Net Promoter Score (NPS): Definition, Calculation & Benefits

A complete guide to understanding, calculating and using the Net Promoter Score to measure as well as improve customer loyalty.

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Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a powerful tool used to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction. It classifies respondents revealing the overall health of customer relationships. The simplicity makes NPS a valuable metric for assessing your CX efforts.

In recent data, over 76% of CX practitioners used NPS as a core metric in 2024. Also, in 2023 the average cross-industry U.S. NPS rose slightly, increasing by 1.5 points.

In this blog, we’ll dive into the basics of NPS and explore how it can drive business improvements. Let’s also discuss how using this score can boost growth and customer engagement.

Table of Content

1 What is The Net Promoter Score (NPS)?
2 Key Benefits of Using Net Promoter Score
3 How to Conduct Surveys and Gather NPS Customer Feedback?
4 What Insights Can Net Promoter Score Provide?
5 List of Net Promoter Score Questions
6 Best Practices to Improve Net Promoter Score
7 Key Takeaways: Leveraging NPS for Long-Term Success
8 FAQs on Net Promoter Score

What is The Net Promoter Score (NPS)?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a metric used to measure customer satisfaction by asking customers how likely they are to recommend a company’s product or service to others.

Responses are typically given on a scale from 0 to 10 and customers are classified into three groups: Promoters (9-10), Passives (7-8), as well as Detractors (0-6). The NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters.

NPS provides valuable insights into how customers perceive your brand and can highlight areas needing improvement. High NPS indicates strong customer loyalty and a positive reputation, which can drive business growth through referrals as well as repeat purchases.

Conversely, a low NPS can signal underlying issues that need addressing to enhance customer satisfaction and retention.

Key objectives:

Gauge customer satisfaction: Measure how satisfied customers are with your product or service and their likelihood to recommend it.
Identify loyalty trends: Track changes in customer loyalty over time to assess the effectiveness of your strategies.
Improve customer experience: Use feedback to make targeted improvements, addressing issues highlighted by Detractors.

Key Benefits of Using Net Promoter Score

Net Promoter Score (NPS) has become a vital metric for businesses seeking to gauge customer satisfaction and loyalty. Let’s explore its key benefits.

Boosts customer loyalty: NPS helps you spot your biggest fans – Promoters. By learning what keeps them loyal, you can repeat those positive experiences for others. More Promoters mean stronger loyalty, repeat purchases and fewer customers leaving for competitors, which fuels long-term business growth.

Facilitates benchmarking and tracking: NPS gives you clear data to track over time. You can see if customer experience efforts are working and compare your score with competitors. This makes it easier to set realistic goals and understand exactly where your business stands in the market.

Reduces acquisition costs: Promoters act like your personal marketing team. They recommend your brand to friends and family, helping you gain new customers without extra ad spend. Word-of-mouth is cheaper, more credible and more powerful than traditional advertising, lowering your customer acquisition costs.

Quantifies word-of-mouth marketing potential: NPS shows how likely customers are to recommend your brand. This makes word-of-mouth measurable, helping you predict organic growth. By tracking Promoters, you can estimate how far positive recommendations spread and use that data for smarter planning as well as forecasting.

Higher customer lifetime value: Customers with high NPS scores tend to spend more over time. They stay loyal, buy repeatedly and often purchase additional products. Improving NPS naturally boosts lifetime value, shifting your focus from short-term sales to long-lasting, profitable customer relationships.

How to Conduct Surveys and Gather NPS Customer Feedback?

Effective NPS surveys require careful planning and execution. Learn how to design and leverage customer feedback to drive meaningful improvements in your business.

1. Define Objectives and Audience

Start by setting clear objectives and knowing your target audience. This makes your surveys focused and relevant, so the data you collect aligns with business goals. Clear objectives guide everything – from writing questions to analyzing results.

When you understand your audience, you can tailor questions and methods to them. It boosts response rates and ensures feedback is accurate as well as valuable. The result is actionable insights that truly reflect your customers and help you make smarter business decisions.

Tips:

Identify goals: Clearly articulate what you aim to achieve with the survey, such as improving customer service or evaluating product performance.
Segment your audience: Choose customer groups that are most relevant to the objectives, such as recent purchasers or users of a specific feature.
Align questions with goals: Ensure that the survey questions are designed to gather insights that directly relate to your objectives.

2. Design the Survey

A well-designed survey helps you collect accurate and unbiased feedback. The structure affects response rates, data quality and overall insights. When questions are clear and logical, people find it easier to share honest feedback without feeling overwhelmed.

