Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a one-question survey metric: "On a scale of 0–10, how likely are you to recommend [product] to a friend or colleague?" Responses fall into three groups:
- Promoters (9–10) — Highly satisfied, likely to recommend and expand
- Passives (7–8) — Satisfied but unenthusiastic; at risk of switching
- Detractors (0–6) — Unhappy customers who may actively discourage others
NPS = % Promoters − % Detractors
The result ranges from −100 to +100. A score above 0 is generally positive; above 50 is strong; above 70 is considered excellent for most industries.
Why NPS Matters for Growth
NPS predicts customer behavior more directly than generic satisfaction scores. Promoters:
- Renew at higher rates than passives or detractors
- Expand their usage through upsells and additional seats
- Generate word-of-mouth referrals that reduce customer acquisition cost
Detractors are churn risks and can negatively influence prospects who are evaluating the product — particularly important in B2B markets where peer reviews carry significant weight.
NPS and Conversion Rate Optimization
NPS is an outcome metric — it reflects the cumulative effect of every experience a customer has had. CRO influences it indirectly: better onboarding, clearer value communication, and reduced friction at key moments all contribute to higher satisfaction and, over time, more promoters.
Some teams use NPS as a guardrail metric in A/B tests — ensuring that an optimization improving short-term conversion rate doesn't quietly degrade the customer experience in ways that increase churn or reduce referrals.
Limitations
- Lagging indicator — NPS reflects past experience; by the time it drops, problems have already occurred
- Single-question simplicity — Without a follow-up open-text question, NPS tells you that customers are unhappy but not why
- Response bias — Customers with a strong reaction (positive or negative) respond at higher rates than satisfied-but-disengaged customers
- Industry variance — A score of 30 can be excellent in financial services and weak in consumer apps; benchmarking requires industry-specific comparisons
Getting More Value from NPS
Segment by cohort: acquisition source, plan tier, tenure, or use case. Patterns by segment reveal actionable problems more reliably than the aggregate score. A drop in NPS among users who signed up via paid search, for example, might indicate a message mismatch between ad and product — a CRO problem, not a product problem.