Net Promoter Score

Frederick F. Reichheld · 2003

Also known as NPS, The recommendation question

One question — how likely are you to recommend us — scored so that the indifferent count for nothing.

Its place in the frameworkOmni Core›Customer Feedback

What it does

Its real contribution was operational rather than statistical: one question gets answered, gets asked continuously, and produces a number an organisation can be organised around. The follow-up question asking why is where the usable information actually is, and it is the part most often dropped.

Reach for it when: When feedback is collected in long questionnaires that few complete and nobody reads.
Where it stops: The claimed link to growth has not survived independent replication, and the scoring throws away information. Treated as a trend on the same population it is useful; treated as a benchmark across companies or countries it is not.

Frederick F. Reichheld, “The One Number You Need to Grow”, Harvard Business Review, 2003. Net Promoter and NPS are registered trademarks of their owners and are named here only to refer to their work.

Why it sits at Customer Feedback

What customers tell you about the experience: gathered where they will answer honestly, read for what it actually says, routed to whoever can act, and returned to the person who raised it.

A model is only useful when you reach for it at the right moment. This one answers a question that arises here — so it is filed here, and nowhere else. These are the working areas it serves:

Gathering itSurvey-methodology work on response bias, and the difference between solicited and unsolicited feedback.
Reading the signalQualitative coding practice, and the distinction between frequency and severity in reading complaint data.
RoutingService-recovery and quality-management practice on routing to the process owner rather than to the point of contact.
Closing the loopResearch on closed-loop feedback and its effect on both retention and subsequent response rates.

All of Customer Feedback

What it touches elsewhere

Nothing in a business is decided on its own. A conclusion reached with this model at Customer Feedback lands in these other cores, whether or not anyone follows it there.

Customer Journey MappingFeedback is the fastest way to find where the journey actually breaks.
Business CoreMost feedback concerns a process, and acting on it means changing that process.
Brand CorePerception research asks what people think; feedback tells you what happened to them.
Data CoreFeedback is data with a known collection bias, and reading it requires knowing which.

Filed at the same place

These answer questions that arise at Customer Feedback too. Where they disagree with this one, the disagreement is the useful part.

The customer satisfaction indexSatisfaction estimated from several questions and placed in a chain, rather than read off a single answer.
The Customer Effort ScoreAsk how hard the customer had to work, because reducing effort predicts loyalty better than delighting does.

Elsewhere in Omni Core

These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.

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