NPS is a metric that tells you your overall customer experience quality, based on your existing customers’ likelihood to recommend your product, service, or organization. To do an NPS calculation, you’ll need to use the following Net Promoter Score (NPS) formula:
Total % of promoters – total % of detractors = net promoter score
This simply means:
The total % of people who would recommend your brand – the total % of those who wouldn’t = your net promoter score.
For example, your Net Promoter Score calculation might look like:
70% promoters – 10% detractors = 60 is your NPS Score
Continue reading to learn how tracking NPS could be helpful for your business today.
In customer success, managers and staff need to quantify the sentiment of customers to compare results and work towards better ones, by measuring customer experiences.
This data can have a real impact on your future commercial strategy, budget allocation, and product development plans. In these cases and others, NPS is used to get a representative landscape of how your customer base thinks about you.
But how exactly do you find out who would recommend your brand and who wouldn’t? And how do you know if your NPS calculation result is an average score, a great score, or a poor one? Let’s break it down.
Think of one of your favorite personal brands. With the brand in mind, answer this question:
“On a scale of 0-to-10, how likely is it that you would recommend this brand to a friend or colleague?”
This question forces you to place a value on your experience with the brand and asks you to stand by it. Recommending a brand goes beyond satisfaction, it’s about trust. If your recommendation goes wrong, it can affect your own credibility with friends or colleagues.
The Net Promoter Score formula replicates this process on a business level, directly asking existing customers the same question.
The scale is rated from 1 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely). Depending on the responses, customers fall into one of three categories:
Promoters – customers who respond with a score of 9 or 10. These are loyal, enthusiastic customers who are most likely to recommend your brand.
Passives – customers who respond with a score of 7 or 8. These customers are satisfied but not enthusiastic enough to actively promote your brand.
Detractors – customers who respond with a score between 1 and 6. These are unhappy customers who may discourage others from buying from you.
Now that you have your customers into the above three categories, it's time to calculate your Net Promoter Score. Start by finding what percentage of your total survey responses are promoters, passives, and detractors. For each group, divide the number of responses in that category by the total number of responses, then multiply by 100.
Once you have the percentages, apply the NPS formula:
Total % of promoters – total % of detractors = net promoter score
The percentage of passives is not included in the formula.
For example, if you have 100 total survey responses, with 70 promoters, 20 passives, and 10 detractors:
Promoters = (70 ÷ 100) × 100 = 70%
Passives = (20 ÷ 100) × 100 = 20%
Detractors = (10 ÷ 100) × 100 = 10%
Subtract the detractor percentage from the promoter percentage:
70% – 10% = 60 — your NPS is 60.
NPS can range from -100 to 100. The ideal score would be 100, meaning all respondents are promoters. However, scores can also be negative.
This can be a little complicated to wrap your head around without actually seeing it in action so use the calculator below to test out different combinations of promoters, passives, and detractors to see what your NPS score would be!
By calculating your NPS and understanding the breakdown of promoters, passives, and detractors, you can take meaningful actions to improve customer experience and loyalty.
If you want to simplify the process and track your NPS over time without manually compiling survey results, our NPS tracking service provides automated collection, calculation, and trend analysis. This means you spend less time on spreadsheets and more time making impactful changes for your customers. Reach out to your Customer Success Advocate or support@membrain.com to get started today.
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