What Is a Good NPS Score? How to Judge Yours Without Industry Tables

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What the number means

Net Promoter Score comes from one question: how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague, on a scale from 0 to 10. Bain & Company, which created it, sets out the method on its Net Promoter System site: people who answer 9 or 10 are promoters, 0 to 6 are detractors, and the score is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors. The 7s and 8s, the passives, count towards the total but are not added or subtracted.

So the score runs from −100 (every answer a detractor) to +100 (every answer a promoter), and it is a number, not a percentage: +45, not 45%. The first and firmest answer to "is my score good?" follows from the arithmetic: above zero, you have more promoters than detractors; below zero, more detractors than promoters. A negative score is not a statistical curiosity; it means more of the people who answered would warn others off than would recommend you.

Why industry tables don't settle it

Search for a good NPS and you will find tables of averages by industry. They are tempting and they rarely fit, for three reasons.

The question is asked at different moments. A survey sent the day after a job goes well scores differently from one sent at renewal time, or to everyone on a mailing list including people who bought once two years ago.

The people asked are different. Some businesses survey every customer; some only those who finished a purchase; some only those who opened an email. Each choice changes who answers.

The sample is different. A benchmark built from thousands of answers about national brands says little about a local business with 40 replies.

Bain itself frames its own findings as comparisons: its measuring page says companies that achieve long-term profitable growth have scores two times higher than the average company. Relative to whom you compete with and to yourself, in other words, not against a fixed pass mark.

Four checks that judge your score on its own terms

1. Calculate it the standard way

Put the counts, or the raw 0 to 10 answers pasted from your survey export, into the free NPS calculator. It skips anything that is not a whole number from 0 to 10 and tells you how many it skipped, so a stray "N/A" in the export does not quietly change the score.

2. Check the sign

Above zero or below. That is the one comparison that needs no history.

3. Note how many people answered

Small samples swing. The calculator's own notes give the example: with 20 responses, one customer moving from detractor to promoter changes the score by 10 points. Always record the number of responses next to the score.

4. Compare with your last round, honestly

Suppose last quarter 40 customers answered: 22 promoters and 9 detractors, a score of +32.5. This quarter 50 answered: 30 promoters and 7 detractors, +46. A jump of 13.5 points looks like a win. But using the confidence-interval method MeasuringU recommends (an adjusted-Wald interval, from Brendan Rocks' 2016 research), the 95% margin of error is about ±24 points for the first round and ±20 for the second. The difference is well inside the noise. Our guide to the NPS margin of error shows the calculation and a table by sample size.

That is not bad news; it means you need more answers before celebrating or panicking. Keep asking the same question the same way, and a real trend will show over several rounds.

When the score drops

A fall feels worse than a rise feels good, so apply the same test before reacting: is the drop bigger than the margin of error for both rounds? If not, note it and keep asking. If it is, or if it is the third fall in a row, look at three things in this order.

1. Did the survey change? A new wording, a different send time or a different group of customers (all customers instead of recent ones) can move the score with no change in how you work.
2. Did the mix of work change? A busy season with more first-time customers, or a run of difficult jobs, shifts who answers.
3. What do the new detractors say? If several name the same thing, you have found the cause.

Only the third is a reason to change how you work; the first two are reasons to change how you compare.

What to do with any score

The number tells you whether things are getting better. The reasons tell you what to change. Add one open question after the 0 to 10 scale, "What's the main reason for your score?", and read every answer from detractors and passives. Group them: slow replies, unclear prices, a missed appointment. The group that comes up most is your next fix, whatever the score.

If you do not have a survey yet, the free form builder has a ready NPS template with that follow-up question built in, and its Summary tab works out the score for you. Our NPS survey template guide walks through it. To compare NPS with a satisfaction score, see NPS vs CSAT.

One thing not to do with promoters: if you ask for Google reviews, ask everyone, not only the people who scored 9 or 10. Google's fake engagement policy lists selectively soliciting positive reviews as a violation. On the Starter plan, Fynl's Reviews tool emails your review link to the customers you choose and reminds anyone who has not clicked it; send it to every recent customer.

The NPS calculator sits with the lifetime value calculator, the form builder and the other no-cost tools on our free tools page.

Questions people also ask

Sources

• Net Promoter System (Bain & Company) — Measuring your Net Promoter Score
• MeasuringU — Confidence Intervals for Net Promoter Scores
• Google — Maps user contributed content policy: fake engagement