Feature
The Gist
- NPS reveals loyalty with one question. Net Promoter Score distills customer sentiment and advocacy into a single measure that leaders can interpret quickly.
- It’s simple—but powerful when paired with analysis. NPS becomes far more valuable when combined with qualitative feedback, key driver analysis, and supporting CX metrics like CSAT and CES.
- NPS persists because it’s familiar and actionable. Despite predictions of its decline, NPS endures thanks to its ease of use, cultural adoption, and ability to guide customer-focused improvements.
In a world where every customer's opinion can be amplified through social media and online reviews, understanding and measuring customer loyalty has never been more critical. Enter the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which some call a powerful tool in the arsenal of customer experience (CX) professionals. The NPS metric aims to capture the essence of customer relationships with a single, straightforward question.
Others aren't so convinced. We've had several columnists this year, in fact, calling for expansion of the customer experience metric playbook beyond the Net Promoter Score. Some feel so strongly they even call for moving beyond the NPS.
But the fact still remains: customer experience leaders still do use this metric. And today, it's a matter of being open to new ways to measure CX and keeping up with the best practices around the NPS.
So here goes:
Table of Contents
- What Is Net Promoter Score (NPS)?
- Core Questions About Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Why Use Net Promoter Score?
- How to Calculate Net Promoter Score
- What’s a Good Net Promoter Score?
- How Does NPS Work? 9 Steps for Deployment
- What Can You Measure Using NPS?
- What Is Your Key Driver Analysis for NPS?
- Why Simple Is Good for Net Promoter Score
- Avoiding Over-Reliance on NPS
- Conclusion: NPS as a Starting Point for Stronger Customer Experience
What Is Net Promoter Score (NPS)?
Net Promoter Score is one of the most common customer experience benchmarks for measuring customer loyalty and satisfaction. It asks customers the question: How likely are you to recommend this product/service to someone else? Many brands and CX pros use the NPS metric in conjunction with Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Customer Effort Score (CES), Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and Customer Churn Rate.
“The NPS is the most accurate measure of customer satisfaction and the likelihood of recommending a product to friends, colleagues and their professional network,” said Paul Staelin, chief customer officer at Vercel and previously chief customer officer at Trifacta. “Even better, an NPS gives CX professionals a data-driven measurement of the success of our customer engagement and of the product itself.”
Core Questions About Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Editor's note: Key questions surrounding how Net Promoter Score works, how to interpret it, and how businesses can use it to strengthen customer loyalty and improve overall CX performance.
Improve NPS by listening to customer feedback, fixing recurring pain points, resolving detractor issues, personalizing communications and engaging promoters through loyalty and referral programs.
Subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. Passives count toward total responses but don’t affect the score directly.
After major touchpoints—purchases, support interactions, feature launches—without over-surveying customers.
Analyze qualitative feedback, follow up with detractors, strengthen weak touchpoints, empower promoters and monitor trends over time.
No. NPS must be paired with metrics like CSAT and CES to understand the “why” behind customer attitudes and behaviors.
Promoters (9–10) are loyal advocates; passives (7–8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic; detractors (0–6) are unhappy and may churn or harm brand reputation.
A good NPS is typically any score above zero, meaning more promoters than detractors. Scores above 20 are strong in most industries, while scores above 50 are excellent. Benchmarks vary by industry, so trend tracking is essential.
It identifies the factors most responsible for increasing or decreasing loyalty, such as product quality, support responsiveness or ease of use.
Critics argue that NPS does not always correlate with business outcomes and oversimplifies customer sentiment. Still, it remains widely used due to simplicity and familiarity.
NPS is culturally entrenched, easy to communicate and widely adopted. Most companies now use it alongside other customer experience metrics.
Why Use Net Promoter Score?
The Net Promoter Score has become a go-to metric for brands seeking a quick, actionable insight into customer loyalty and brand advocacy. Its strength lies in its simplicity: with a single question, businesses can identify their strongest promoters, spot unhappy customers before they churn, and compare their performance against competitors.
