Net Promoter Score

Net Promoter Score is a customer loyalty metric measuring the likelihood of customers recommending a product to others, serving as a proxy for satisfaction and growth potential. NPS is calculated from a single question: On a scale of zero to ten, how likely are you to recommend this product to a friend or colleague? Responses categorize customers into Promoters scoring nine or ten who are loyal enthusiasts, Passives scoring seven or eight who are satisfied but unenthusiastic, and Detractors scoring zero to six who are unhappy and may damage brand through negative word-of-mouth. NPS is calculated as percentage of Promoters minus percentage of Detractors, ranging from negative one hundred to positive one hundred. For example, sixty percent promoters and twenty percent detractors yields NPS of forty. Higher scores indicate stronger loyalty and growth potential. NPS provides several benefits: simple standardized metric enabling benchmarking, predictive of growth through word-of-mouth, actionable through follow-up questions, and trackable over time showing trends. Best practices include asking at appropriate moments like after key milestones, following up with open-ended why questions, closing the loop with detractors, segmenting by customer type or product area, tracking trends over time not absolute scores, and taking action on feedback. Common mistakes include surveying too frequently annoying customers, not following up on feedback, treating NPS as vanity metric, comparing across industries without context, and focusing only on score not underlying reasons. Product managers use NPS to measure customer satisfaction, identify improvement priorities, benchmark against competitors, predict growth and retention, and validate product changes impact. While NPS has critics questioning its predictive power, it remains widely used for its simplicity. The key is treating NPS as one of multiple satisfaction signals, always accompanied by qualitative understanding of why customers feel as they do.