Loyalty program survey questions, by programme moment

02/ NPS for the programme

Measure the programme separately from the brand.

A guest can love the hotel and be indifferent to the points. If you only ask about the brand, the programme’s problems stay hidden.

Net Promoter Score comes from Bain & Company: ask “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” on a 0 to 10 scale, then subtract the percentage of detractors (0 to 6) from the percentage of promoters (9 and 10) (Bain & Company, measuring your NPS).

For a loyalty programme, ask the same question about the programme itself, and always follow it with an open “What is the main reason for your score?”. The reason is what you act on; the number only tells you whether it is getting better.

Track programme NPS by tier and by moment, not as one figure, and never compare it directly with a brand NPS asked in a different survey. The full satisfaction and NPS method for members is on our member satisfaction survey guide.

03/ Writing the questions

Test every question before it goes out.

Most bad survey data is written in, not collected. The UK government’s analysts publish the rules, and they apply as much to a points survey as to a national one.

The Government Analysis Function says to keep questions short, avoid vague words such as “regularly”, avoid double negatives, and avoid leading questions, balancing them with phrases such as “if any” or “useful, or not useful” (Questionnaire design guidance).

In a loyalty survey the usual traps are leading questions (“How much did you enjoy your reward?”), double questions (“How satisfied are you with our rewards and tiers?”) and jargon only the programme team uses, such as internal tier codes.

Run each draft question through the check before it goes into the survey.

04/ Answer scales

Pick a scale and keep it.

Changing the scale between waves breaks the comparison you ran the survey to make.

The Government Analysis Function describes open questions for exploring, closed questions for counting, and Likert-type scales for attitudes, noting that a seven-point scale gives more detail for analysis (Questionnaire design guidance).

Our practical rule for loyalty surveys: one balanced five-point scale for ease and satisfaction, Bain’s 0 to 10 for recommendation only, and one open question per survey at most, placed after the score it explains.

05/ Order and length

Easy first, sensitive last, short throughout.

The same guidance says to start with easy questions, group related ones, route people past questions that do not apply to them, and keep sensitive questions away from the start, with a “Prefer not to say” option (Questionnaire design guidance).

For a loyalty survey that usually means routing on tier and on whether the member has ever redeemed, so a member who has never redeemed is not asked about rewards they have not seen.

06/ Research or marketing?

A survey is not a sales message.

Loyalty teams own the customer list and the marketing permissions, which makes it tempting to blur the two.

The ICO says genuine market research is not direct marketing, but if a research message includes promotional material, or the research is carried out to send people direct marketing, it is direct marketing: “sometimes referred to as ‘sugging’ (selling under the guise of research)” (ICO, identify direct marketing).

So keep offers, bonus points for booking and upsell links out of the survey. If you want to thank people with points for taking part, check the PECR position with your data protection lead first.

If an agency runs the survey for you, ask whether it works to the MRS Code of Conduct, the Market Research Society’s professional standard for UK research practitioners (2023 edition).

07/ Turning answers into decisions

Each question should point to a lever.

A loyalty programme has a small number of levers: the earn rate, the reward catalogue, availability, tier thresholds, tier benefits and communications. Map every question to one of them before the survey launches.

If an answer could not move any lever, it is a curiosity, not a survey question.

08/ Loyalty programme or membership?

Paid members need different questions.

A points programme that anyone can join free is not the same as a paid membership, and a repeat customer is not automatically a member. Where people pay a fee, ask about the value of the fee and renewal intention as well.

For associations and institutes, start from our membership survey questions. For the programmes themselves, see our operator guides to hotel loyalty programmes and airline loyalty programmes.

09/ Loyalty marketing agency

Want help acting on the answers?

A survey is the start. Our loyalty marketing agency work turns what members tell you into changes to the earn rate, rewards, tiers and the messages that explain them.