How to interpret your NPS score; why it's difficult

Many of our customers focus on their Net Promoter Score (NPS). If the score is good, everybody is happy. If the score is low, heads could roll (primarily in marketing, operations and service).

In our view, that is putting way too much emphasis on one data point that is, to our way of thinking, sometimes a thin or even unreliable marker of overall success or failure.

Yes, NPS is widely viewed as a universal measurement of customer loyalty, which means the company is doing a lot of things right. But too much emphasis is placed on NPS at the expense of more valuable benchmarks.

That’s what gives us indigestion.

First, here are just a couple important reasons why we are leery of the NPS score: (As a reminder, to calculate your NPS score, ask customers to grade their satisfaction from 0 to 10. The score is the percent of 9 or 10s, minus the percent of 0-6.)

1.       NPS ignores customers who score you a 7 or 8, which we think is a pretty good score.

2.       NPS considers someone who rates you a “0” as similar to someone who rates you a “6.” That doesn’t make sense.

Some measurements we like are:

1.       Cost to value

2.       Repeat purchases

3.       Ease of communications

4.       Brand trust

5.       Conflict resolution

So, if you’d like us to help you set up and monitor better customer benchmarks, give Rick Naymark a call at 612-875-9081, or rnaymark@qmarketresearch.com.