The Flaws of NPS and the Superiority of CSAT as a Metric | 3min snip from Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth

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The UX research reckoning is here | Judd Antin (Airbnb, Meta)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

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The Flaws of NPS and the Superiority of CSAT as a Metric

NPS is criticized for being a flawed metric due to the 0-11 scale, unlabeled options, and too many items, leading to imprecise and inaccurate survey data. The question about likelihood to recommend is considered fundamentally flawed and not a good indicator of loyalty. In contrast, customer satisfaction (CSAT) is advocated as a superior metric with better data properties, precision, and correlation to business outcomes. Research confirms that CSAT outperforms NPS and provides more accurate and consistent data. The flawed nature of NPS undermines its usefulness for benchmarking or meaningful comparison with industry standards.

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Judd Antin has spent 15 years leading research and design teams at companies like Yahoo, Meta, and Airbnb. His direct reports have gone on to lead user research at Figma, Notion, Slack, Robinhood, Duolingo, AllTrails, and more. In our conversation, we unpack the transformation that the user-research field is experiencing. Specifically:

• Where user research went wrong over the past decade

• The three types of research—macro, middle-range, and micro—and the purpose of each

• How to effectively integrate researchers into the product development process

• The “user-centered performance” phenomenon and why it’s a waste of time

• Common tropes about PMs, from researchers

• The ideal ratio of researchers in a company

• Why Judd says NPS is useless, and what to use instead

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Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-ux-research-reckoning-is-here

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Where to find Judd Antin:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juddantin/

• Website: https://juddantin.com/

• Blog: https://medium.com/onebigthought

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/