NPS, or Net Promoter Score, is one of the simplest and most effective ways to measure customer loyalty. Most businesses should use it, but they must be prepared to act on what they learn.
The methodology has become ubiquitous because it converts customer sentiment into a single, trackable number that correlates with revenue growth and customer retention. Companies use the Net Promoter Score to assess customer satisfaction with their performance, products, services, brand, and key departments. Many publicly traded companies include their NPS score in quarterly earnings reports. Many CEOs have portions of their compensation tied to it. But what is it really, and how does it work?
The NPS question
Companies ask customers a single question via email: “On a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the best, how likely are you to recommend CompanyName to your friends or colleagues?”
In some surveys, CompanyName can be replaced by Product or Service, switching the focus from the company to its offerings.
The specific phrasing of the question is intentional and powerful. Asking customers whether they would recommend a company to their friends and colleagues reveals how they actually feel about their experience. The question triggers an emotional response rather than an intellectual one. Customers evaluate whether they would stake their personal reputation on the recommendation, which forces a more honest assessment than generic satisfaction questions.
Employee Net Promoter Score
The same framework can also be applied internally as Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) to measure team engagement and loyalty. Employees are asked a version of the same question: “How likely are you to recommend this company as a place to work to your friends or family?”
Research has shown that companies with higher employee NPS often report higher customer NPS as well, revealing the direct link between internal culture and external customer experience. Disengaged employees rarely deliver experiences that create customer promoters. The correlation makes eNPS a leading indicator of customer satisfaction trends.
Emailing The Question
These survey questions are typically emailed to clients or employees, so following best email practices will optimize your campaign open and completion rates. Send the email from a real person’s account, customize the greeting, test and optimize the subject line, respect customers’ privacy, and select sending time judiciously.
Calculating The Scores
Subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters generates the Net Promoter Score. Scores can therefore theoretically vary from as high as +100, where every respondent is a Promoter, to as low as −100, where every respondent is a Detractor.
NPS scores vary across industries, but a positive NPS (higher than zero) is generally deemed good. An NPS of +50 is considered excellent, and scores greater than 70 are exceptional. Context matters: a score of +30 in retail banking might represent strong performance, while the same score in software would signal competitive vulnerability.
Understanding The Scores
Customers who answer 9 or 10 are considered Promoters. They typically continue buying, stay longer, and refer others to the company, fueling revenue growth.
Customers who answer 7 or 8 are considered Passives. They are somewhat satisfied but won’t actively recommend the company, and they remain open to competitive offerings.
Customers who answer 0 to 6 are considered Detractors. They will likely not remain customers long and will likely generate negative word-of-mouth, damaging both reputation and future revenue.
Using the NPS at Work
Tracking NPS scores over time provides even more context for analysis. Beyond the NPS score itself, all aspects of the process should be tracked, including changes in completion rates, product performance, and results by geography.
Symantec’s Consumer Business Unit applied this approach with Norton products and achieved a 50% surge in NPS score. The company reduced support costs by 30% and reinvested those savings into customer experience improvements. They reduced call times by 10-12% and enabled support agents to handle an average of 1.6 customers simultaneously. The NPS insights drove operational efficiency while strengthening customer loyalty. The results demonstrate how NPS, when integrated into operations rather than treated as a standalone metric, can identify specific leverage points for both cost reduction and experience enhancement.
Using eNPS internally over time helps identify how organizational changes, leadership practices, and culture initiatives affect morale. Many companies use it alongside other engagement metrics to strengthen communication, retention, and leadership effectiveness. Tracking scores over time reveals which initiatives actually shift employee sentiment versus those that generate activity without impact.
Engaging respondents
Scores are not final. The goal should be moving Detractors and Passives into Promoters. Each cohort requires a customized, structured, and systematic approach. Promoters should be encouraged and recognized. Passives need engagement and reactivation. Detractors must be addressed directly to rebuild confidence and prevent churn.
In all cases, companies typically use open-ended follow-up questions to the main NPS question, for example, asking “What is the primary reason for your score?” This most often provides context from the customer’s perspective. Variations include “How can we improve?”, “What do you value most?”, and others.
Such questions add context and often action items to the score. They need to be evaluated systematically by managers with the authority to design, deploy, or recommend changes. The replies are typically provided to front-end employees who call back customers, engage them about their scores, and capture feedback so that action can be taken where applicable. Without this systematic evaluation and response loop, even well-designed follow-up questions become wasted opportunities.
The methodology’s predictive power validates its strategic value. The original authors were able to predict the likelihood of future purchases and referrals based on the score in more than 75% of the industries they surveyed. This correlation between NPS and business outcomes explains why the metric gained such widespread adoption across sectors.
Where implementation fails
Many companies collect NPS scores but fail to act on them. The survey becomes a dashboard metric rather than a tool that drives change. Common breakdowns include scores never reviewed by decision-makers, feedback not routed to teams who can address it, and Detractor concerns acknowledged but never resolved. Without action, the program generates reports instead of results.
The gap between measurement and action often stems from organizational structure. When NPS programs are isolated without cross-functional authority, insights stay siloed. When follow-up processes lack clear ownership, concerns fall through the cracks.
Effective NPS implementation requires closing these loops. Assign clear ownership for each cohort’s engagement strategy. Route feedback directly to teams with the authority to act. Track not just scores but response rates, actions taken, and outcomes achieved. The companies that succeed with NPS treat it as an operational system, not a quarterly survey. They build accountability mechanisms that ensure feedback creates action, not just data.
Tools and assignments
Send customized thank-you notes to all respondents, whether they identified as Promoters, Passives, or Detractors. Several Software-as-a-Service solutions are available to automate this process and facilitate reporting and escalation. However, automation should streamline response, not replace the human judgment required to determine which feedback demands executive attention.
Companies that ran NPS initiatives internally or used contracted resources had richer and more successful experiences with their programs than those that outsourced the entire function to specialized third-party companies. Keeping the program close to the business preserves institutional knowledge and maintains direct accountability for results. Third-party vendors can execute surveys efficiently, but they cannot own the customer relationships or make the operational changes that scores demand.
Final thought
By increasing their NPS score, businesses expand the number of brand ambassadors, improve renewal rates, and leverage satisfied customers as advocates for business development. Essentially, they turn customers into an extension of their sales force. But the score itself changes nothing. The operational changes driven by NPS insights create the customer experiences that generate promoters. Companies that measure without acting collect data. Companies that act on what they measure build competitive advantage.