Glossary
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
A loyalty metric calculated by asking customers how likely they are to recommend a business on a 0–10 scale, then subtracting the percentage of detractors (0–6) from the percentage of promoters (9–10).
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is the most widely used customer-loyalty metric in B2C and B2B. It was introduced by Fred Reichheld and Bain & Company in 2003. The standard question is exactly: "On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [company/product] to a friend or colleague?"
Respondents are bucketed as detractors (0–6), passives (7–8), and promoters (9–10). The score is calculated as the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors, resulting in a number between −100 and +100.
Benchmarks: any positive score is acceptable, above 30 is good, above 50 is excellent, and above 70 is world-class. Banking and telecom typically run 10–30, SaaS 30–50, premium retail and hospitality can clear 60. The most useful comparison is your own NPS over time, not the absolute number.
How to use it: send the NPS question 24–72 hours after a meaningful customer interaction (a purchase, a renewal, an appointment). Pair the rating with a single open-text follow-up that varies by score — detractors get "what did we do wrong," promoters get "what did you like most" or an invitation to leave a public review. Tools like Vouch automate the cadence, the routing, and the open-text theme extraction.
Common mistakes: modifying the question wording (breaks comparability), running NPS too often on the same customer (response fatigue), and treating the score in isolation without analyzing the qualitative comments. NPS is a leading indicator — not a target to game.
Related terms
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
— A transactional metric that measures satisfaction with a specific interaction by asking customers to rate their experience on a 1–5 or 1–7 scale immediately afterward.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
— A metric that measures how easy it was for a customer to accomplish a task by asking them to rate the effort on a 1–7 scale, typically after a support or onboarding interaction.
Review velocity
— The rate at which new reviews are added to a business's profile over time, typically measured per week or month. A key local-SEO signal because Google weights recent reviews more heavily than old ones.