Interpreting Net Promoter Score (NPS) Results
| NPS Score Range | Performance Category | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| -100 to 0 | Needs Improvement | More detractors than promoters; urgent focus on CX is needed. |
| 1 to 20 | Good | More promoters than detractors; CX initiatives are starting to pay off. |
| 21 to 50 | Excellent | Strong customer loyalty; brand advocates are growing. |
| 51 to 100 | World-Class | Exceptional loyalty; customers are highly likely to recommend your brand. |
Some key benefits of using Net Promoter Score include:
- Determining your customers' level of satisfaction with your product or service
- Deploying customer experience metrics simply without a big resource and time grab
- Using data-driven customer experience feedback to drive action
- Sharing your positive feedback publicly with customers and prospects
Related Article: Key CX Metrics That Shape Customer Loyalty and Business Success
How to Calculate Net Promoter Score
How is NPS measured? It's all based on the question: How likely are you to recommend the product/service? The Net Promoter Score survey allows customers to choose a score between 0 and 10, with 0 meaning "not likely at all," and 10 meaning "very likely."
The Net Promoter Score scale breaks down what your customers look like based on their chosen NPS scores.
- Promoters: Answer with a 9 or 10
- Passives: Answer with a 7 or 8
- Detractors: Answer with a 6 or lower
To calculate your final NPS score, subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters:
Promoters Percentage - Detractors Percentage = NPS
For example, if 20% are detractors and 80% are promoters, your NPS score is 60. The best score would be 100, and the worst score would be -100.
What’s a Good Net Promoter Score?
A good NPS score falls above 20%, according to Staelin. “However, for enterprise technology, I believe 30% is world-class since companies buying technology for business services are notoriously demanding." For example, Trifacta’s NPS falls around 84%.
In order to be a successful enterprise technology solution, create CX programs that will get your NPS much higher, Staelin added. The market is incredibly competitive, so customer retention and continual successful use cases of your product have become more important than ever before “With that in mind, most technology companies aim to have an NPS of 30. We shoot for a score over 50.”
While NPS scores can vary widely by industry, a score above zero means you have more promoters than detractors, and for most businesses, above 20 is solid. In highly competitive sectors like enterprise technology or SaaS, expectations are higher—many companies set their sights on 30 or above, with scores over 50 considered excellent or world-class.
NPS vs. Other Customer Experience Metrics
| Metric | What It Measures | When to Use |
|---|---|---|
| Net Promoter Score (NPS) | Likelihood to recommend your brand (loyalty/advocacy) | Track overall brand sentiment and customer loyalty |
| Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) | Satisfaction with a specific interaction or experience | Gauge satisfaction after a support ticket, purchase, or event |
| Customer Effort Score (CES) | Ease of accomplishing a task or resolving an issue | Assess how easy you make things for your customers |
It’s also important to compare your score to industry averages and your own past results, rather than chasing a universal “good” number. Ultimately, the most valuable use of NPS is to track trends over time and identify areas to strengthen customer loyalty and advocacy.
Related Article: Beyond NPS: The Customer Trust Analytics Model for CX Strategy
How Does NPS Work? 9 Steps for Deployment
Brands that want to deploy a Net Promoter Score system should follow the steps below:
- Choose the right tool. You can use a simple survey platform or more advanced customer experience management software with built-in NPS functionalities.
- Determine the delivery method. Decide how you'll distribute the survey, such as through email, online while interacting with your website or product, via text message, etc.
- Design your survey. Keep your survey simple and short. Ensure respondents understand the scale (0 to 10) and which end represents positive feedback. You can also customize the look and feel of the survey to match your company's branding and increase engagement.
- Choose the timing and frequency. Send the survey after a purchase, support interaction or another significant engagement. And be mindful of survey fatigue — space out NPS surveys appropriately to prevent annoyance.
- Send the survey. Use your chosen method(s) to distribute the survey. Personalize the invitation to increase response rates and let customers know their feedback is valued.
- Analyze the responses. Collect and analyze your data. Beyond calculating the Net Promoter Score, dig into the qualitative feedback to understand the reasons behind the score, which can provide actionable insights for improving your product or service.
- Act on the feedback. Use the insights gained from the NPS survey to take corrective action. You can also use the data gathered to engage promoters further, such as through referral programs or user-generated content.
- Close the loop. Follow-up with respondents based on their feedback. Thank detractors for their feedback and inform them of steps taken to address their concerns. Acknowledge passives and explore ways to improve their experience, and thank promoters and encourage them to share their positive experiences online.
- Monitor and iterate. Regularly measure NPS and monitor changes over time. Use this data to refine your approach, improve customer satisfaction and boost your NPS score.
