I Used to Believe NPS Was Useless

How and why I changed my mind

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I used to think NPS was bull****, you ask people about what they would do vs actually do.

The idea of it sounds great. You ask customers how likely they are to recommend you. From there you group responses into detractors, passive and promoters:

How NPS scores are perceived

This then allows you to calculate your NPS score:

% Promoters -% Detractors

At the time, I’d even seen brands frame it differently to gamify it. For example, saying an 8 was average, a 9 was good, and a 10 was great, intentionally anchoring customers to score higher to increase the number of promoters.

I’d also seen customers do the opposite to what they said they would do. They would say they’d recommend a brand only to never do, or let one small thing lead them to follow out of love with the brand.

Tim D, CEO of Global Student Living, highlights another issue in his article “Is Your Net Promoter Score (NPS) Junk?”:

“Moving customers from scoring 6 to scoring 7 is a boost to NPS. Moving…