What NPS Tells You About Your Customer Experience [+ What You Can Do About It]

Understanding what your customers really feel about your brand isn’t easy. Most teams want better insights, but getting there often means using long, clunky surveys that few people complete and even fewer take action on.

That’s why so many companies turn to Net Promoter Score (NPS). It’s simple, quick to roll out, and gives you a clear pulse on customer loyalty — all through one straightforward question.

But while NPS is easy to measure, it’s not always easy to interpret. What does your score actually say about your customer experience? And how do you use that insight to drive real improvements?

This guide breaks it down.

Table of Contents

• What Is NPS (Net Promoter Score)?
• How to Calculate NPS
• What’s Considered a Good NPS Score?
• What Your NPS Says About Your Customer Experience
  • What Different NPS Ranges Typically Indicate:
• How to Use NPS to Actually Improve Customer Experience
  • 1. Follow Up with Detractors — While It’s Still Fresh
  • 2. Map NPS Feedback to Specific Customer Touchpoints
  • 3. Analyze Themes in Written Responses — Not Just the Score
  • 4. Close the Loop with Both Customers and Teams
  • 5. Use NPS to Sharpen Agent Performance
  • Why NPS Isn’t Enough — And What to Use With It
• NPS vs CSAT vs CES: What’s the Difference and When to Use Each?
• Closing Thoughts: Building a Smarter Customer Experience Strategy
• FAQs on NPS in Customer Experience
  • 1. How often should companies run NPS surveys?
  • 2. Can NPS be used to predict customer churn?
  • 3. What’s the difference between NPS and CSAT?
  • 4. What is the difference between NPS and CES?
  • 5. What are the 3 categories of NPS responses?
  • 6. What is a good NPS score?
  • 7. How can I improve my NPS score?

What Is NPS (Net Promoter Score)?

Net Promoter Score, or NPS, is one of the simplest ways to measure customer loyalty — and, by extension, the health of your customer experience.

It’s built around a single question: “How likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?”

Respondents answer on a scale from 0 to 10 and are grouped as:

• Promoters (9–10): Loyal advocates who are likely to do repeat business and spread the word about your company
  
• Passives (7–8): Satisfied but not enthusiastic enough to talk about you — they’re at risk of switching
  
• Detractors (0–6): Unhappy customers who could churn or leave negative reviews

The beauty of NPS lies in its simplicity. It was first introduced in the early 2000s by Fred Reichheld of Bain & Company, who found that a customer’s willingness to recommend a brand was a strong predictor of future growth. Since then, NPS has become a go-to metric for CX and support teams, especially those looking for a quick, repeatable way to track customer sentiment without over-engineering the process.

How to Calculate NPS

Once you’ve collected responses to the “How likely are you to recommend us?” question, you group them into:

• Promoters (9–10)
• Passives (7–8)
• Detractors (0–6)

Then, plug those numbers into a simple formula:

NPS = % of Promoters − % of Detractors

Let’s say you run an NPS survey and receive 5 responses:

Respondent	Rating	Category
1	9	Promoter
2	10	Promoter
3	8	Passive
4	6	Detractor
5	9	Promoter

Promoters: 3 out of 5 → 60%
Detractors: 1 out of 5 → 20%

So, NPS = 60% − 20% = +40

An NPS of +40 is a healthy signal that most of your customers are having a good experience and are likely to recommend you.

What’s Considered a Good NPS Score?

Let’s get one thing out of the way. There’s no universal “good” NPS.

Sure, a score above 0 is generally a sign that you have more happy customers than unhappy ones. But context matters. What’s considered excellent in one industry might be just average in another.

Here’s a rough breakdown:

• 0 to 30 → You’re on the right track. Customers are mostly satisfied, but there’s room to grow.
• 31 to 50 → A solid score that indicates strong customer relationships.
• 51 to 70 → Excellent. This means you’ve likely earned customer trust and repeat business.
• 71 to 100 → Exceptional. You’re delighting customers consistently — and it shows.

