What are detractors?
In Net Promoter Score, detractors are the customers who answer 0 to 6 when asked how likely they are to recommend you. Promoters answer 9 or 10, passives answer 7 or 8, and detractors are everyone below that.
Outside NPS, the word simply means someone who criticises a person or idea. This page covers the customer feedback meaning.
The three groups come from the Net Promoter Score, which Fred Reichheld of Bain & Company introduced in Harvard Business Review in 2003.
What are promoters, passives and detractors?
They are the three groups NPS sorts respondents into, based on their answer to the 0 to 10 recommendation question.
- Promoters (9 or 10) are likely to recommend you and to stay.
- Passives (7 or 8) are satisfied but not enthusiastic, and easy for a competitor to win over.
- Detractors (0 to 6) are unlikely to recommend you and are usually treated as the group most at risk of leaving.
How detractors affect your NPS
NPS is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors, so every detractor counts directly against the score. Passives are excluded from the calculation entirely, which means a customer answering 6 hurts your score and a customer answering 7 does nothing to it, despite the two being nearly identical in how they feel.
That one-point cliff is a reason to read the responses rather than watch the number. Movement between 6 and 7 changes the score noticeably and reflects almost no change in the customer.
For example, out of 200 responses, 100 are promoters (50%), 60 are passives and 40 are detractors (20%), so the NPS is 30. If ten of those passives drop from a 7 to a 6, detractors rise to 50 (25%) and the NPS falls to 25, while the customers themselves barely changed.
What a detractor score actually tells you
Less than people assume. A 4 out of 10 says something is wrong. It does not say what, how long it has been wrong, or whether it is fixable.
The comment underneath is the valuable part, and detractors write the most specific comments you will get. Promoters tend to write "great tool, love it". Detractors tell you exactly which thing broke and what it cost them, because they are annoyed enough to be precise.
A detractor who takes the time to explain is doing you a favour. The ones who score you low and write nothing have usually already decided.
Types of detractor
In the NPS responses for your own product, detractors usually fall into one of four groups.
- Something broke. A specific failure, often recent. The most fixable kind.
- Wrong fit. They needed a different product. No amount of support changes this, and the useful action is upstream in how you acquire.
- Accumulated friction. Nothing failed dramatically, everything takes too long. The hardest to spot and the most likely to churn quietly.
- Unmet expectation. They were promised something in a sales conversation that the product does not do.
These need different responses, and treating them as one group is why "close the loop with detractors" often produces no improvement.
How to respond to detractors
Reply, and quickly. A detractor who hears back within a day is in a different conversation from one who hears back in three weeks.
Ask one question. "What would have made that a 9?" gets a more useful answer than a general apology.
Group before you act. One detractor is an anecdote. Eleven detractors naming the same step is a roadmap item.
Tell them what changed. The strongest promoters are often former detractors who saw something fixed after they raised it.
Detractors for enterprise product teams
With thousands of NPS responses a quarter, nobody reads every detractor comment, and the account team tends to follow up with the largest customers first. Product teams need something else from the same responses: the reasons, grouped and counted across every segment.
A useful detractor review shows each theme with the number of detractors who raised it, the segments they belong to, and links to the original comments. A product manager can then take one theme into a roadmap meeting and defend it, with every response behind the count one click away.
How Usersnap helps with detractors
Usersnap runs NPS as an in-app micro-survey, so the follow-up comment arrives with the score rather than in a separate export. Responses sit in the same workspace as the rest of your feedback.
- Grouping the reasons: Sentiment Sensor, included on Professional plans and above (an add-on on Starter and Growth), tags each new comment with a topic and a sentiment. You can see whether four detractors describe the same step or four different things, and click through to their exact words.
- Asking your AI assistant: with the MCP connector, ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor can query your live workspace with your own permissions, for example "what are customers saying about onboarding this month?" The connector sees new data, and Customer Success can index older responses.
- Acting on a theme: link the detractor responses behind a theme to an opportunity on the Opportunities Board and score it for value and effort. The linked responses also tell you who to update once the change ships.
Detractors FAQ
What score makes someone a detractor?
Any answer from 0 to 6 on the standard 0 to 10 NPS question.
Why are detractors important?
They subtract directly from your NPS, and their comments are usually the most specific feedback you receive, because irritation produces detail that satisfaction does not.
What is the difference between a detractor and a passive?
Passives answer 7 or 8 and are excluded from the score. Detractors answer 0 to 6 and count against it. The gap between a 6 and a 7 is one point of sentiment and a large difference to your reported number.
How do you turn detractors into promoters?
Respond quickly, ask what specifically would have improved the experience, fix the thing if it is fixable, and tell them when it is done. Customers who see something changed after they raised it often become the strongest advocates.
Related terms
See how product teams read the reason behind every NPS score, grouped and counted.
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