Net Promoter Score®
The Ultimate Net Promoter Score FAQ
Who invented it? What's a good score? Can you do it on a 5-point scale? Every question about NPS the textbooks gloss over, answered in plain English, including the ones that keep getting the wrong answer in LinkedIn posts.
By Adam Ramshaw 1 min read
Businesses and their staff have plenty of questions about Net Promoter Score, and the same ones come up in every rollout. Here are the answers, including the ones that are routinely answered wrongly.
Net Promoter Score Questions and Answers
Who invented Net Promoter Score, and when?
- Fred Reichheld, of Bain & Company, is credited with inventing Net Promoter Score and published it in a Harvard Business Review article, The One Number You Need to Grow, in December 2003. Reichheld was already well known in customer loyalty, and worked with colleagues and Satmetrix Systems on the research behind it.
What is the Net Promoter Score formula?
- The formula is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors in your sample. A simpler way to calculate it is the number of promoters minus the number of detractors, divided by the total number of respondents. Promoters score 9 or 10, passives 7 or 8, and detractors 0 to 6.
Is Net Promoter Score a percentage?
- No. Net Promoter Score is the difference between two percentages, the percentage of promoters less the percentage of detractors. That produces a number between -100 and +100, so it is not a percentage in the ordinary sense and should be reported as a number, not with a percent sign.
Can Net Promoter Score be negative?
- Yes. Any time detractors outnumber promoters the score is negative, and the scale runs to -100 if every respondent is a detractor. A negative score is common early in a programme and in industries where complaints drive the response. It is a starting point, not a verdict.
Is Net Promoter Score out of 100?
- No. The scale runs from -100 to +100, not 0 to 100, because the score subtracts detractors from promoters. The survey question uses a 0 to 10 scale, which is where the confusion comes from. A score of 50 is a long way up that range, not a pass mark at half marks.
What does Net Promoter Score measure?
- Net Promoter Score measures customer loyalty. It can be used on an individual customer, to compare one customer with another, or across an entire customer base. The higher the score relative to competitors, the more loyal the customers. It does not tell you what to fix, which is the job of the comments and the driver analysis.
Is Net Promoter Score quantitative or qualitative?
- Both, and the qualitative half is the useful one. The score is quantitative and tells you what is happening. The free text question that follows it is qualitative and tells you why, which is what your team can act on. A programme that collects only the number gathers a trend and no instructions.
Is Net Promoter Score a KPI?
- Many organisations report it as one, and that is fine at a company level. Genroe advises against tying it to individual bonuses or front line targets, because most of the score is outside any one person s control and the reliable way to move it is to ask customers for a better score.
What is a good Net Promoter Score?
- A good Net Promoter Score is one better than your own score last quarter. Published benchmarks vary by industry and country, and survey method alone can move a score by tens of points, so a number from another organisation rarely describes yours. Track your own trend and compare like with like.
What is an acceptable Net Promoter Score?
- A score higher than your competitors means you are likely growing faster and holding more loyal customers, so in practice any score above your competitors is acceptable. The harder question is whether your score is moving, and whether you have enough responses for that movement to be real rather than noise.
What does a Net Promoter Score of 0 mean from a customer?
- A zero is a specific message: the customer is really unhappy and still engaged enough to tell you. Genroe sees more zero responses than you would expect, and those customers are often the easiest to turn around, because a good service recovery conversation moves them a long way.
Can I calculate Net Promoter Score on a 5 point scale?
- No. Net Promoter Score uses the 0 to 10 scale, which is 11 points. Mapping a 5 point scale onto promoters, passives and detractors looks workable but loses the zero, which anchors the low end and carries a distinct message. It also makes your results incomparable with every published figure and with your own history.
Are companies Net Promoter Scores public?
- Some publish them in press releases and earnings reports, but most keep them private. Treat published scores with caution: the score moves with survey method, sample and timing, so a figure quoted without that detail cannot be compared with yours and is usually presented at its most flattering.
Is Net Promoter Score still relevant?
- Yes, when it is run as a process rather than a scoreboard. The academic argument is about whether it predicts firm level revenue growth better than the alternatives. That argument barely touches the day to day value, which is a low score routing to a customer and a comment someone can act on this week.
Is Net Promoter Score trademarked?
- Yes. Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score and NPS are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. You can run a Net Promoter Score programme in your own business without a licence, but use the marks correctly in anything you publish.
Why use Net Promoter Score at all?
- Net Promoter Score lets you predict customer loyalty from one simple survey question. Combined with what customers tell you they like and dislike, it shows where to change the product or service so that revenue and profit follow. The value is in that change, not in the reporting.
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