Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer loyalty metric that measures how likely customers are to recommend your product or service to others. It helps organizations track customer satisfaction, predict business growth, and identify opportunities for improvement based on a simple, standardized scoring system.
Net Promoter Score is a widely adopted customer experience metric introduced by Fred Reichheld in 2003. The beauty of NPS lies in its simplicity—it's based on a single question: "On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or colleague?" Based on their responses, customers are categorized into three groups:
Your Net Promoter Score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters:
NPS = % Promoters - % Detractors
NPS scores range from -100 (if every customer is a detractor) to +100 (if every customer is a promoter).
Net Promoter Score has become a standard metric for several compelling reasons:
A high NPS indicates your customers are likely to promote your product through word-of-mouth, essentially acting as an unpaid marketing force for your business.
✅ Keep it simple - Don't overcomplicate your survey with too many additional questions ✅ Survey at the right moment - Consider timing carefully (after key interactions, not during frustrating moments) ✅ Segment your results - Break down NPS by customer segments, products, or touchpoints ✅ Focus on trends - A single NPS number is less valuable than tracking changes over time ✅ Combine with other metrics - Use NPS alongside metrics like customer satisfaction, churn rate, and customer lifetime value ✅ Act on the feedback - The most important step is making changes based on what you learn
❌ Focusing only on the score - The qualitative feedback is often more valuable than the number itself ❌ Surveying too frequently - Survey fatigue leads to lower response rates and less accurate data ❌ Not closing the feedback loop - Failing to tell customers how their feedback led to changes ❌ Setting unrealistic targets - Not all industries can achieve extremely high NPS scores ❌ Using NPS in isolation - NPS is most effective as part of a comprehensive measurement system ❌ Comparing across different industries - NPS benchmarks vary widely by industry, making cross-industry comparisons less meaningful
Understanding your Net Promoter Score can highlight areas of your product or service that need UX improvement. When customers provide low scores, they often point to specific pain points in your user experience that need addressing.
Card sorting can be a powerful tool to address issues identified through NPS feedback:
For example, if your NPS feedback reveals that customers struggle to find important features in your software, a card sorting exercise can help you redesign your menu structure to better match users' mental models.
To get started with Net Promoter Score:
Remember that collecting NPS data is just the beginning—the real value comes from the improvements you make in response to customer feedback.
Ready to improve your product's user experience based on customer feedback? Try a free card sort to better understand how users think about your product's features and information architecture.