What is net promoter score?

Why it matters

NPS is a relationship metric, which makes it the right place to look for the compounding effect of support quality. A single bad interaction rarely moves NPS. A pattern of slow, inconsistent, or unresolved support moves it a lot, and it moves before churn shows up in revenue.

What to know

• Passives are counted in the denominator but contribute nothing to the score, which makes NPS jumpy on small samples.
• Transactional NPS, sent after a support contact, is a different measurement from relationship NPS and should not be blended.
• The follow-up why question produces more useful insight than the score, and it is the part most teams skip analysing.
• NPS is not comparable across industries or even across survey channels, so external benchmarks mislead.
• Support is one input to NPS among many, so treat it as a directional signal rather than a support scorecard.

How to calculate it

An example

Example: of 500 respondents, 250 score nine or ten, 150 score seven or eight, and 100 score six or below. NPS is 50 minus 20, which is 30. Note that the 150 passives changed nothing except the size of the denominator.

Common mistakes

• Comparing your NPS to a published industry benchmark collected differently
• Blending transactional and relationship NPS into one number
• Sampling only active, engaged users and missing the quietly unhappy
• Reading a small movement on a small sample as a trend

Questions