Net Promoter Score (NPS)
A survey metric derived from likelihood-to-recommend, reported as promoters minus detractors.
The calculation and what it discards
Ask how likely someone is to recommend you, 0 to 10. Promoters score 9–10, detractors 0–6, passives 7–8 and are excluded. Subtract detractor percentage from promoter percentage.
What the buckets hide
Making it useful
Fix the method — same question, same scale, same timing relative to the customer lifecycle — and treat any change as a break in the series.
Report the response rate. A score from 8% of customers is a measure of who felt strongly enough to answer.
Segment by tenure and size. A blended score averages a honeymoon cohort with a renewal-eligible one.
Read the comments. The free text is where the actionable content is; the number is a way of sorting it.
Where it misleads
Asking after a positive interaction inflates it; asking after support contact deflates it. Timing is a larger lever than sentiment.
Response bias is severe — satisfied and furious customers answer, the indifferent majority does not.
It measures stated intent, not behaviour. Promoters churn, detractors renew.
Used as a team target it stops measuring sentiment, because the people surveyed can be chosen and the moment can be picked.
RELATED TERMS
Customer Effort Score (CES)
A survey measure of how much effort a customer had to expend to get something done.
Customer Health Score
A composite indicator combining usage, engagement and support signals to estimate the likelihood an account renews.
Churn
Customers or revenue lost over a period. The leak determining whether acquisition compounds or merely replaces.
COMMON QUESTIONS
- How is NPS calculated?
- Percentage scoring 9–10 minus percentage scoring 0–6. Scores of 7–8 are counted as passives and excluded, which is why two very different response distributions can produce the same score.
- Is NPS a good metric?
- It is a reasonable trend measure within one company using one method. It is a poor comparison between companies, because sampling, timing and question wording differ and all three move the score more than sentiment does.
- What is a good NPS?
- Better than your own last one, measured the same way. Cross-company benchmarks compare different sampling methods, and the collapsing of 0–6 into one bucket means the same score can describe very different customer bases.
- What should you actually do with NPS?
- Read the free-text comments and close the loop with detractors. The score is a trigger for a conversation; the conversation is where anything actionable comes from.
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