But again, benchmarks vary wildly across industries. For example, streaming services and consumer tech brands often score in the 60s or 70s, thanks to their strong brand affinity and frequent user engagement. On the other hand, telecom and logistics providers may hover in the 40s — and in those sectors, that’s still considered competitive. B2B software companies typically fall somewhere between 30 and 50, depending on the complexity of the product and the quality of customer support.

What Your NPS Says About Your Customer Experience

Your NPS is a window into how your customers experience your brand — and whether that experience is earning their loyalty or slowly pushing them away.

But interpreting NPS requires more than just knowing whether your score is “good” or “bad.” The real value lies in understanding what that number says about the quality, consistency, and perception of your customer experience across the journey.

What Different NPS Ranges Typically Indicate:

NPS Range	What It Suggests About Your CX
-100 to 0	Major CX breakdowns. Customers are actively unhappy — and likely leaving.
1 to 30	CX is inconsistent. Some experiences are working, others are creating friction.
31 to 50	A solid foundation. Customers are generally satisfied, but there are gaps.
51 to 70	Strong CX. You’re likely delighting customers consistently.
71 to 100	World-class experience. Your customers are your brand advocates.

But a score on its own can only tell you so much. To get real value from NPS, you need to go beyond the number and interpret it in context — relative to your industry, your customer expectations, and the feedback you’re actually receiving.

How to Use NPS to Actually Improve Customer Experience

Collecting NPS scores is easy. Turning them into meaningful change? That’s the hard (and valuable) part.

The real power of NPS lies not in the score itself, but in what you do with it. If you want to improve customer experience using NPS, you need to go beyond the numbers and focus on what customers are telling you — and when.

Here’s a step-by-step approach that leading CX teams (including ours at Hiver) use to make NPS feedback actionable.

1. Follow Up with Detractors — While It’s Still Fresh

A low score isn’t just a red flag. It’s an opening. Customers who take the time to give you a 3 or 4 are still engaged enough to care — and that’s your moment to step in.

Reach out while the interaction is still fresh in their mind. And when you do, skip the templated “Sorry for the inconvenience.” It doesn’t land. Instead, personalize the message. Use their name. Reference the specific interaction or order. Make it obvious that you’re not just going through the motions.

More importantly, don’t just apologize — explain. If you know what went wrong, tell them. If you’re still figuring it out, say that too, and commit to following up. In some cases, offering a small gesture of goodwill (a freebie, a credit, or priority support) can go a long way, but it should feel thoughtful and not transactional.

2. Map NPS Feedback to Specific Customer Touchpoints

To improve customer experience meaningfully, you need to know when and where the score was given — and what touchpoint actually shaped the customer’s perception.

Instead of running one blanket survey at random intervals, tie your NPS surveys to key moments in the customer journey. For example:

• Send one right after onboarding to gauge early impressions
• Trigger another after a support interaction to assess issue resolution
• Send one post-purchase or delivery to capture end-to-end satisfaction

This layered approach helps you isolate friction. If customer onboarding NPS is high but post-support scores are consistently low, you know the issue is support quality. Or maybe your product experience is strong, but scores dip after shipping — pointing to gaps in operations.

Think of it as building an NPS heatmap across your customer journey. It tells you not just what customers feel, but when and why.

3. Analyze Themes in Written Responses — Not Just the Score

The NPS score is just the headline. The real story (and emotion) is in what customers write in the comments, the open-text boxes, the “anything else you’d like to add?” fields. 

Too often, teams stop at the number. But to understand the why, you need to analyze the qualitative feedback alongside the score. It’s the only way to uncover what’s really driving sentiment, especially if your NPS is way below industry benchmarks and isn’t improving.

Start by reading every comment. Yes, even the ones from Promoters. A customer who gave you a 9 may still have reservations — and if they took the time to explain why it wasn’t a 10, that’s a gift. On the flip side, a Detractor who left no comment can be harder to act on — which is why prompting the right follow-up questions matters just as much.

