What Is NPS? A Simple Guide to Calculation, Promoter/Detractor Categories, and Benchmarks
Published:
Last Updated:
Category: Marketing Glossary, CRM, LTV & Customer Management
Authors: Shusaku Yosa
Published:
Last Updated:
Category: Marketing Glossary, CRM, LTV & Customer Management
Authors: Shusaku Yosa
NPS (Net Promoter Score) shows up constantly in customer surveys and service-improvement work. It is widely used as a measure of customer loyalty, yet many people are unsure exactly how to calculate it or what counts as a good score.
This article explains how to calculate NPS step by step, starting from a single question and the classification into Promoters, Passives, and Detractors. We cover a worked example, score benchmarks, and tips for putting it to use, at a level that even first-timers can apply in practice.
NPS (Net Promoter Score) is a metric that measures customer loyalty (attachment to and trust in a company or brand) through how strongly customers would recommend a product or service to others.
Whereas traditional "satisfaction" measures how satisfied someone was at a given moment, NPS goes a step further into future behavior and intent to recommend, asking whether the customer will keep using the product and recommend it to others. Because of this, it is adopted by many companies as a metric that correlates well with business performance.
An NPS survey is, in essence, complete with just one question.
"How likely are you to recommend this product (service / company) to a friend or colleague?"
Respondents rate this question on an 11-point scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means "not at all likely" and 10 means "extremely likely." Calculating NPS begins by sorting these 11-point scores into three groups.
The responses obtained on the 0-10 scale are divided into the following three groups based on their score. This classification is the foundation of the NPS calculation.
Something to watch out for here is that the 7-8 "Passives" are not included in the NPS calculation. Also, since everything 6 and below is treated as a "Detractor," a score of 6—which might seem "not bad" at first glance—is also classified as a Detractor. This strict cutoff is part of why NPS is good at picking up signals for improvement.
Once the classification is done, NPS is found with the following simple formula.
NPS = % of Promoters − % of Detractors
The key point is that you calculate using percentages of all respondents, not the raw number of people. Passives do not appear in the formula, but they must always be included in the denominator (the total number of respondents) when calculating the percentages.
Organized into steps, the calculation has three parts.
Because NPS is a subtraction of percentages, the result ranges from −100 to +100. If everyone is a Promoter it is +100; if everyone is a Detractor it is −100. Unlike many metrics, it can take negative values. By convention, the number is not written with a "%" sign—you simply say "NPS is +20."
Let's calculate with concrete numbers. Suppose a service surveys 100 people and the responses break down as follows.
First, find the percentages. Promoters are 40 ÷ 100 × 100 = 40%, and Detractors are 25 ÷ 100 × 100 = 25%. Plugging these into the formula gives NPS = 40% − 25% = +15.
Here, the 35 Passives do not appear in the formula itself, but they are properly included in the denominator of 100 people used to compute the percentages. If you exclude Passives from the denominator, the percentages change and you will not get the correct NPS, so be careful.
Let's cover rough benchmarks for how to evaluate the NPS you have calculated. As a premise, though, there is no single universal standard for the absolute value of NPS.
As a general rule, a positive NPS means Promoters outnumber Detractors—a healthy state—while a negative NPS means there are many Detractors and improvement is needed. A range of +30 to +50 is often considered strong, and above +50 is considered very high, but these are only rough guides.
Especially important is that average values differ greatly by industry and country. For example, people in Japan tend to choose mid-range scores (7-8), so NPS is said to come out lower there than in Western countries. For that reason, rather than simply comparing your numbers with other companies or other industries, it is more practical to look at the trend compared with your own past scores.
To make sure NPS does not end as just a "score" but actually drives improvement, here are points to keep in mind.
Measuring NPS is not the goal in itself; it has value only when you read the customer voices behind the score and connect them to your next improvement action.
NPS is a customer loyalty metric that asks "how likely you are to recommend to a friend or colleague" with a single question on an 11-point 0-10 scale, then classifies responses into Promoters (9-10), Passives (7-8), and Detractors (0-6). The formula is simply "% of Promoters − % of Detractors"; Passives are not part of the formula but must always be included in the denominator when computing the percentages.
The score ranges from −100 to +100, with positive read as healthy and negative as needing improvement; but because differences by industry and country are large, the basic approach is to track your own trend rather than compare with other companies. Rather than stopping at producing a number, combine it with free-text reasons and segment analysis to turn customer voices into improvement actions.
Learn the meaning and calculation of ARPPU (Average Revenue Per Paying User). We organize the difference from ARPU—which...
The Pareto principle (80/20 rule) is an empirical rule that about 80% of results come from about 20% of the elements. Le...
CTR and CVR explained. CTR measures “whether it got clicked (the entrance)” and CVR measures “whether it led to a result...
