What Is a Good Net Promoter Score for a B2B Company in Australia?

Australian business decision-makers rated their suppliers at an average Net Promoter Score® of 0 in Evolved Thinking’s 2024 study.

The 2025 and 2026 benchmarks from software vendors Survicate, Retently and CustomerGauge put their headline B2B figures between 38 and 68.

Both are real numbers. Neither tells you whether your score is good.

ACXPA’s Net Promoter Score glossary, as viewed in October 2026, gives a simple rule for Australia: above +30 is good and above +50 is excellent. A rule of thumb is a fair sense check.

By that rule, the average Australian B2B supplier in Evolved Thinking’s 2024 study falls well short, while the headline B2B figures in the 2025 and 2026 vendor benchmarks all clear it. In my view, that gap says more about how the numbers were collected than about how good the suppliers are.

The Published Australian and B2B NPS Figures

The published B2B Net Promoter Score figures below come from one Australian research firm and three software vendors. Each row names who answered, how many, and when.

CustomerGauge is the B2B Net Promoter Score platform we implement as its exclusive partner for Australia and New Zealand. Its 2026 report says plainly that the scores are self-reported by the companies.

Why Buyer Surveys and Vendor Benchmarks Disagree

Buyer surveys and vendor benchmarks disagree because they ask different people in different ways.

Evolved Thinking asks Australian business decision-makers to rate their suppliers, and its waves from 2020 to 2021 counted every supplier they had ever used. Survicate and Retently pool the scores from NPS surveys run by their own customers. CustomerGauge collects scores that B2B companies report for their own programmes.

The same industry label shows how far apart those two approaches land. Consulting scored -18 in Evolved Thinking’s 2024 Australian study and 68 in Retently’s 2026 benchmark.

Both figures can be accurate. They measure different things.

In my experience, B2B customers give a supplier’s own survey a kinder score than they give an independent interviewer. Long-term clients are wary of upsetting a supplier they rely on, so the hard feedback tends to come out only when a third party asks.

How Survey Method Moves a B2B Net Promoter Score

Survey method moved one B2B company’s Net Promoter Score by 40 points in Van Bennekom and Klaidman’s study of 2011 data, across customers of the same company asked the same questions.

Three method choices show up clearly in the published B2B data: the channel, which suppliers the buyer rates, and who in the customer’s business answers.

Phone Versus Web Form

Frederick Van Bennekom and Samuel Klaidman analysed one month of transactional survey data from a large B2B company that services equipment for business customers in the United States and Canada. Their paper, Survey Mode Impact Upon Responses and Net Promoter Scores, used December 2011 data.

Customers were asked the same three questions by the same independent surveying firm, either by phone or by web form.

In Van Bennekom and Klaidman’s December 2011 data, telephone respondents produced a Net Promoter Score of 58.1 and web-form respondents 18.0, from 1,946 phone and 178 web-form responses.

The split was not random. Customers with an email address on file got the web form. The authors judged the difference too large for that alone to explain.

That matches what I see in B2B programmes. Phone interviews score well above email surveys for the same customers, which is why comparing NPS across survey modes is unsafe.

Current Versus Former Suppliers

Which suppliers a buyer is asked about moves the score as well.

In Evolved Thinking’s January to March 2020 wave, Australian buyers rated every supplier they had ever used at an NPS of +8. Rated on current suppliers only, the same 2020 Evolved Thinking survey gave +31.

A company surveying its own current customers sits on the current-supplier side of that split. An independent study that includes former suppliers does not.

Who in the Customer’s Business Answers

The role of the person answering changes the result too.

In Evolved Thinking’s 2020 wave, middle managers rated their suppliers at +11, senior leaders at +0 and subject matter experts at -4.

In B2B, the senior buyer at a large account matters more than a front-line user at a small one. A benchmark that counts every response equally cannot show that. Weight your own results by account value, not by response count.

How to Read a Published NPS Benchmark

Check four things before you compare your Net Promoter Score with any published figure:

1. Who answered. A decision-maker panel, your own customers, or companies reporting their own scores.
2. How they were asked. Phone, email, in-product or a mix, and whether an independent firm asked.
3. Which suppliers they rated. Current suppliers only, or every supplier they have ever used.
4. When, and how many. The fieldwork dates and the number of responses behind each industry figure.

If the benchmark answers those four the way your own survey does, the comparison means something. If it answers them differently, it is context, not a target.

What a Good B2B Net Promoter Score Looks Like

A good B2B Net Promoter Score is one higher than your own last result, measured the same way.

Beat Your Own Last Result

I tell clients that the most useful benchmark they have is their own score last quarter and last year. I explain why in this short video.

Keep the method fixed: the same channel, the same customers and the same timing. Then a change in the score is a change in your customers, not in your survey.

Do not turn a published benchmark into a staff target. Tying NPS to targets rewards people for managing the number rather than the customer.

Run Your Own Competitor Comparison

If the board needs to know where you stand against competitors, survey your customers and your competitors’ customers the same way, at the same time.

That is the only comparison where the method matches. The steps are in why external Net Promoter benchmarks waste your time, along with the case for benchmarking against yourself first.

Next Steps

If you need a competitor comparison you can trust, Genroe runs independent NPS benchmark studies. The same chat works if you want help reading your own trend.