Measure customer satisfaction with a Net Promoter Score survey. Learn how to calculate it, and get tips for creating an effective NPS survey.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS®) survey is an easy way for businesses to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty. Regularly tracking NPS helps monitor the impact of your customer experience (CX) strategies, so you know what's working for your business.
Millions of businesses worldwide use NPS as a core CX metric, making it a valuable benchmark.
Net Promoter Score is a metric that measures customer satisfaction and loyalty with one central NPS question: "How likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or colleague?"
Respondents will use a scale of 0 to 10 to indicate their likelihood of recommending your company. A rating of 0 means they're unlikely to recommend your business, while a rating of 10 means they're highly likely to recommend it to others.
Using the NPS framework, you can then classify customers into three categories based on their responses:
You can use the NPS formula to generate your NPS score on a scale of -100 to 100, with a higher number indicating high customer loyalty and satisfaction.
Conducting NPS surveys will allow your business to better understand customers' feelings about your customer experience efforts. You can create an actionable plan to enhance your customer experiences by conducting follow-ups with less satisfied segments.
Related: Why use NPS?
To calculate your NPS, subtract the total percentage of detractors from the total percentage of promoters (% of promoters - % of detractors.)
You’ll get a percentage ranging from -100% to 100%. This result is your NPS.
Here’s our step-by-step breakdown:
Imagine you received 200 responses to your NPS survey:
To determine the percentage of your detractors and promoters, divide each number by the total responses, then multiply the result by 100.
Since a Net Promoter Score always appears as an integer and not a percentage, your NPS is 60.
Calculating NPS for a small group is easy but can get complex as your survey size increases. With SurveyMonkey's NPS template, the built-in NPS calculator ensures 100% accurate results faster.
Understanding promoters, detractors, and passives is central to calculating your Net Promoter Score. Each group fulfills a unique role in your business, making these classifications important for customer feedback.
The NPS framework categorizes customers who respond with a 9 or 10 as promoters, representing the most satisfied customers likely to recommend your business due to their numerous positive experiences with your brand.
Sending additional feedback requests to these customers can show you what you’re doing well as a business.
Any customer that responds 0-6 on the NPS survey is a detractor. Detractors are dissatisfied customers who are unlikely to recommend your business to a friend or colleague.
These customers have had negative experiences with your brand. You might receive a negative social review from these customers or see them churn soon.
Sending follow-up feedback requests to these customers can show you how you could improve your customer experience and turn detractors into promoters.
Passives are customers that score 7 or 8 on the NPS scale. These middle-of-the-road customers don’t love your business but haven’t had negative experiences. They typically won’t recommend your company but are happy enough with your products or services.
Don’t overlook this group; they can enhance your customer experience strategy. Collecting and acting on feedback from passives can help transform them into promoters and improve your overall customer experience.
A good NPS score indicates that your customers are generally delighted with your business and have a good perception of your brand.
The optimal NPS score for your business will vary depending on its industry. For example, a good NPS score would be around +50 for a professional services or consumer goods company. However, a good NPS score comes in at +40 in the technology market.
Generally speaking, if your NPS score is 25 or below, your customers might not be satisfied with your brand. It’s a good idea to collect more feedback to pinpoint your customers’ sentiments.