment, and the growth owner the action. Keep a timestamped snapshot so late responses create a new version rather than changing the earlier report without explanation. Use a neutral, permission-respecting follow-up strategy instead of targeting only recent happy customers.
Failure modes and limits
Coverage alone cannot diagnose bias. A completed invited cohort can still exclude important customers or use a leading question. Small subgroups can disclose identities and produce unstable impressions. The extreme range assumes each missing unit could supply any valid score and says nothing about the likelihood of a completion. No universal response-rate threshold or NPS benchmark is imposed. Escalate complex sampling, weights and unknown eligibility to a qualified researcher.
Sources checked October 13, 2026: Bain’s NPS scoring definition and AAPOR Standard Definitions. Publication/update dates for these living pages are unavailable. They support scoring and caution about interpreting response rates; this finite-cohort worksheet is original synthesis, not an endorsed AAPOR response-rate formula.