● Customer reviews
NPS (Net Promoter Score)
NPS, or Net Promoter Score, is a customer loyalty metric from -100 to +100. You ask one question, how likely are you to recommend us on a scale of 0 to 10, then subtract the percentage of detractors (0-6) from the percentage of promoters (9-10).
Full definition
What is an NPS score
An NPS score is a number between -100 and +100 that shows how many of your customers would recommend you, net of those who would not. It comes from one question: how likely are you to recommend this company to a friend or colleague, on a scale from 0 to 10?
Fred Reichheld of Bain & Company introduced the metric in the Harvard Business Review in December 2003, in an article called "The One Number You Need to Grow." His argument was simple: one question predicts loyalty better than a long satisfaction survey. Most teams now add a second, open question right after the score: why did you give that rating? The number tells you where you stand. The answers tell you what to fix.
You can send the survey by email, SMS or inside your app. The channel matters less than the habit. Ask the same question, in the same way, every time, so scores stay comparable from one wave to the next.
How to calculate NPS
Every respondent falls into one of three groups, based on the 0-10 answer. Promoters score 9 or 10. Passives score 7 or 8. Detractors score anywhere from 0 to 6.
The formula is NPS = % promoters - % detractors. Say 200 customers answer: 90 promoters, 70 passives and 40 detractors. That is 45% promoters and 20% detractors, so your NPS is +25.
Passives count in the total number of responses, so they pull both percentages down. They never appear in the subtraction. A 7 or an 8 adds nothing to your score, but it still dilutes your promoters. Report the result as a whole number, without a percent sign.
Small samples swing fast. With 20 answers, 12 promoters, 5 passives and 3 detractors give you +45. One more detractor in place of a passive and you are at +40. Collect enough answers before you read a trend into a five-point move.
NPS scale: what each score means
The scale runs from -100 to +100, and three anchors help you read it. At -100, every respondent is a detractor. At 0, promoters and detractors cancel each other out. At +100, every respondent is a promoter.
In practice, anything above 0 means you have more fans than critics. Above +50 is strong in most sectors, and above +70 is rare. A negative score does not doom your business, but it does mean unhappy customers outnumber happy ones and word of mouth is working against you.
Many teams read the result in bands. Below 0 needs action now. From 0 to 30 is workable. From 30 to 50 is good. Above 50 is excellent. Treat these bands as a first read, before you compare yourself with your sector.
The number only means something next to your own history and your own sector. A +30 that was +10 six months ago is good news. A +30 in a sector where the median is 55 is a warning.
What is a good NPS score
A good NPS score is one that beats the median of your own industry. According to Survicate's 2025 NPS benchmarks, the median NPS is 55 for retail and e-commerce, 30 for software, 61 for healthcare and 46 for fintech.
The study covered January to October 2025 and included at least 50 companies per industry. The spread between sectors is the point. A software company at +30 sits right on its median. An online store at +30 sits 25 points below its own.
Use these medians as a rough guide, not a target. Who you survey, when you send the survey and which channel you use all move the result, so two companies in the same sector are rarely measured the same way.
Response rate matters as much as the score. If only 5% of your customers answer, you hear mostly from the very happy and the very angry. Get answers from a broad slice of buyers before you draw conclusions.
Your best benchmark is yourself. Track your NPS every quarter and compare it with the same period a year earlier. Watch the share of detractors more closely than the headline number. Pair it with your customer satisfaction data to see whether a dip comes from one product or the whole experience. Then read NPS and customer reviews side by side: a high NPS with a low Google rating can mean your happy customers are not posting.
Limits of NPS
NPS is one question, so it flattens a lot. Keiningham (2007, Journal of Marketing) found it no better than other loyalty measures at predicting revenue growth. Hayes (2008) also criticized how much one question can carry.
NPS also says nothing about cause. Two companies with the same +40 can have very different problems. That is why the open follow-up question matters more than the score itself.
Day to day, three weaknesses show up. The score hides why customers answered as they did. A 0-10 scale is read differently from one culture to another. And a small sample can swing the result. Treat NPS as a signal, and the open answers as the explanation.
Concrete example
The same formula gives different readings depending on the sector. These three examples are illustrative, with made-up counts.
Online store. You send the survey after delivery and get 100 answers: 60 promoters, 25 passives and 15 detractors. That is 60% minus 15%, so your NPS is +45. Retail and e-commerce has a median of 55 in Survicate's study, so you have room to grow, and the comments from your 15 detractors show where.
Next step: group the 15 detractor comments by theme, such as late delivery or damaged items. If one theme covers half of them, fix it first, then survey your next 100 orders.
B2B SaaS. A software company surveys 80 accounts and gets 28 promoters, 32 passives and 20 detractors. That is 35% promoters and 25% detractors, so the NPS is +10. The software median is 30 in the same study. This team has a gap to close and 20 accounts to call.
Next step: check which accounts are detractors. In B2B, 20 detractors out of 80 can hide a few large contracts, so rank your follow-up by revenue and renewal date.
Restaurant or hotel. A restaurant texts guests a rating request after dinner and collects 150 answers: 105 promoters, 30 passives and 15 detractors. That is 70% promoters and 10% detractors, so the NPS is +60. Nearly all of that score comes from the 105 promoters, which makes them the guests to invite to leave a public review.
Next step: message the 105 promoters with your review link while the evening is fresh. Give the 15 detractors a direct line to the manager.
Compare each result with its own sector, not with the other two. A +45 and a +60 are not rivals. They are answers to different questions.
With Review Collect
You can run NPS in two ways. Transactional NPS asks the question right after an event, such as a delivery or a stay. Relational NPS asks it on a schedule, to every customer, whatever they bought recently. The first tells you what went wrong with a specific order. The second tells you how people feel about your brand overall.
An NPS score stays private unless you do something with it. A customer who answers 9 or 10 is willing to say good things about you, so ask them to say it in public. With Review Collect, customers who answer 9 or 10 can be directed to one review platform that you choose, such as Google, Trustpilot or Verified Reviews. The customer always keeps the choice to publish.
Low scores matter just as much. According to Review Collect internal data, 93% of dissatisfied customers who are contacted prefer resolving the issue privately over publishing a negative review. A low NPS answer gives your team a reason to reach out before anything is written.
If you want to measure your NPS score and send your promoters to a review platform, start with the NPS and CSAT page.
