What is the Net Promoter Score, and should my team use it?

Question

Accepted Answer

NPS asks customers how likely they are to recommend you, scores promoters minus detractors, and gives one loyalty number to trend over time. Chapter 5 of the book describes introducing it, with an employee version, at a national healthcare ministry, and pairs it with root-cause work rather than treating the score alone as insight.

The Net Promoter Score asks customers a single question: how likely they are to recommend you to a friend or colleague, answered on a scale of 0 to 10. Chapter 5 of the book explains the arithmetic. Respondents sort into Promoters (9 to 10), Passives (7 to 8) and Detractors (0 to 6). The score is the percentage of Promoters minus the percentage of Detractors, giving a single number that can run from deeply negative to 100.

The book's own use was at a national healthcare ministry, where Dave introduced NPS alongside an employee version, eNPS, to take the pulse of both the people served and the people serving. Paired with operational root-cause work on member calls, that measurement focus supported a 2% increase in the retention save rate, a small percentage with a large financial meaning across a big member base.

Should your team use it? It passes the book's four KPI tests when loyalty is genuinely one of your outcomes: it is relevant, simple to measure consistently, actionable in that a falling score forces the right questions, and it trends cleanly over time. Its weakness is the mirror image of its strength: one number cannot tell you why customers feel as they do. The book pairs it with listening, the voice of the customer work in Chapter 3, rather than treating the score as the whole story.

Start by asking the question properly and consistently, read the trend rather than any single month, and always read the comments alongside the score. The number tells you where to dig. It is not the digging.

What is the Net Promoter Score, and should my team use it?

Related questions