What Is Net Promoter Score (NPS)?
A single-question loyalty metric that sorts respondents into Promoters, Passives, and Detractors based on how likely they are to recommend you, then nets the results into one score from -100 to 100.
Net Promoter Score comes from one question: “How likely are you to recommend [company/product] to a friend or colleague?” on a 0–10 scale. Fred Reichheld introduced it in a 2003 Harvard Business Review article, and it’s since become the most widely used loyalty metric in CX and product feedback.
Answers sort into three buckets: 0–6 are Detractors, 7–8 are Passives, and 9–10 are Promoters. The score is Promoters minus Detractors, expressed as a percentage-point difference — not a percentage itself, which is why NPS can run from -100 to 100 rather than 0–100. A score of 100% Promoters and 0% Detractors gives NPS 100; an even split gives NPS 0.
NPS is deliberately a single number, which is both its strength and its most common criticism. It’s easy to track over time and easy to communicate to a board — but on its own, it doesn’t say why people answered the way they did. That’s why most NPS surveys pair the rating with an open-ended follow-up: “What’s the main reason for your score?”
Example
| Group | Scores | Customers |
|---|---|---|
| Promoters | 9–10 | 120 |
| Passives | 7–8 | 50 |
| Detractors | 0–6 | 30 |
- Share who are Promoters
- 120 ÷ 200=60%
- Share who are Detractors
- 30 ÷ 200=15%
- Net Promoter Score
- 60% − 15%=45The 50 Passives are in the 200 but add to neither side. NPS is a number from −100 to 100, not a percentage.
A score of 45 means there are 45 percentage points more Promoters than Detractors.
What it does not tell you
- It is one question and one number. NPS does not say why people scored as they did; the open-ended follow-up does.
- A score is only comparable with other scores collected the same way: the same wording, scale, audience and timing.
- It is a gap between two shares, so with few responses the score moves a lot on a handful of answers. Report how many people answered, and the range around the score.
- There is no official cutoff for a good score, and published benchmarks differ by source and method.
How to Use NPS in SurveyRock
SurveyRock scores and buckets NPS automatically once you add the standard 0-10 question. Pair it with an open-ended "why" follow-up, and theme detection shows you the reasons people keep giving for their score, with an AI executive summary you can hand to stakeholders as-is.