Net Promoter Score (NPS): What it is and why it matters

NPS (Net Promoter Score) is one of the most quoted metrics across a wide variety of industries. You’ve likely heard something like:“Our NPS is up this quarter so things are looking good.”

But is that score actually telling you what your customers think? Or what they need?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is useful, but it’s not a silver bullet. It’s a single number, built on one question:

“How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?”

Promoters are loyal, but detractors aren’t. The real insights come from digging deeper.

In this guide, we’ll help you:

• Understand what a net promoter score is and how to calculate it
• Know what’s considered a good NPS (and what’s not)
• Recognise NPS’s limitations and learn how to work around them
• Build an NPS survey that actually drives action

What is NPS (Net Promoter Score)?

Net Promoter Score is a customer loyalty metric that measures how likely someone is to recommend a company, product or service to others. NPS is based on a single question: “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” 

Customers rate you on a scale from 0 to 10, and businesses typically collect these responses through online, email or app-based surveys. Once the data is in, customers are grouped into three buckets: 

🟢 Promoters (9–10): Fans who love your brand and want others to know

🟠 Passives (7–8): Customers who are satisfied but not sold (they might switch is a better offer comes along)

🔴 Detractors (0–6): Unhappy customers who could actively damage your reputation 

The score itself is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. 

While a high NPS score is a positive sign of customer loyalty, the number alone doesn’t tell the full story. What really matters is why customers gave you that score. When you dig into the reasons behind the feedback (what’s working, what’s not and what customers are really saying), that’s when NPS becomes truly valuable. The number gives you a signal, but the insights behind it help you take action.

What can you do with your NPS score?

Your NPS score isn’t just a number to report. It’s a tool to help you understand your customers and take meaningful action. Here’s how you can put it to work in your business.

Align your team around customer feedback 

Make sure your teams know what the score is telling you. By sharing NPS results with customer-facing departments like support, sales and product, you create alignment around customer feedback. This helps everyone stay focused on improving the experience where it matters most.

Measure progress over time

Tracking NPS at regular intervals gives you a way to monitor how changes affect customer sentiment. As you launch new features or improve processes, your score can show whether those efforts are making a real difference. It becomes a benchmark for progress, not just a one-time metric.

Act on what you learn

NPS responses often highlight recurring issues or unexpected wins. Take time to dig into the comments behind the score. If detractors rate the same thing repeatedly, address those pain points directly. If promoters praise certain features or experiences, consider how to amplify those across your offering.

Inform your business strategy 

Because NPS reflects the customer’s perspective, it’s a useful input when setting strategy. Use it to support roadmap decisions, refine your positioning or shape retention efforts. When combined with qualitative feedback, it can surface trends you might otherwise miss.

How to calculate Net Promoter Score

It all starts with the score, but how exactly do you get there? Here’s how to do it, step by step:

Step 1: Survey customers 

Start by asking your customers the classic NPS question via a survey tool: “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” They’ll answer on a scale from 0 to 10.

Step 2: Group responses

Once you’ve collected the responses, group your customers based on their scores:

• Promoters (9–10)
• Passives (7–8)
• Detractors (0–6)

Step 3: Calculate the percentage of Promoters and Detractors

Work out the percentage of your total responses that are Promoters and Detractors. Passives aren’t included in the final calculation, but they’re still worth paying attention to because they’re on the fence: not loyal and not leaving. With the right nudges, they could become new fans.

Step 4: Apply the formula

Next, subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. 

📈NPS = % Promoters – % Detractors

For example, let’s say you surveyed 200 customers. You received:

• 120 Promoters
• 50 Passives 
• 30 Detractors 

That means:

• % Promoters = (120 ÷ 200) × 100 = 60%
• % Detractors = (30 ÷ 200) × 100 = 15%

📈NPS = 60% – 15% = 45

Step 5: Interpret your score

The final result will be a number between -100 and +100. A positive score means you have more promoters than detractors. The higher the score, the more likely your customers are to recommend your business.  If you look at our example above, an NPS of 45 is a strong signal that your customers are more likely to recommend you than not.

What is a good NPS score?

As we mentioned above, your NPS score can fall anywhere between -100 and +100. At -100, every customer is a detractor; at +100, every single one is a promoter. Generally, scores break down like this:

• -100 to 0: Not great; there’s serious room for improvement.
• 0 to 30: Okay, but you’re just getting started.
• 30 to 70: Solid; customers are happy and recommend your products or services.
• 70+: Outstanding; your brand has world-class loyalty.

But what feels like a “good” score depends a lot on the sector you’re in. Industries like retail, SaaS, or healthcare have very different customer expectations. The best way to interpret your NPS is to see how you stack up against similar industries. Without that context, the number alone doesn’t tell the full story.

Here’s a quick look at average scores across some key sectors: 

Industry	Average NPS
SaaS / Tech	30 to 50
Financial services	20 to 40
eCommerce / retail	25 to 45
Healthcare	15 to 35
Telecommunications	10 to 30
Travel and hospitality	30 to 50

Important note: Your NPS score is something you track over time to see how your customer loyalty evolves, and not a one-time result. 

Where NPS falls short (and what to do about it)

NPS is a useful starting point for understanding customer loyalty, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Before you put all your faith in that single score, it’s worth understanding where NPS can fall short and how to make sure you get the full picture.

Challenge 1:  NPS Doesn’t tell you why customers feel the way they do

NPS gives you a score but no context. For example, a customer rating your business a 4 or a 9 doesn’t explain why they feel that way or what could make their experience better. 

