What is NPS?
NPS, or Net Promoter Score, measures how likely your customers are to recommend you. It comes from one question: "how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?", answered on a scale of 0 to 10.
It measures the relationship rather than any single interaction, which makes it slow to move and awkward to act on directly.
People sometimes type it as "NAP score". In customer feedback, that almost always means NPS. In local SEO, NAP stands for name, address and phone number, which is unrelated.
How NPS is calculated
Responses split into three groups.
- Promoters, who answer 9 or 10.
- Passives, who answer 7 or 8, and who are ignored in the calculation.
- Detractors, who answer 0 to 6.
NPS = % promoters − % detractors
The result runs from -100 to +100. If 50% are promoters and 20% are detractors, your NPS is 30. The passives count toward the total response number but not toward the score, which is why a large group of 7s and 8s can leave the number unchanged while the underlying picture shifts.
Who created the Net Promoter Score?
Fred Reichheld of Bain & Company created the Net Promoter Score and introduced it in December 2003, in the Harvard Business Review article "The One Number You Need to Grow".
Bain developed the score together with Satmetrix, and Reichheld expanded the idea in his 2006 book "The Ultimate Question". Bain calls the wider practice around the score, which includes following up with customers and acting on what they say, the Net Promoter System.
What is a good NPS score?
Anything above 0 means you have more promoters than detractors. Above 50 is generally treated as strong, above 70 as exceptional. These bands are widely quoted and worth treating with caution, because NPS varies enormously by industry and by how the survey is delivered.
Your own trend across the same audience, asked the same way, is more informative than any benchmark.
What NPS does not tell you
Three things are worth knowing before a score gets put in a board deck.
It is one number covering everything. A score of 30 can mean a broadly content customer base or two segments pulling hard in opposite directions. Splitting by company size, plan or use case regularly shows a healthy average hiding a segment in trouble.
It measures intent, not behaviour. Someone answering 9 is telling you how they feel at that moment, which is not the same as an actual referral.
The score is not the useful part. The comment underneath is. A score tells you something changed and gives you nothing to do about it.
NPS vs CSAT vs CES
NPS asks about the relationship and moves slowly. CSAT asks about one interaction and moves quickly. CES asks how much effort something took and predicts churn better than either.
Use NPS when you want a stable relationship measure over time. Use CSAT when you want to know whether a specific step works. Do not run all three on the same people.
NPS for enterprise product teams
In a large company, the headline NPS usually belongs to someone outside product. It gets reported upward every quarter, and it's too broad for any single product manager to act on. The useful work happens one level down.
Split the score by product area, plan or customer segment before anyone draws a conclusion, and keep every comment attached to its score. When the detractor share in one segment rises, the roadmap review will ask what those customers said. A good answer is a handful of themes with a count next to each, and every count traces back to the original responses.
How to run NPS with Usersnap
NPS runs as a micro-survey inside the product, so it reaches people while they are using it rather than in an email they may not open. The follow-up comment arrives alongside the score, in the same workspace as the rest of your feedback.
- Setup: start from the ready-made NPS template and show the in-app micro-survey on the pages you choose. The NPS rater can also be embedded in an email.
- Reasons behind the score: 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 and lists the top three positive and negative topics, each linked to the responses behind it.
- Questions in your AI assistant: with the MCP connector, ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor can query your live workspace with your own permissions. You can ask "what are customers saying about onboarding this month?" and get an answer drawn from the responses themselves. The connector sees new data, and Customer Success can index older items.
- From theme to roadmap: link the responses behind a theme to an opportunity on the Opportunities Board and score it for value and effort.
NPS FAQ
How is NPS calculated?
Subtract the percentage of detractors, who answer 0 to 6, from the percentage of promoters, who answer 9 or 10. Passives on 7 and 8 are excluded. The result ranges from -100 to +100.
What is a good NPS score?
Above 0 means more promoters than detractors. Above 50 is usually considered strong. Industry variation is large enough that your own trend is the better comparison.
Is an NPS of 40 good?
Yes, by the bands most often quoted. An NPS of 40 means promoters outnumber detractors by 40 percentage points, which puts it well above 0 and below the 50 usually called strong. Whether it's good for you depends on your industry and on your own previous score.
What is the difference between NPS and CSAT?
NPS measures the overall relationship and is slow to change. CSAT measures satisfaction with one specific interaction and responds quickly.
How often should you run NPS?
Quarterly is common. More often than that and you get survey fatigue on a metric that does not move fast enough to justify it.
Related terms
See how product teams run NPS inside the product and read the reason behind every score.
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