Here are the kinds of insights to extract:

• What exact issues are customers pointing out? (“I had to wait 15 minutes for help” is more useful than “not great service.”)
• Are multiple customers mentioning the same thing? This is how patterns emerge.
• What do your happiest customers mention consistently? These are your brand strengths. Don’t lose sight of them.
• What could’ve changed the score? That “one small thing” might be low effort but high impact.

To make sense of all this at scale, consider using tools built for text analysis and sentiment clustering. Platforms like Thematic, MonkeyLearn, and Text iQ (by Qualtrics) use natural language processing (NLP) to detect recurring themes, categorize feedback, and surface high-friction moments across customer journeys. Even basic tools like Google Sheets + ChatGPT can help identify patterns in smaller datasets.

The goal isn’t to just “review” feedback. It’s to turn noise into direction — and direction into action. When your team knows exactly what’s dragging down a 9 or causing a 2, they’re far better equipped to fix it — fast and intentionally.

4. Close the Loop with Both Customers and Teams

Closing the loop means circling back with customers to show them their feedback led to action. It also means looping in internal teams so they’re not just aware of customer issues, but actively solving for them. When you do both, you build a culture of listening and accountability.

👥 For Customers: Respond with Intention, Not Automation

If someone took time to share feedback, they deserve more than a generic email.

• Respond to Detractors within 24–72 hours while the experience is still fresh
• For Passives, follow up in 4–5 days to ask what could’ve improved their score. It shows curiosity, not defensiveness
• Thank Promoters and invite them to leave a review, refer a friend, or share feedback publicly
• When replying, always reference the original comment. It signals to the customer that you actually read and understood it

Even a short, personalized note can turn a static score into a dynamic interaction.

🛠 For Teams: Make Feedback Visible and Actionable

NPS data doesn’t belong in a spreadsheet silo. It should move into meetings and product discussions. Here’s how to make sure that happens:

• Set up a shared NPS dashboard where real-time feedback is visible to all stakeholders
• Create feedback channels in Slack/Teams to surface new insights quickly
• Run a quarterly monthly NPS review with CX, product, and support leads to spot patterns and align on fixes
• Assign clear ownership: Who replies to customers? Who logs themes? Who acts on common issues?

And don’t stop at just highlighting what’s broken. Celebrate what’s working too. If your onboarding NPS is strong, share those comments with the onboarding team. Let them know they’re doing something right.

5. Use NPS to Sharpen Agent Performance

Not every NPS insight needs to trigger a process overhaul. Sometimes, the fix is more immediate and human.

If you’re noticing recurring low scores tied to support interactions, don’t rush to redesign your workflows. Start by looking at how your team is handling conversations. Often, it’s not a system failure — it’s a skill gap.

Maybe customers are getting technically correct answers that feel cold or transactional. Maybe an agent is great at solving issues, but slow to respond. Or maybe your support playbook is solid but not everyone’s following it consistently.

Here’s how to use NPS for targeted training:

• Collect feedback tagged to individual interactions or reps (without turning it into blame)
• Spot recurring tone issues, knowledge gaps, or delays
• Run short training sessions tied to real feedback and not abstract scenarios
• Create “what good looks like” scripts based on Promoter comments
• Use low-score themes to update FAQs, internal docs, or onboarding materials

Don’t mistake any of this for micromanagement. It’s about helping agents see the impact of their conversations — in the words of the customer.

Why NPS Isn’t Enough — And What to Use With It

NPS is a powerful metric. But, it only tells part of the story.

It gives you a sense of overall loyalty, but it doesn’t capture how individual interactions feel in the moment. A customer might love your product and still give a low score after a frustrating support call. Or they might score you high after purchase, only to become a Detractor weeks later after a glitchy onboarding.

That’s why it’s important to pair NPS with CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) and CES (Customer Effort Score):

• CSAT measures how satisfied customers are after a specific interaction, like a ticket being resolved or a delivery being completed. It gives you real-time feedback on the parts of the journey that NPS might miss.
  
