The Net Promotor Score was created by Fred Reichheld in 2003 and is used by businesses globally.
The Net Promoter Score, also known as NPS, is a metric used to measure customer satisfaction (CSAT) and brand advocacy.
Customer loyalty is a huge aspect for any business to drive success and scale their business. The NPS was created to help businesses understand where they are in terms of how many loyal customers and how many unsatisfied customers they have.
The NPS can be used by businesses of all shapes and sizes and across all industries that want to get to know their customers better.
How NPS works
The NPS is calculated based on customer responses to one simple NPS survey, “how likely are you to recommend our product/service to your friends and family?”
Customers choose an answer on a scale from 0- 10, where 0 is not likely and 10 is highly likely.
The responses are divided into three categories based on the number chosen:
Detractors: These customers choose anything from 0-6. They are not satisfied with their experience and can provide negative feedback.
Passives: Customers who respond with 7-8 are considered satisfied with their experience, however not enough to recommend the product or service to others.
Promotors: Promotors are customers who choose 9-10 and are valuable assets to any business because they are highly likely to promote your brand.
How do you calculate your NPS?
Once the data is collected, a value between -100 and 100 is calculated using the following formula:
Net Promoter Score = % of Promotors – % of Detractors.
For example, if 60% are Promotors and 20% are Detractors your NPS would be 40.
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Why knowing your NPS can help you scale your business organically
The NPS is a great tool for businesses to gain insights into their customer service and how to improve the customer journey with a deeper understanding of what your customers experience at every touch point.
Once you have a benchmark that can be decided according to the industry you are in, measuring your NPS frequently will help you to monitor and track progress to avoid a high churn rate and improve retention.
It is cheaper to retain customers than to acquire new ones, so gauging the Detractors from the Promotors or Passives can help businesses change existing strategies and implement new ones at different stages of the customer journey.
The NPS is widely popular because it’s simple to use and integrate with existing management software and across various channels including MailChimp, Slack, Zapier, Salesforce, and more.
Businesses can collect helpful data easily and you can use, NPS Software or an NPS Calculator to record, calculate, collect, and analyze customer feedback with automated solutions.
Here is a list of our top Free NPS Software and NPS Calculator recommendations:
1. Thermostat
Customers can blow hot and cold about a customer experience and it’s important for you to find out why.
Thermostat is an NPS Software that helps you deliver your NPS survey in various ways, including email, pop-up, link, and with API integrations via Zapier.
There is no limit to the amount of time data is stored with Thermostat, and this software focuses on tailoring feedback according to the NPS system. You can filter responses, and access all reports from one screen.
Everything you need to do to create, collect, analyze, and respond can be carried out from your dashboard making Thermostat easy to use.
2. Survicate
Survicate is a free NPS Software that provides customizable templates and question types that best fit your brand.
Surveys can be sent across various channels, including email, website, or mobile and web apps. There is zero coding required and you can automate events to deliver surveys according to your business strategy.
Survicate offers a built-in customer feedback survey report which helps you view your NPS and responses to easily collaborate and analyze with your team and take actionable steps to improve the customer experience.
You can use your dashboard to track real-time responses and automate your campaigns based on collected data so you can build customer satisfaction at specific touch points in the customer journey.
3. SurverySparrow
SurverySparrow helps you schedule surveys, segment customer responses, and track your NPS weekly, monthly, or yearly.
It also allows you to automate follow-up emails that can be customized according to the customer’s responses and segregate data to identify promoters, passives, and detractors easily.
SurverySparrow effectively provides feedback and allows you to send surveys via email, web, and SMS.
Your surveys can be customized to your brand’s personality and style and automated according to your timelines and the responses, you receive, to increase customer retention and loyalty.
Typeform creates conversational style surveys, to increase completion rates and improve customer engagement.
Typeform also offers other templates like quizzes and forms to capture customer feedback. You can highlight your brand personality with video and photo libraries that create visually pleasing surveys using customizable themes and layouts.
