Net Promoter Score

Revealing the Secret Behind Tesla’s Sky-High NPS Score

Jul 2, 2024

11 mins read

Manisha Khandelwal

Tesla NPS is 97. An unexpected number!

Why do you think that is? How did they reach this score when the average NPS in the automotive industry is only around 50? 

The Story Behind Tesla’s NPS Triumph

As Tesla continued to innovate and expand its product lineup with models like the Model X, Model 3, and later the Model Y, its NPS continued to rise. The Model 3, in particular, played a significant role in boosting Tesla’s NPS as within 72 hours, they received 276,000 pre-orders.

An impressive 98% of the customers would love to repurchase these cars. Not just that. 99% said they recommend the Model 3 of Tesla cars to their family, friends, or colleagues. Therefore, this leads to increased word of mouth marketing without losing a penny.

But what makes them purchase this specific model? – Its affordability and mass-market appeal. 

Also, Tesla’s ability to keep a high NPS over the years shows its strong brand and focus on innovation and customer-centric approach. By selling directly to customers and providing over-the-air updates, Tesla ensures a smooth and satisfying experience, which makes customers more likely to recommend them to others.

Now that we understand Tesla’s journey and success, let’s talk about NPS and how you can leverage it. 

What is Net Promoter Score?

An image created by the SurveySensum team depicting the Net Promoter Score (NPS) scale and formula to calculate NPS. The scale is highlighted in red for scores 0-6 (detractors), yellow for scores 7-8 (passives), and green for scores 9-10 (promoters).

First things first, what’s NPS? So, NPS is a straightforward but compelling CX metric. It gauges customer loyalty toward your company. And instead of asking millions of questions, NPS asks one:

→ “How likely are you to recommend us [brand/product] to a friend [or colleague] on a scale of 0-10?”

The satisfaction of customers often brings more customers to a business. And through NPS insights, you can pinpoint the loyal customers who will stay for a long time, thereby lifting your customer retention rate. 

Are your customers loyal to you? Find out with NPS surveys. Create one with SurveySensum for free!

Let’s move ahead and look at other players in the automotive industry with their NPS scores to compare and understand what makes Tesla different.

Comparison with Industry Averages

The NPS score in the automotive industry varies as the industry is huge. The usual average NPS score for this sector lies at 58. Here is a list of some mainstream brands and their respective NPS scores:

  • Honda NPS: 82
  • Porsche NPS: 60 
  • Hyundai NPS: 69
  • Maruti Suzuki NPS: 62 
  • Harley-Davidson NPS: 52
  • Toyota NPS: 43

While the scores of these automotive brands are pretty good, they still haven’t achieved what Tesla has. Tesla’s NPS most often borders on being significantly in the 90s, which is above the average within the industry. This radically sets them apart and points toward the exceptional customer experience, loyalty, and satisfaction felt toward the company.

But how did Tesla do it? Let’s have a glance at factors that contribute to Tesla’s NPS score.

7 Factors Contributing to Tesla’s High Net Promoter Score

Following are the 7 points that are making Tesla stand out from all other competitors in the automotive industry: 

1. Exceptional Product

The electric cars of Tesla are known for their advanced technology giving not only great functions but also unique features. It provides that fast experience with models like the Model S, Model 3, Model X, and Model Y in its acceleration, battery life, and technology in Autopilot. These unique product attributes form the base of dedicated customers for whom innovation and sustainability are values strongly considered.

2. Customer Loyalty with Shared Value

Another crucial factor is sharing a similar value with each other. Tesla’s customers find themselves relatable with Musk’s company vision of a sustainable future. This shared common value results in a high level of collaboration with the brand’s mission, creating a strong customer relationship. 

3. Deliver Seamless CX

The third factor contributing to the success of Tesla’s high NPS is that they deliver a smooth customer experience. They use a consumer model that helps them avoid the extremely painful dealership experience customers undergo while working with the competition. And ensures that the sales process is easy, be it pre-purchase or post-purchase. 

The D2C sales model also plays a key role as it does not require traditional dealerships because everything is online. This puts customers just a few clicks away from ordering customizable vehicles online. 

After purchasing the car, Tesla vehicles do not remain static. They keep updating their product and use over-the-air updates that introduce new features and enhancements for years after the initial sale, without the need to visit a service center.  

4. Listen & Act on the Gathered Customer Feedback

According to Harvard Business Review, companies that actively use customer feedback to drive decision-making have higher growth rates than those that don’t leverage customer feedback.

This is one of the reasons that Tesla has owned it as they constantly gather and act on customer feedback. They dive deeper into the gathered feedback and keep updating themselves by pinpointing issues and working on them in real time. And they do this regularly, enabling them to take proactive actions and boosting customer satisfaction.