Start with the NPS question, then add follow-up questions that dig deeper. Use a mix of formats like multiple-choice and open-ended to capture both numbers as well as opinions. Keep the flow smooth and engaging so respondents stay interested. A thoughtful design not only improves the experience but also makes data easier to analyze and act on.

Actionable Tips:

Keep questions simple: Use straightforward language and avoid jargon to make it easy for respondents to understand as well as answer.
Include follow-up questions: Add open-ended questions to capture detailed feedback about why customers gave a particular score.
Test the survey: Conduct a pilot test with a small group to identify any issues and refine the questions before full deployment.

3. Choose the Right Tools

Picking the right survey tool makes the whole process smoother. It helps you collect data, improve response rates and analyze results quickly. The best tools also integrate with your existing systems, giving you a complete view of customer feedback.

Look for features like automation, real-time tracking, templates and multi-channel sharing. Advanced reporting can give you deeper insights. Choose a tool that matches your budget, technical needs and desired level of analysis. This way, you get valuable feedback that’s easy to understand and act on.

Helpful Tips:

Evaluate features: Choose tools that offer essential features like real-time reporting and integration with your existing systems.
Consider usability: Select a user-friendly platform that simplifies survey creation, distribution and analysis for your team.
Check support: Ensure the tool offers good customer support and resources for troubleshooting as well as assistance.

4. Timing and Frequency

The timing and frequency of NPS surveys play a big role in the quality of feedback. Sending them at the right moments captures customer sentiment when it matters most. The right frequency keeps insights flowing without overwhelming customers.

Send surveys after key touchpoints like purchases, support interactions, or during ongoing services. Adjust the frequency based on your business model and customer lifecycle. This helps you track changes in sentiment over time and understand how specific experiences shape customer opinions.

Useful Tips:

Target key interactions: Send surveys following significant customer events or interactions to gather timely and relevant feedback.
Set a schedule: Establish a consistent survey frequency, such as quarterly, to track changes over time without overwhelming customers.
Avoid peak times: Ensure surveys are not sent during periods of high customer activity or stress to improve response quality.

5. Distribute the Survey

How you share your survey directly impacts response rates and data quality. A good distribution strategy makes sure the right people see it and can respond easily. It also considers customer preferences as well as accessibility.

You can use email, SMS, in-app notifications, or post-interaction pop-ups. Choose methods that fit your audience and the type of interaction they had with your brand. A multi-channel approach works best, as it helps you reach more customers and gather reliable, representative feedback.

Tips to Consider:

Choose the right channels: Use the communication channels most frequently accessed by your customers, such as email or mobile apps.
Personalize invitations: Address customers by name and reference recent interactions to make the survey more relevant.
Follow-up reminders: Send gentle reminders to encourage participation from those who haven’t responded.

6. Collect and Analyze Responses

Collecting and analyzing responses turns raw data into useful insights. Organizing feedback helps you spot patterns, understand what drives your NPS and highlight strengths or areas to improve. This step is key for smart, data-driven decisions.

Use tools to calculate your NPS, segment results by demographics or products and track trends over time. Compare NPS with other business metrics for deeper insights. For open-ended feedback, use text analysis to find common themes and customer sentiment. This gives a clear picture of satisfaction and loyalty.

Helpful Tips:

Monitor in real-time: Use tools that provide real-time data collection to quickly address any issues and adapt strategies.
Segment data: Analyze responses by customer segments to uncover specific insights and tailor your approach accordingly.
Review trends: Look for trends in NPS scores and feedback to identify areas for improvement and track changes over time.

7. Act on Feedback

Acting on feedback is the most important step in the NPS process. It shows customers their opinions matter and helps turn insights into real improvements. This builds better products, services and experiences, driving stronger satisfaction as well as business growth.

Use your analysis to plan improvements and set priorities. Address issues raised by detractors and passives while reinforcing what works well for promoters. Share changes across teams while tracking how they affect future NPS scores. This way, feedback directly shapes progress and success.

Tips to Consider:

Prioritize actions: Focus on key issues highlighted by Detractors to resolve major pain points and improve satisfaction.
Leverage positive feedback: Use positive comments from Promoters to enhance marketing and reinforce successful aspects of your business.
Track changes: Monitor the impact of implemented changes on future NPS scores to gauge effectiveness and make further adjustments.

8. Communicate and Follow-Up

Communication and follow-up are key to showing customers that their feedback matters. Sharing results and actions closes the loop, boosts trust, while encouraging more responses in the future. It also strengthens engagement and builds long-term relationships with your audience.

Use multiple channels to share survey outcomes with customers, employees and stakeholders. Follow up with detractors to address concerns and show you care. Keep customers updated on improvements made from their input. Regular, transparent communication builds credibility and motivates customers to keep participating in surveys.