What Can You Measure Using NPS?
Net Promoter Score is more than just a number—it offers a window into customer loyalty, sentiment and the growth potential of your brand. By asking how likely customers are to recommend your product or service, NPS captures both satisfaction and advocacy in a single metric. High scores indicate not just contentment, but genuine enthusiasm—identifying those customers who are most likely to promote your business to others and fuel organic growth.
The power of NPS lies in the layers beneath the score. Alongside the quantitative rating, qualitative feedback reveals why customers feel the way they do, uncovering insights into what’s working and where improvements are needed. Over time, tracking NPS can help you monitor the effectiveness of your customer experience initiatives, spot shifts in loyalty, and compare a brand’s performance against its peers.
In practice, NPS helps businesses identify their strongest advocates (promoters), pinpoint those at risk of churn (detractors), and segment their customer base by engagement level. This segmentation enables more targeted retention strategies, personalized communications and smarter product development. For businesses focused on growth, a rising NPS often signals a healthy, referral-driven pipeline, while a declining score can be an early warning sign of competitive risk or customer dissatisfaction.
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Ultimately, NPS is most powerful when it’s used as a guide to action—not just as a score to report. By combining the metric with thoughtful analysis of customer feedback, businesses can refine their strategies, drive better outcomes, and build lasting loyalty.
What Is Your Key Driver Analysis for NPS?
Understanding your NPS is just the beginning—what truly drives improvement is uncovering the factors that influence it most. That’s where key driver analysis comes in. By examining customer feedback and correlating NPS results with other data, businesses can pinpoint which aspects of their experience—such as product quality, support responsiveness, or ease of use—have the biggest impact on loyalty.
As Howard Lax, Ph.D., president of The LAX Group and former principal director of customer experience consulting at Forsta, explained, driver analysis is essential for moving from measurement to meaningful action. It allows businesses to identify, quantify, and prioritize the areas that need the most attention in order to boost overall loyalty and business outcomes. In other words, key driver analysis helps bring the NPS metric to life—turning raw scores into a guide for stronger CX programs and measurable improvement.
Why Simple Is Good for Net Promoter Score
The simplicity of NPS is a major reason for its lasting popularity and widespread adoption. As Lax told CMSWire, few loyalty metrics are cited as often or used as widely in boardrooms as NPS. For senior executives, its appeal is clear: "The NPS provides the promise that all you need to do is ask one question to gauge insight into brand loyalty."
Yet, not everyone is convinced that NPS alone tells the whole story. In 2021, Gartner predicted that more than 75% of companies would abandon NPS as a CX metric by 2025, citing concerns that the score alone wasn’t always actionable or directly tied to business results. Despite these doubts, NPS has stuck around—not because it’s perfect, but because it’s fast, easy to understand, and provides a common language for measuring loyalty across a business.
Why has NPS endured despite predictions of its demise? The answer is partly cultural: NPS is embedded in many businesses’ CX programs, making it a familiar metric for executives, teams, and even investors. Additionally, most brands now use NPS alongside other metrics—such as CSAT and CES—to create a more complete, actionable picture of customer experience. As a result, while its role is evolving, NPS continues to provide value when combined with other insights and used as a springboard for deeper CX analysis.
Related Article: The End of Scoreboard CX: Why Customer Experience Needs Movement, Not Metrics
Avoiding Over-Reliance on NPS
“While the Net Promoter Score metric has soared in popularity and offers a simple and straight-forward way to gauge brand loyalty, it is not always the right CX metric to focus on,” Lax said. “Businesses that want to build better customer experiences should never blindly adopt NPS as their holy grail. The best CX metric is that which best explains the customer behaviors you are trying to encourage and the business outcomes you want to achieve.”
According to Lax, to choose the best CX metric, businesses should:
- Identify the outcome(s) that are the most important to your business
- Link the outcomes to customer survey and behavioral data
- Test which metric does the best job of explaining those outcomes
Conclusion: NPS as a Starting Point for Stronger Customer Experience
Net Promoter Score has earned its place as one of the most popular and accessible tools for measuring customer loyalty and advocacy. Its one-question simplicity allows brands to quickly take the pulse of their customer base, identify key promoters, and spot potential risks before they turn into churn.
Yet as customer expectations, channels, and business models evolve, it’s become clear that NPS is most valuable when used as part of a broader, data-driven customer experience strategy.