By following this key strategy Tesla continually enhances its products and services, bringing the response to customer concern in due time and effectively.

A Twitter screenshot highlighting customer feedback given to Elon Musk about the steering wheel and we can see active listening and responding to the feedback and assuring to take action.

5. Transparency

This screenshot captures Elon Musk's keeping transparency by advising against charging to 100% due to slight battery efficiency gains, which, if misunderstood, might be misconstrued as a universal warning against full charging.

Tesla is a well-known, popular automotive company that promotes transparency. The above screenshot is one example that highlights the advice given by Musk about charging the vehicle. This transparency customers like as their opinions, feedback, and complaints are heard and responded to. Such kind of openness and the relationships between customers and the company nurture trust and build strong customer relationships. This results in increasing customer lifetime value

6. Over-the-air Software Updates

With over-the-air updates from Tesla, new features, improvements, and bug fixes are downloaded remotely so that vehicles stay up to date and function better over time without even visiting service centers. This is what customers want and love about Tesla – leading to further increased NPS scores.

Are you looking for what to do with gathered survey data? It is time to take action on it. Knowing what your customers have to say about your products and services lets you pinpoint improvement areas and enhance your product. To take action, make sure you close the feedback loop effectively with SurveySensum

7. Personalized Buying Experience

Giving a personalized buying experience to your customers can boost 40% revenue of your automotive business. It is one of the fastest ways to grow your business. 

Tesla aces in this as they create tailored vehicles to meet their individual customer needs. This leads to increased customer satisfaction as they feel more valued and important. 

You now must be wondering how you can benefit by launching an NPS survey and gathering its insights. Let’s find out right here.

Leverage Your NPS Insights with SurveySensum

An image showing the NPS dashboard available on the SurveySensum platform from where you can access all the reports at your fingertips

SurveySensum is a robust NPS software that lets you create, distribute, and analyze NPS feedback all in one platform. 

  • With Text Analytics, it helps you to dive deeper into the qualitative data and identify trends and customer sentiments to make data-driven decisions. 
  • It enables you to collect feedback through multiple channels like WhatsApp, email, SMS, etc. for effective reach.  
  • Its powerful dashboard gives a birds eye view of the performance of your program and gives downloadable NPS reports to share with your team.
  • It is known for its easy navigation and engaging UI.
  • It offers expert support to implement NPS end-to-end. CX experts guide you thoroughly and suggest the best practices to implement for the welfare of your business. 

Thus, with such benefits, you can improve the process of managing customer experience and succeed in managing your business.

Leverage NPS program insights in real-time with SurveySensum’s CX expert guidance end to end

FAQs

Q.1. What is Tesla’s NPS and how do they calculate it?

NPS is a survey metric to gauge customer loyalty by asking a simple question: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend Tesla?” The respondents are categorized into promoters (who scored either 9 or 10), passives (who scored either 7 or 8), and detractors (who are unhappy and scored between the range of 0 to 6). To calculate the NPS, you should subtract promoters from detractors. Similarly, Tesla did and Tesla’s NPS 2023 is 97 which is the highest net promoter score in the automotive industry.

Q.2. How does Tesla have the highest NPS?

It is because Tesla is one of the rare companies that thought far ahead of the current time. They come up with the innovation of having sustainable mobility leading to the invention of electric vehicles. Then they worked on the customers’ insights on what they wanted the most. To fulfill customers’ needs and expectations, they bring technology and customer feedback together and get the highest NPS score by delivering exactly the need of the hour.

Q.3. In what ways does Tesla use the NPS score to expand its business?

Tesla listens to what customers say to make their products and services even better. They use NPS to identify the pain points that, in response, will bring the customers back and, in the meantime, will bring their friends along for Tesla.

Q.4. What does Tesla do when people aren’t happy?

Tesla takes the unhappy customers seriously. They listen to the complaints and solve the problems quickly. Be it any technical glitch or enhancement in services, Tesla tries to an extent to make its dissatisfied customers → a satisfied one.

Q.5 What Initiatives did Tesla implement based on NPS insights?

The NPS insights are the base for which Tesla performs further initiative implementations of enhancements of products, services, and communication strategies that could assist customers in deriving better value from services and products.

Conclusion

Having a great product in the market is fine but having loyal customers who not only love your product but also shout out loud encouraging others to purchase your product is what makes a brand stand out. This loyalty plays a very important part in driving business success. And NPS surveys are the key to gauge this loyalty. 

NPS not only updates you about your loyal customers but it also updates you about those customers who are about to churn and benchmark your score with your competitors. So, learn from Tesla, and start getting more businesses from your current customers.

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Manisha Khandelwal

Senior Content Marketer at SurveySensum

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