You can record real-time responses with live result tracking and a feedback management system to collect data seamlessly.
Built-in analytics means you can share data across various channels for effective communication with your team. Typeform is an interactive software that helps you manage your NPS surveys one question at a time.
5. SurveySensum
SurveySensum has an easy-to-use user interface which really makes you feel you are in the driver’s seat, helping improve the customer experience.
SurveySensum is a great NPS Calculator that really addresses the crux of feedback and tries to go one step further to find out more.
A customer can change their mind about their experience at any touch point, and SurverySensum allows you to identify every instance that is leading to negative feedback.
With text analysis for open-ended questions you can quickly find problems your customers have faced and even the positive remarks too.
Detractors are the ones to look out for so instant automated alerts let’s you quickly get in touch to change the narrative for them with additional support to give them a better experience and retain them as a customer.
6. Delighted by Qualtrics
Delighted by Qualtrics is a unique NPS Calculator that offers 8 ready-to-use templates and 5 ways to deliver your surveys, either via email, web, kiosk, link, or iOS SDK.
Customer surveys can be customized to the look and feel of your brand to increase response rates and actionable feedback. Delighted also ensures no one is getting too many surveys with automated tracking.
With a number of ways to deliver your survey, and multi-language support too, you can get some great insights from customers to reduce churn and achieve growth.
You real time dashboard can help you segment responses and discover trends, keywords, and patterns to help you plan your next move.
What is a good NPS Calculator or NPS Software to use?
We found our recommendations highlighted above to be effective tools as they have created simple interfaces and included important features to streamline the entire customer feedback journey.
Here are some key features that every NPS Calculator or NPS Software should have:
- Real-time data tracking
- Customizable templates
- Centralized data collection
- Follow-up recommendations
- Automated workflows
- Data segmentation
What is a good NPS?
Now that you have a better idea of what tools you can use to calculate your NPS, you are probably wondering what a good NPS is.
Scoring anything above 0 is a good NPS because it means you have some loyal customers. However, working towards an NPS between 50-80 is definitely a great achievement for any business.
What can businesses gain from calculating their NPS?
The idea of calculating your NPS is to give you a better understanding of where your strength and weaknesses lie in the customer journey. Identifying the different touch points and predicting your customer’s behavior using customer feedback, before an action is taken, can ensure a customer does not become a Detractor.
Calculating your NPS frequently will help your business track progress, and continue to streamline processes to increase positive feedback and the number of Promotors. How you act on the data you collect makes the difference and knowing your NPS gives you a great head start.
How can businesses improve their NPS?
There are a few ways you can improve your NPS including:
- Focusing on the customer experience
- Providing enough customer support
- Encouraging customer feedback
- Increasing customer interactions
- Automate workflows and processes
- Monitor progress and track your NPS
In a nutshell…
Your NPS is a powerful insight into how your brand is doing, who your loyal customers are, what your chances of acquiring new customers is, and how to retain your existing ones.
Although customers are more likely to share a bad experience, your NPS allows you to listen to your customers using one simple NPS survey. You can gather enough data to work on your business strategies to drive organic growth, and avoid a high churn rate.
A brand can only continue to grow with happy customers and happy customers are highly likely to be loyal ones too.
Word of mouth is still a very effective tool for getting more customers and that can be achieved with a high NPS. If you can calculate your NPS and set the benchmarks you would like to reach, then you can effectively improve the customer journey at specific steps, to achieve your NPS goals.
You might also like:
- The Essential Guide to Customer Feedback – Customer feedback is the insights and information put up by the customers about their experiences with your company. But is that all? Let us find out.
- To see how SmartKarrot helps B2B companies streamline and scale customer success, Request a Demo.
Surojit has over 15 years of experience in quality and implementations. He is a promoter of an extremely light and efficient Agile process to fit business needs. In his prior role as product owner, he built a robust product in a very short span of time.
Published September 22, 2022, Updated September 17, 2024