• CES tracks how easy it was for a customer to get help or complete a task. In many cases, it’s a better predictor of long-term loyalty than satisfaction alone. If something feels like hard work, customers won’t come back, even if the end result is technically fine.

Each metric adds a layer to your understanding. Use NPS to track sentiment over time, CSAT to fine-tune daily interactions, and CES to reduce friction where it matters most.

NPS vs CSAT vs CES: What’s the Difference and When to Use Each?

Not sure which metric to prioritize? Here’s a quick side-by-side to help you choose based on what you want to measure — and when.

Factor	NPS (Net Promoter Score)	CSAT (Customer Satisfaction)	CES (Customer Effort Score)
What it measures	Overall customer loyalty and likelihood to recommend	Satisfaction after a specific interaction	How easy it was to complete a task or resolve an issue
Survey question	“How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?”	“How satisfied were you with your recent experience?”	“How easy was it to get the help you needed?”
Calculation method	% Promoters – % Detractors	Average of all satisfaction scores	Average score of all responses
Response scale	0 to 10	1 to 5 or 1 to 7 (Very dissatisfied to very satisfied)	1 to 5 or 1 to 7 (Very difficult to very easy)
Best used for	Tracking long-term loyalty and overall brand sentiment	Measuring day-to-day service or product satisfaction	Identifying friction points in the customer journey

Closing Thoughts: Building a Smarter Customer Experience Strategy

Customer experience isn’t something you can fully measure with a single number — and that’s a good thing. The more you’re willing to dig, the clearer the patterns become.

NPS gives you a directional view: are customers likely to stay loyal, or are they slipping away? But to understand what’s driving those feelings — and how to respond — you need to combine it with other signals like CSAT and CES. 

The most effective CX teams don’t chase perfect scores. They look for signal in the noise — tracking shifts over time, breaking down feedback by journey stage, and involving cross-functional teams in the response. 

In the end, it’s not about metrics for metrics’ sake. It’s about staying close to your customers — understanding their highs and lows, the friction and delight — and using that insight to build experiences that last.

FAQs on NPS in Customer Experience

1. How often should companies run NPS surveys?

Most companies benefit from conducting NPS surveys once every quarter to track customer sentiment trends. For B2B businesses with fewer accounts, bi-annual surveys may be enough. The key is consistency. A regular cadence ensures you’re spotting changes before they become problems.

2. Can NPS be used to predict customer churn?

Yes. NPS can be a strong early indicator of churn risk. Customers who give low scores (0–6, known as Detractors) are far more likely to leave, especially if their feedback points to unresolved service issues or product friction. Tracking these scores allows support and CX teams to identify at-risk customers and intervene before it’s too late.

Sources like CustomerGauge and Survicate confirm that Detractors are significantly more likely to churn and negatively impact long-term revenue.

3. What’s the difference between NPS and CSAT?

NPS measures long-term loyalty and likelihood to recommend on a 0–10 scale. CSAT measures immediate satisfaction after a specific interaction, typically on a 1–5 scale. NPS is strategic and tracks overall sentiment, while CSAT is tactical and focused on daily touchpoints.

4. What is the difference between NPS and CES?

NPS reflects brand loyalty while CES (Customer Effort Score) measures how easy it was for a customer to complete a task, like resolving an issue or contacting support.

5. What are the 3 categories of NPS responses?

NPS respondents fall into three categories:

• Promoters (9–10): Loyal advocates who drive referrals
• Passives (7–8): Neutral but vulnerable to competitors
• Detractors (0–6): Unhappy customers likely to churn or leave negative reviews
  

6. What is a good NPS score?

A positive score (>0) means more Promoters than Detractors. A score above +50 is considered excellent, and anything above 70 is world-class. Benchmarks vary by industry, so always compare within your vertical.

7. How can I improve my NPS score?

To improve NPS:

• Follow up quickly with Detractors
• Personalize responses based on feedback
• Map scores to journey touchpoints (onboarding, support, etc.)
• Analyze recurring themes in comments
• Train agents based on low-score insights