NPS (Net Promoter Score)

NPS (Net Promoter Score) is a customer loyalty metric obtained with a single question: "On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company to a colleague or friend?" Its simplicity is what turned it into a customer experience standard at B2B and B2C companies.

Based on their answer, each customer falls into one of three groups: promoters (9 to 10), passives (7 to 8) and detractors (0 to 6). The final score comes from subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters, and it ranges from minus 100 to plus 100. Passives count toward the total number of responses but neither add nor subtract.

Beyond the number itself, NPS becomes more valuable when it is combined with the rest of the business data (cohorts, churn, the value of each account). Turning that survey into an actionable signal, segmented by product or region, is part of what an analytics layer like Metrix organizes: the score stops being an isolated data point and becomes a dashboard the team checks every week.

NPS was created in 2003 by consultant Fred Reichheld and the firm Bain & Company, with a provocative premise: that a single question could predict growth better than long satisfaction surveys. The idea is that willingness to recommend sums up, in a single gesture, whether the customer trusts you enough to put their own reputation on the line. That is why it became the common language among leadership, marketing and customer service.

How to calculate it, step by step

The calculation is deliberately simple, and it is worth getting it right because this is where most mistakes happen:

• Send the recommendation question with a 0 to 10 scale to a representative sample of customers.
• Group the responses: promoters (9-10), passives (7-8) and detractors (0-6).
• Calculate the percentage of each group out of the total responses.
• Subtract: NPS = % promoters minus % detractors. The result is a whole number, not a percentage, even though it comes from percentages.

For example, if an Argentine software company surveys 200 customers and gets 110 promoters (55%), 50 passives (25%) and 40 detractors (20%), its NPS is 55 minus 20, which equals 35. A positive score already indicates more fans than critics; passives remain a "lukewarm" group to convert.

What counts as a good NPS

There is no universal magic number. The benchmark depends heavily on the industry and the country: what is excellent in telecommunications can be mediocre in software. As a reference, SurveyMonkey (2025), with data from more than 150,000 organizations, puts the global average at +32 and suggests this general reading:

The key is not to compare yourself against an abstract ideal, but to track your own trend over time and against competitors in the same industry and region. An NPS that rises three points per quarter says more than an isolated absolute value.

NPS vs CSAT and CES: they do not measure the same thing

The most common mistake is treating NPS as a synonym for "satisfaction." In reality, it coexists with two other experience metrics that target different moments:

NPS is relational (it measures the overall relationship), while CSAT is transactional (it measures a specific episode). The robust approach is to use them together, not to pick just one.

Common mistakes when measuring NPS

In practice, a number of companies in Latin America sabotage their own NPS without realizing it:

• Surveying only happy customers, which inflates the score and hides the real problem.
• Looking at the number without reading the "why." The open follow-up question ("what would it take for you to give us a 10?") is where the actionable gold is.
• Not closing the loop: spotting a detractor and not reaching out to them. The value of NPS lies in turning critics into neutrals, not just in reporting.
• Comparing against different industries and demoralizing the team with a benchmark that does not apply.

Why it matters for the business

An improving NPS usually predicts lower churn, more referrals and a better LTV per customer, because promoters buy more, stay longer and bring in peers. That is why many companies connect it with their customer success function: the team uses the score to prioritize which accounts need attention before they leave. Seen this way, NPS is not a vanity snapshot but an early warning system for the health of the customer base.