The Net Promoter System® (or NPS) has been a popular customer experience metric since its creation in 2003. NPS is used by the biggest companies and leaders in its industries: from Apple to Airbnb, from Amazon to Tesla. At the same time, NPS is often a subject of criticism and misunderstanding.
In doubts, I wanted to reach out to the thought leaders and influencers to know what they think of NPS, or rather, according to the best traditions of NPS, if they would recommend NPS to a fellow CX colleague. I’d love to specify from the very beginning, we focus on the Net Promoter System, not only on the Net Promoter Score (that actually changes a lot).
Before we dive deeper, here’s a detailed guide to how to improve your customer experience with NPS (it also includes a quick summary of what NPS is and isn’t).
Now that we’re on the same page, I could go deeper into our small research. All the leaders were asked the same two questions:
1. How likely are you to recommend Net Promoter System to your CX colleagues? (on a scale 0 to 10, where 0 is not likely at all and 10 is very likely)
2. Why did you give that score?
We have received 31 answers from 31 recognized thought leaders, consultants and great doers from all over the world across industries. Then we divided the answers according to the categorization of NPS – into promoters, passives, and detractors. 2 answers are marked “in doubt” because the participants provided the range of scores or no score at all.
Having mentioned that, I couldn’t help but calculate the Net Promoter Score of the Net Promoter System. 15 experts are very likely to recommend Net Promoter System to their CX colleagues (they are marked as ”promoters”) and 6 wouldn’t do that (“detractors”).
MIKE WITTENSTEIN
Management Consultant and Managing Partner at Storyminers
Why? “NPS is great for companies who are just beginning to look at their customer’s experience and don’t know where to start. An NPS score is like a pointer. If you use it, it will point you to problem areas that matter to customers—but it doesn’t do the work for you!
Many people think that getting a better score is the point of NPS. It’s not. Creating a better business that delivers more value to customers is the real point. As recent industry surveys show, NPS scores don’t reward companies that ‘game’ the system. NPS scores reward outcomes not efforts.”
