What is the Net Promoter Score® (NPS) - and why is it important for your company?

Making customer loyalty easy to measure

The Net Promoter Score® (NPS) measures how likely it is that customers will recommend a company or service to others. This makes it one of the most important key figures for long-term growth and a positive customer experience.

The NPS was developed in 2003 by Fred Reichheld in collaboration with Bain & Company and Satmetrix. The aim was to create a simple, yet meaningful indicator that accurately measures customer loyalty and willingness to recommend customers - as a supplement to traditional satisfaction measurements.

How the NPS® works

The NPS® question is:

"How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?"

The answers are given on a Likert scale from 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (very likely).

This results in three groups:

• Promoters (9-10) - enthusiastic customers who actively recommend the company to others.

• Passive (7-8) - satisfied but not necessarily loyal customers.

• Detractors (0-6) - dissatisfied customers with a negative impact on your image.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is the difference between the proportion of promoters (rating 9-10) and the proportion of detractors (rating 0-6) in response to the question: "How likely is it that you would recommend our company to others?"

NPS = %promoter:inside - %detractor:inside

The result of an NPS is therefore always between -100 and +100:

• Positive values (above 0) mean that there are more promoters than detractors - satisfaction is good overall.
• Values above +50 are considered excellent,
• values between 0 and +50 as solid to good,
• Values below 0 indicate dissatisfaction.

What the NPS® says - and what it doesn't say

A high NPS® means that your company is actively recommended by many customers. This is a strong sign of trust, quality and emotional loyalty.

But be careful: the NPS® shows what your customers feel - not why. That's why it's important to combine it with qualitative feedback.

How to measure your NPS® with ValueQuest

With ValueQuest's survey solutions, the Net Promoter Score® can be collected precisely and efficiently - customized to your industry and target group.

• Customer Satisfaction Surveys
  Capture NPS®, Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Customer Effort (CES) combined - for a complete picture of your customer relationships.

• 360° feedback and employee surveys
  Use the Employee NPS® to measure the loyalty and retention of your employees.

• Industry solutions
  Whether services, trade or industry - we provide benchmarks and comparative data from your sector to help you classify your results correctly.

Why the NPS® is worthwhile

• Simple communication: A single key figure for customer satisfaction and loyalty.

• Strategic control: Ideal for management dashboards and customer experience programs.

• Growth through recommendations: Promoters act as multipliers and reduce acquisition costs.

• Early detection of risks: A falling NPS® can indicate critical service or product problems.

Best practices for use

1. Measure regularly: Survey the NPS® continuously (e.g. quarterly or after customer interactions).

2. Ask open questions: "What was the main reason for your evaluation?" provides valuable qualitative insights.

3. Derive measures: Actively contact dissatisfied customers - and use promoters as brand ambassadors.

4. Analyze trends: The development over time is more important than a single value.

Conclusion

The Net Promoter Score® is a powerful tool for making customer experiences measurable - simple, clear and comparable. With the survey solutions from ValueQuest you can combine the NPS® with other feedback indicators to create the basis for loyal customers and sustainable growth.