Structure your NPS open-ended responses into clear themes and actionable insights so you know exactly what to fix, improve, or double down on.
The template
Response Collection
List all raw NPS open-ended comments you received in this analysis period, including the respondent's score if available.
Example: Score 9 — "Love the speed and the new dashboard layout. Just wish we could export reports as PDF." | Score 4 — "Onboarding was confusing and support took 3 days to respond." | Score 7 — "Good product but pricing feels high compared to alternatives."
Theme Grouping
Group similar comments into named themes, and note how many responses mention each theme to understand relative frequency.
For each high-impact theme, write one specific next step and assign it to the team or person responsible for following up.
Example: Onboarding Friction → Audit the first 3 onboarding steps and add a progress indicator — Owner: Product team | Support Response Time → Set up an auto-acknowledgment email within 1 hour — Owner: Customer Success lead
How to use it
Export your NPS comments Pull all open-ended responses from your NPS survey tool (Delighted, Typeform, SurveyMonkey, etc.) into a spreadsheet alongside each respondent's numerical score.
Read through and tag each comment Assign one or two theme tags to every comment — for example "onboarding," "pricing," or "support" — so you can group them in the next step.
Fill in the Theme Grouping and Sentiment sections Tally how many comments share each tag, decide whether the overall sentiment is positive or negative, and rate the business impact so you can prioritize.
Define one action per high-impact theme Write a single, specific next step for every theme rated impact 3 or 2, name the owner, and add it directly to your team's backlog or sprint.
What it looks like filled in
Onboarding Friction
"I signed up excited but had no idea what to do first. The setup wizard disappeared and I couldn't find it again."
→ Re-surface the setup checklist persistently in the dashboard until all steps are complete
Speed & Performance
"Honestly the reason I give it a 9 is how fast everything loads. Switched from a competitor and it's night and day."
→ Add a performance benchmark callout to the sales and marketing site to reinforce this differentiator
Missing Export Features
"Would give a 10 if I could export my reports as a PDF or share a live link with clients who don't have an account."
→ Add PDF export and shareable read-only report links to the Q3 product roadmap
Why teams skip the template
Tagging hundreds of comments by hand takes hours Manually reading and categorizing every open-ended NPS response is tedious, and themes you're already primed to see tend to get over-counted while subtle patterns get missed entirely.
Theme naming is inconsistent across team members When two people tag the same batch of responses, they rarely use the same labels — making it impossible to reliably compare NPS feedback across months or between segments.
The template becomes stale the moment new responses come in NPS comments arrive continuously, so a spreadsheet analyzed once a quarter gives you a snapshot that's already weeks out of date by the time you act on it.
Analyze your NPS comments automatically — no template needed
