What NPS actually measures
Net Promoter Score is a single-question survey that scores customer loyalty on a −100 to +100 scale. It was introduced in 2003 and has become the de facto cross-industry benchmark, which is its superpower: your 42 is comparable to another company's 42 in a way that proprietary scores aren't.
What it doesn't measure: any single interaction, feature quality, or price sensitivity. NPS is a pulse on the whole relationship — use CSAT for per-ticket satisfaction and CES for perceived effort.
How to set it up in under 10 minutes
- 1
Copy the standard question
Use 'How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?' verbatim. Substituting words ('our product', 'our service') is fine, but don't paraphrase — the standardisation is the point.
- 2
Pick your scale
0–10, always. Scales with 5 or 7 points aren't NPS and can't be compared to NPS benchmarks. Include both 0 and 10 — some platforms drop one or the other and the resulting score is wrong.
- 3
Add a follow-up field
'What's the most important reason for your score?' as an optional free-text field. The comment is often more valuable than the number — it tells you why the number is the number.
- 4
Choose the send trigger
30–90 days after signup or first meaningful use is the common rule. Don't send to users who haven't had a chance to form an opinion. For B2B, send after onboarding completes or after the first renewal.
- 5
Send it
Email is the default channel. In-product works if you can trigger it after a successful action (not an error state). SMS works for mobile-first products. Keep the message to one sentence — the question is the point.
How to calculate the score
Bucket every response: 9 or 10 is a promoter, 7 or 8 is a passive, 0 through 6 is a detractor. The score is: (% promoters) − (% detractors). Passives count toward the total but not the calculation. The result is a number between −100 and +100.
Worked example: 100 responses, 60 promoters, 20 passives, 20 detractors. NPS = 60% − 20% = +40. If you had 30 detractors, NPS = 60 − 30 = +30. A single detractor shift changes the number more than most people expect — which is why sample size matters.
What to do with the answers
- Promoters (9–10): ask them for a public review, a referral, or a testimonial. They'll say yes more than you expect.
- Passives (7–8): treat as at-risk. A passive today is a detractor after one bad interaction. Follow up with a short 'what would take this from a 7 to a 9?' question.
- Detractors (0–6): route to a human. Not a support bot, not a ticket. A real reply within 24 hours reduces churn risk and often uncovers a systemic issue.
- Share the aggregate trend internally every quarter. Shipping a product change without noting its NPS impact is a missed feedback loop.
Common mistakes
Sending too early. A user who signed up yesterday cannot meaningfully answer a loyalty question. Wait until they've experienced the product. Sending too often. Quarterly is the sweet spot; anything more frequent trains users to ignore the ask. Treating the number as the goal. NPS is a lagging indicator — chasing it directly leads to gaming (bribing promoters, filtering out detractors) that kills the signal you set up to measure.