Quick Tips:

Share results: Communicate key findings and planned improvements to your customers to demonstrate responsiveness as well as transparency.
Thank respondents: Send thank-you messages to participants to show appreciation and encourage future participation.
Update on changes: Regularly update customers on the progress and outcomes of changes made in response to their feedback.

What Insights Can Net Promoter Score Provide?

NPS is a tool for assessing customer satisfaction. While the primary focus of NPS is to gauge customer sentiment, it provides valuable insights into several key areas of your business:

1. Customer Loyalty
NPS helps you measure loyalty by grouping customers as Promoters, Passives, or Detractors. A high number of Promoters shows strong loyalty, while too many Detractors warn of problems that could hurt retention.

2. Customer Satisfaction
Promoters are usually very satisfied customers who see real value in your offerings. Their feedback shows what’s working well. Detractors highlight areas where expectations aren’t met, giving you clear opportunities to improve satisfaction.

3. Brand Health
Your NPS reflects how customers view your brand. A positive score means strong reputation and advocacy. A negative one suggests issues that could harm your brand image if not addressed quickly.

4. Customer Experience
NPS reveals how customers feel about different parts of their journey like buying, using products, or getting support. Detractor feedback pinpoints pain points, helping you improve specific aspects of the experience.

5. Employee Performance and Engagement
Customer feedback often connects to employee interactions. By linking NPS scores to departments or teams, you can see where staff performance affects satisfaction. This helps guide training and improve customer-facing roles.

6. Product and Service Quality
Detractors often share concerns about product reliability, features, or service issues. Promoters highlight what they love most. Analyzing both helps you fix weak spots while maintaining the qualities customers value.

7. Customer Segmentation
NPS lets you group customers by loyalty level. You can design referral programs for Promoters, focus improvements on Detractors and adjust marketing for each segment to create more personalized engagement.

List of Net Promoter Score Questions

The effectiveness of an NPS survey hinges on the quality of its questions, which should be designed to elicit meaningful feedback from customers. Here are some essential NPS questions.

1. Core NPS Question
The core NPS question is straightforward and focuses on measuring customer loyalty. It is the foundation of the NPS survey and is designed to gauge how likely customers are to recommend your company to others.

Question: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [Company/Product/Service] to a friend or colleague?”

Purpose: This question categorizes respondents into three groups:
Promoters (9-10): Loyal and enthusiastic customers who are likely to advocate for your brand.
Passives (7-8): Satisfied but not particularly enthusiastic customers.
Detractors (0-6): Unhappy customers who may negatively impact your brand through word-of-mouth.

Implementation Tip: Ensure that the scale is clearly defined and the question is simple as well as easy to understand to avoid any confusion.

2. Follow-Up Question
The follow-up question helps to gather qualitative feedback and understand the reasons behind the given score. This provides context to the numerical NPS score while helping identify areas for improvement.

Question: “What is the primary reason for your score?”
Purpose: This open-ended question allows respondents to elaborate on their experiences, providing insights into what they value or what issues they encountered. It helps in pinpointing specific areas that need attention or improvement.

Implementation Tip: Encourage detailed responses by being specific in your follow-up question, such as asking about particular aspects of the service or product if the core question indicates dissatisfaction.

3. Additional Satisfaction Questions
To gain a deeper understanding of customer experience, you may include additional satisfaction questions that complement the core NPS question. These can provide insights into specific aspects of the customer experience.

Examples:

“How satisfied are you with the quality of our [product/service]?”
“How would you rate the responsiveness of our customer service team?”

Purpose: These questions help identify areas of strength and weakness within specific aspects of your business. They provide more detailed feedback that can be used to enhance the overall customer experience.

Implementation Tip: Keep these questions focused and relevant to the customer’s recent interactions to ensure the feedback is actionable as well as timely.

4. Benchmarking Questions
Benchmarking questions can be used to compare your NPS with competitors or industry standards. This helps in understanding your position relative to others in your market.

Examples:

“How does our [product/service] compare to similar offerings from other companies?”
“How likely are you to switch to a competitor based on your recent experience?”

Purpose: These questions provide context on how your brand stacks up against competitors and can highlight areas where your competitors may be outperforming you.

Implementation Tip: Use benchmarking questions sparingly and ensure they are relevant to the customer’s experience to get meaningful comparative insights.

5. Customer Demographics Questions
Demographic questions can help segment your customer base and analyze NPS scores across different groups. This can be useful for identifying trends and tailoring strategies to specific customer segments.

Examples:

“What is your age range?”
“What is your primary use case for our [product/service]?”

