Structure your NPS comments into actionable themes so you can identify what's driving promoters, passives, and detractors — and actually do something about it.
The template
Response Segment
Record the NPS score group this comment belongs to — Promoter (9–10), Passive (7–8), or Detractor (0–6).
Example: Detractor — Score: 4
Verbatim Comment
Paste the exact customer comment here without editing so you preserve the original language and sentiment.
Example: "The onboarding took forever and I still don't know how to set up integrations — support wasn't very helpful either."
Theme / Category
Assign one primary theme that best captures the core issue or praise expressed in the comment.
Example: Onboarding Experience
Recommended Action
Write one specific, concrete next step your team should take based on what this comment reveals.
Example: Audit the integration setup flow and add a guided checklist to the onboarding sequence by end of quarter.
How to use it
Export your NPS responses Pull your NPS survey results — including scores and open-ended comments — from your survey tool into a spreadsheet.
Fill in one row per response For each comment, complete all four template sections: segment, verbatim text, theme, and recommended action.
Group rows by theme Sort or filter your spreadsheet by the Theme column to see how many responses share the same underlying issue or praise.
Prioritize by volume and segment Focus first on themes that appear most often among Detractors, since these represent your highest-leverage opportunities to improve retention.
What it looks like filled in
Onboarding Complexity
"It took me two weeks to feel comfortable using the product — the setup process was really confusing."
→ Redesign the onboarding checklist and add contextual tooltips at the three highest drop-off steps.
Customer Support Speed
"I love the product itself but every time I have a question it takes 3–4 days to get a real answer."
→ Introduce live chat during business hours and set an internal SLA of 24-hour first response for all tickets.
Reporting & Insights Value
"The dashboards finally helped our team align on what customers actually care about — we use it every week now."
→ Feature the reporting workflow in renewal conversations and build a case study around this use case for marketing.
Why teams skip the template
Manually reading hundreds of comments takes hours When your NPS survey generates more than 50 responses, categorizing each one by hand becomes a half-day task that rarely gets done consistently across team members.
Human theming introduces bias and blind spots Different analysts group comments differently, so the themes you surface often reflect assumptions you already had rather than what customers are actually saying.
Insights go stale before anyone acts on them By the time you finish tagging, summarizing, and presenting findings in a doc or slide deck, another wave of responses has already come in and the window for action has narrowed.
Analyze your NPS comments automatically — no template needed
