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The Gist
- NPS isn’t broken — measurement strategy is. Organizations misused Net Promoter Score as a complete CX strategy instead of one signal within a broader system.
- Metric churn won’t fix cultural gaps. Replacing NPS with CSAT, CES or new scores repeats the same cycle when teams fail to connect metrics to decisions and outcomes.
- Mature CX measurement requires alignment. Effective programs tie metrics to ownership, actionability and business goals — not dashboards built for reporting theater.
In 2016, I wrote that Net Promoter Score (NPS) was becoming a vanity metric. Not because NPS itself was flawed, but because organizations were expecting it to be their entire CX strategy.
Nearly a decade later, everyone's lining up to take a swing at NPS — and completely missing what they're angry about.
In 2021, Gartner predicted more than 75% of organizations would abandon NPS as a measure of success for customer service and support by 2025. Well, here we are in 2026, and Gartner's prediction largely came true—sort of. Only 23% of U.S. enterprise CX leaders now use NPS to measure performance.
But organizations didn't abandon it dramatically—they quietly downgraded it within larger metrics stacks. Meanwhile, there's a website devoted to eradicating NPS (NPSIsTheWorst.com), think pieces declaring it "dead" and endless articles asking, "Why are we still using NPS?"
NPS has officially become the industry's favorite punching bag.
Table of Contents
- How the NPS Punching Bag Got Installed
- What We're Really Punching at in Customer Experience
- Installing a New Punching CX Bag Won't Help
- Same Punching Bag, Same Bruised CX Knuckles
How the NPS Punching Bag Got Installed
When Fred Reichheld and Bain & Company introduced NPS in 2003 with "The One Number You Need to Grow," they were selling a solution to a real problem: translating customer sentiment into executive language. Organizations needed a number. NPS promised to be that number.
And boy, did organizations buy it.
NPS spread like wildfire because it was simple, benchmarkable and board-meeting friendly. Customer success teams hung their entire reputations on it. It became the thing everyone could point to and say, "We're measuring CX."
But then the predictable dysfunction began. Organizations weaponized it—tying it to compensation, turning it into targets. Teams started gaming: "Please give us a 9 or 10!" Customers weaponized it back: "I'll give you a 10 if you give me a discount."
The metric that was supposed to measure loyalty became a transaction itself.
As I wrote in 2016, organizations focused on increasing the score instead of improving the experience. They treated NPS as everything instead of part of a greater whole. Everyone learned to game a system never designed to withstand that kind of pressure.
Related Article: Net Promoter Score Isn't a Growth Strategy — It's a Comfort Metric
What We're Really Punching at in Customer Experience
Fast forward to today, and the criticism has reached fever pitch. I recently read an article arguing that NPS is simultaneously "working exactly as organizations designed it" AND "being asked to do work it was never capable of doing." When your critique contradicts itself, maybe you're punching the wrong target.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: we're not angry at NPS. We're angry at ourselves.
We bought the hype when Bain called it "the one number." We installed it everywhere without building measurement maturity. We replaced strategy with a score and created incentive structures that turned it into theater.
We're angry that Forrester reports customer experience quality has been in a "multiyear downward trend" globally—21% of brands declined, only 6% improved and 73% remained unchanged—despite two decades of measuring NPS religiously.
NPS is just there, absorbing all that frustration like a heavy bag in a boxing gym.
Here's an example from my experience: A B2B company maintained high NPS scores throughout the customer lifecycle. Service was responsive, account managers attentive, customers rated them highly. Then renewal time came, and customers shopped around anyway—because the product didn't deliver promised business outcomes.
Was that NPS's fault? Or was it the organization's fault for not measuring what mattered? They were mad at the score, but the score was telling them exactly what it was designed to: customers felt good about the relationship. It just wasn't the right question for predicting renewals.
The metric didn't fail. The measurement strategy did.
Related Article: Your NPS Strategy Is Becoming 'Feedback Theater'
Installing a New Punching CX Bag Won't Help
Here's where the cycle gets predictable: Gartner says abandon NPS. Articles proclaim it "dead." Companies rush to adopt Customer Effort Score, Customer Satisfaction Score, Brand Vulnerability Score or whatever comes next.
And you know what will happen? Organizations will misuse those metrics, too. They'll turn them into targets, tie them to compensation, expect them to solve strategic problems. Customers will learn to game them. And in five years, we'll have think pieces declaring those metrics "dead," too.
The pattern will repeat because we're not fixing the underlying problem.
Five Questions to Pressure-Test Any CX Metric
Before adding any metric to your dashboard—NPS or otherwise—use this framework to ensure it drives action, not just reporting.
| Question | What You're Really Testing | If the Answer Is No... |
|---|---|---|
| What decision will this inform? | Whether the metric leads to a concrete business action | Don’t measure it—it's noise, not insight |
| Which team owns it? | Clear accountability for acting on the metric | It becomes a vanity metric with no impact |
| How does this connect to your north star? | Alignment with core business and CX goals | It distracts from what actually matters |
| Can you act on what you learn? | Operational ability to respond to insights | You're measuring problems you can't fix |
| If it moved 20 points, would you do anything differently? | Sensitivity of the metric to meaningful change | Remove it—it's not decision-driving |
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A metric is a tool—a barometer, not the whole weather system. NPS can signal sentiment, but it cannot diagnose root causes or replace direct customer understanding.
If you can't answer all five, you're just shopping for a nicer punching bag.
This hierarchy applies regardless of metric choice. The tool is irrelevant if the foundation is broken.
What Actually Drives Customer Experience Outcomes
Metrics don’t fix customer experience—operating discipline does. These are the foundations that separate insight from impact.
| Priority | Focus Area | What It Really Means |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Culture first | Prioritize genuine customer care over chasing scores or optics |
| 2 | Strategy second | Evolve your CX approach as your business, customers and channels change |
| 3 | Metrics third | Use metrics to guide decisions—not just to report performance |
| 4 | Collaboration always | Build dashboards with the teams responsible for acting on insights |
| 5 | North star alignment | Ensure every metric ties directly to organizational goals and outcomes |
Here's a diagnostic test: What's the average time between collecting feedback and taking meaningful action? If it's more than 30 days, your metrics are decorative—you're reporting, not using them.
And here's what nobody wants to admit: NPS has a legitimate role in a mature measurement system. It's one signal in a constellation. It measures relationship sentiment at a point in time—valuable information, just not the ONLY information.
A mature system includes relationship metrics (NPS), moment-based metrics (CSAT/CES), behavioral data, operational metrics and qualitative insights. NPS isn't the problem. Expecting any single metric to do all that work is.
Same Punching Bag, Same Bruised CX Knuckles
NPS was oversold in the early 2000s. By the 2010s, organizations had installed it everywhere without building measurement maturity. They focused on increasing scores instead of improving experiences. They gamed it, weaponized it, turned it into performance theater.
Now in the 2020s, we're punching it for our own failures.
Here's what I've learned from watching this cycle repeat: the next metric won't save you either. Not because metrics don't matter, but because until you build the culture, strategy and systems that make ANY metric useful, you're just shopping for a different punching bag.
The organizations succeeding with CX aren't the ones who abandoned NPS first or adopted the newest metric fastest. They're the ones who never expected a single number to do the heavy lifting of culture and strategy in the first place.
Stop blaming the barometer for the storm. Stop expecting magic beans when what you need is to plant an actual garden and do the hard work of cultivation.
The itch isn't with NPS. It's with our unwillingness to build real measurement maturity. And no amount of punching—no matter which metric you're aiming at—will make that itch go away.
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