✔️ The solution: Pair the NPS question with open-ended follow-up questions. 

Open ended questions help you dig deeper into what’s driving customer sentiment.A good follow-up question invites customers to share their thoughts in their own words, and ideally, it should be tailored based on their score:

• Promoters (9–10): “What do you love most about [our product/service]?”
• Passives (7–8): “What could we do to improve your experience?”
• Detractors (0–6): “What was missing or disappointing in your experience?”

You can also use a general qualitative question like, “What’s the main reason for your score?” to uncover pain points, motivations and what drives loyalty. When to ask these questions matters too, usually immediately after the NPS rating, while the experience is fresh, to get honest, actionable feedback.

💡Pro tip: Need help crafting better survey questions? Check out our guide on how to write survey questions that get clearer, more actionable responses.

Challenge 2: NPS scores can be skewed by timing or context

Sometimes your NPS score dips, and it’s not because your whole experience is broken, it might just be bad timing. That’s because NPS can be thrown off by the context in which you ask the question. If you trigger it right after a single interaction (like a late delivery or a call with support), you might get a low score that reflects that moment, not the customer’s overall perception of your brand.

✔️ The solution: Use NPS relationally, not transactionally. 

Relational NPS is sent at regular intervals (e.g. quarterly or biannually) to track overall brand sentiment over time. It’s designed to measure the strength of your customer relationships and not once-off experiences. 

For feedback on specific touchpoints, use Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) or Customer Effort Score (CES) surveys instead. That way, you can isolate friction in the journey without contaminating your loyalty metric.

Challenge 3: NPS doesn’t reveal which customers are at risk

One of the biggest limitations of NPS is that it treats all responses equally. But not all customers are equal in terms of impact. A low score from a long-term, high-value account is very different from a detractor who just joined.

✔️ The solution: Segment your NPS responses 

Break them down using factors like how long a customer’s been with you, what plan they’re on, where they’re located, or how often they use your product. These insights help you spot trends, zero in on at-risk groups and tailor your responses.

Challenge 4: Customers don’t always understand the scale

Not everyone uses the 0–10 scale the same way. What’s a 7 to one person might be a 9 to another. People interpret numbers differently depending on cultural norms or personal habits. A 7 might feel like a high rating to one customer and an average one to another. This can distort your results and make cross-segment comparisons unreliable.

 ✔️ The solution: Calibrate internally and consider regional context

Rather than focusing on a single number, look at how your score changes over time within a specific group. Benchmark against your own past performance and factor in regional or cultural context. 

Most importantly, pay attention to the written feedback that comes with the score (it’s often more revealing than the number itself).

💡Pro tip: If you’re looking for a more flexible way to measure sentiment or satisfaction, you might also consider using a Likert scale in your surveys.

Challenge 5: NPS can become a vanity metric

It’s easy to get fixated on your NPS score, especially when leadership is looking for one simple number to rally around. But that simplicity can be misleading. Chasing a higher score doesn’t always mean you’re improving the customer experience. In some cases, it just means you’re getting better at asking for good ratings.

✔️ The solution: Treat NPS as one input in a larger CX strategy

To really understand how customers feel, combine it with behavioral data like churn rate, repeat purchases, or product usage. 

Layer in metrics like CSAT (Customer Satisfaction), which measures how happy customers are after a specific interaction, and CES (Customer Effort Score), which tells you how easy or difficult it was for them to complete a task. Together, these signals give you a more complete (and actionable) view of customer experience.

Challenge 6: It’s not actionable on its own

NPS can easily become a box-ticking exercise. You collect the feedback, look at the score, maybe skim a few comments… and then move on. But without a follow-up process, even great insights get lost and customers are left feeling ignored.

✔️ The solution: Build a “closed-loop” NPS process

Put a closed-loop process in place. Start by analysing your responses; both the scores and the comments. Next, route the insights: pass unhappy customers to your support team, share positive feedback with marketing and log recurring issues for your product or UX team. Then close the loop: follow up with customers to let them know their feedback made an impact. 

How to run an NPS survey 

If you want your NPS program to really help your business, it needs to be part of a bigger feedback system. Here’s how to do that:

1. Define your goals: Know what you want to achieve, whether it’s boosting loyalty, cutting churn or improving brand reputation.
2. Choose relational surveys: Send surveys regularly, like every few months, to get a clear, consistent view of customer sentiment.
3. Add open-ended follow-ups: Include open ended questions that ask customers to explain their scores so you understand their reasons.
4. Segment your responses: Divide your data by customer group, product or journey stage to uncover useful trends.
5. Analyze feedback themes: Look for common patterns by grouping similar comments or using text analysis tools.
6. Build feedback workflows: Make sure feedback reaches the right teams so they can take meaningful action.
7. Close the loop: Reach back out to customers to let them know their feedback matters and what you’re doing about it.
8. Track trends over time: Watch how your scores and feedback evolve to measure real progress.

💡Pro-tip: If you’re still getting to grips with different types of surveys and how to use them effectively, this guide on what surveys are offers a great overview.

Ready to start measuring your NPS?

In this article, you’ve learned what NPS is, how to calculate it, what a good score looks like and why it’s important to look beyond the number. You’ve also seen common challenges and how to run an effective NPS program that drives real change. 

The next step is getting your NPS program off the ground. Attest’s easy-to-use NPS templates make it simple to get started. Use them to open the door to honest, actionable customer feedback and take your customer experience to the next level.