Purpose: Understanding demographic information helps in analyzing how different groups perceive your brand, allowing for targeted improvements and personalized customer engagement strategies.
Implementation Tip: Ensure that demographic questions are optional as well as respectful of privacy to avoid deterring respondents from completing the survey.

6. Closing Question
A closing question can provide an opportunity for customers to share any additional thoughts or feedback that may not have been covered by previous questions.

Example: “Is there anything else you would like to share about your experience with us?”

Purpose: This question allows respondents to provide any additional feedback or comments that may not fit into the structured questions. It can uncover valuable insights that are not captured elsewhere in the survey.

Implementation Tip: Keep the closing question open-ended and encourage respondents to provide any relevant information that could be beneficial for improving customer experience.

Best Practices to Improve Net Promoter Score

Implementing Net Promoter Score effectively requires more than just asking the standard question. These best practices ensure you maximize the value of your NPS program.

Use Appropriate Follow-up Questions
While the standard NPS question provides valuable quantitative data, it’s crucial to dig deeper with follow-up questions.

For Promoters, ask what specifically they love about your product or service.
For Passives and Detractors, inquire about areas for improvement.

These open-ended responses provide context to the scores and offer actionable insights. Tailor your follow-up questions to your industry and specific business needs to gather the most relevant information.

Close the Feedback Loop
Collecting feedback is just the first step—acting on it matters most. Follow up with Detractors to show their opinions count and resolve issues. Share insights with teams, create action plans, and communicate improvements regularly. This builds trust, improves satisfaction and turns feedback into meaningful change.

Analyze Trends Over Time
NPS is more valuable when tracked over time. Regularly measure and review changes to see if customer experience is improving. Look for patterns across segments, products, or touchpoints. This helps you connect results to specific initiatives and spot what strengthens or weakens customer loyalty.

Segment Feedback for Insights
Breaking NPS data into segments makes it more actionable. Analyze scores by demographics, product lines, or journey stages. This shows where you’re performing well and where improvements are needed. With these insights, you can tailor strategies for different customer groups and focus efforts where they’ll have the most impact.

Evaluate Survey Effectiveness
Your NPS survey itself needs regular review. Track response rates and completion times to ensure it’s short as well as clear. Check if surveys reach customers at the right time in their journey. Adjust question clarity and timing as needed. Refining your process improves both the quality and volume of responses.

Key Takeaways: Leveraging NPS for Long-Term Success

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a crucial metric for measuring customer loyalty and satisfaction. NPS provides actionable insights into customer sentiment and highlights areas for improvement by assessing how likely customers are to recommend your business.

Implementing NPS effectively involves crafting clear questions, analyzing feedback and taking responsive actions to address concerns. Regularly tracking NPS helps businesses refine their strategies, enhance customer experiences and encourage loyalty. Overall, NPS is an invaluable tool for guiding business success and growth.

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Tushar Joshi

Tushar Joshi is a passionate content writer at Omni24, where he transforms complex concepts into clear, engaging and actionable content. With a keen eye for detail and a love for technology, Tushar Joshi crafts blog posts, guides and articles that help readers navigate the fast-evolving world of software solutions.

FAQs on Net Promoter Score

What should you ask when you run an NPS survey?

When running an NPS survey, start with the core question: “How likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?” Follow this with open-ended questions asking why they gave that score. Include queries about specific aspects of your offering, customer service experiences and areas for improvement. Keep the survey concise to ensure high completion rates.

What is eNPS?

Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is an adaptation of NPS for measuring employee satisfaction and loyalty. It asks employees how likely they are to recommend their workplace to others. eNPS helps organizations gauge employee engagement, identify areas for improving workplace culture and predict potential turnover.

What is a good Net Promoter Score?

A good Net Promoter Score varies by industry, but generally, any positive score (above 0) is considered good, as it means you have more promoters than detractors. Scores above 50 are excellent, while those above 70 are considered world-class. It’s more important to focus on improving your score over time and comparing it to industry benchmarks.

What does a Net Promoter Score indicate?

A Net Promoter Score indicates the level of customer loyalty and satisfaction with a company, product or service. It reflects the likelihood of customers recommending the business to others. A high NPS suggests strong customer loyalty and potential for organic growth through word-of-mouth referrals. A low score indicates customer dissatisfaction and a risk of churn.

What are the components of a Net Promoter Score?

The components of a Net Promoter Score include three categories of respondents based on their rating (0-10): Promoters (score 9-10) who are loyal enthusiasts, Passives (score 7-8) who are satisfied but unenthusiastic and Detractors (score 0-6) who are unhappy customers. The NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters, resulting in a score ranging from -100 to +100.