What Is NPS (Net Promoter Score)?

NPS is the most widely reported customer metric in business, and the most widely misreported. Its appeal is that it reduces a complicated relationship to one number from one question, which makes it easy to track over time and easy to put in front of people who will never read a survey. Its weakness is exactly the same thing: a single number that hides three different populations behind it.

The mechanics are worth stating precisely because they are so often bungled. Respondents answering nine or ten are promoters. Those answering seven or eight are passives. Everyone from zero to six is a detractor, which surprises people who assume a six is roughly neutral. The score subtracts the detractor share from the promoter share, so passives influence the result only by diluting both percentages.

Reading the Number Honestly

Because NPS is a difference of two percentages, it carries no percent sign, and a score of 40 does not mean forty percent of anything. Two organisations can post identical scores from completely different distributions: one with many promoters and many detractors, another with almost everyone passive. The first has passionate customers and a serious problem to fix; the second has an indifferent base. Reporting the three group sizes alongside the score is the only way to tell them apart.

The response rate matters just as much. NPS collected from a self-selecting few tells you about those few. As with any survey score, the denominator belongs next to the number every time it is quoted.

Relationship Versus Transactional NPS

Relationship NPS is asked on a cycle and is about the company. Transactional NPS is asked after a specific event and is about that event. Contact centers most often run the transactional form, because it can be attributed to a queue, a campaign or a team. The two are not comparable, and averaging them produces a number that means nothing. If you run both, label them and report them separately.

How DialerBee Handles NPS

NPS from zero to ten is one of five question types in DialerBee's surveys and CX module, alongside yes/no, CSAT one to five, consent yes/no and open text. Surveys are built with a live preview on six mobile-first page templates carrying your tenant branding, and publishing locks the version. A later change creates a new version instead of editing the published one, so last quarter's responses keep the wording they were given.

The survey can be delivered as a voice IVR survey on the call itself, answered by keypress or by speech, asked conversationally by the Layla survey runtime on the same call flow, sent as a WhatsApp or SMS message, opened from a short link to its own web page, handed off by an agent pressing Send to survey at the end of a call, or run as its own outbound survey campaign with pacing and quotas when you need a sample rather than a reaction to one call. Analytics give an overview, a breakdown, a per-question view, a trend and drivers, each stating what the number is out of. Most importantly for NPS, detractors and low scores become recovery cases in a queue, assigned to a named person and closed with a recorded outcome, so the unhappy customer gets a call back rather than a place on a chart.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is NPS calculated?

Ask the recommendation question on a zero to ten scale. Scores of nine and ten are promoters, seven and eight are passives, and zero to six are detractors. Subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. Passives count in the denominator but not in either percentage, which is why a large passive group drags the score toward zero.

What range can an NPS score take?

From minus 100, where every respondent is a detractor, to plus 100, where every respondent is a promoter. Because it is a difference between two percentages rather than a percentage itself, it should never be written with a percent sign. A score of 30 means promoters exceed detractors by thirty points of the respondent base.

What is the difference between NPS and CSAT?

NPS asks about the relationship and is usually collected periodically. CSAT asks about one interaction and is collected immediately after it. NPS is the slower, broader signal and is poor at attributing a change to a specific agent or call; CSAT is the fast, narrow signal and is poor at telling you whether the overall relationship is healthy.

Is a relationship NPS different from a transactional one?

Yes. Relationship NPS is sent on a cycle, for example quarterly, and asks about the company overall. Transactional NPS is sent after a specific event such as a support call or a delivery. They answer different questions and should not be compared with each other or averaged together into a single number.

What should happen to a detractor?

They should be contacted, not counted. The value of the question is mostly in the follow-up: a detractor whose complaint is worked and closed often becomes a more loyal customer than someone who never had a problem. A programme that produces a chart and no callbacks is collecting scores rather than managing experience.

Related terms: CSAT, first call resolution, callback scheduling, omnichannel and WhatsApp Business API.