What is Net Promoter Score (NPS), and how do you calculate it?
Definition
Net Promoter Score measures customer loyalty from one question — "how likely are you to recommend us?" — answered on a 0-10 scale. Respondents scoring 9-10 are promoters, 7-8 are passives, and 0-6 are detractors; the score is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors, ranging from -100 to +100.
Formula: NPS = % of responses scoring 9-10 - % of responses scoring 0-6
What data do you need?
- Response-grain data with the raw 0-10 score
- Response timestamps for trending
- Account or user joins for segmentation
- Survey and channel fields (in-app vs. email waves differ)
- Enough volume per segment — small samples swing wildly
SQL pattern
NPS by month with response volumePostgreSQL
SELECT
date_trunc('month', submitted_at) AS month,
COUNT(*) AS responses,
ROUND(
100.0 * (
COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE score >= 9)
- COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE score <= 6)
) / NULLIF(COUNT(*), 0), 1
) AS nps
FROM nps_responses
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 1;Common pitfalls
Reporting the score without response volume.→ Chart responses next to NPS, and hold judgment below a sample floor (30 per segment is a common rule).
Averaging the 0-10 scores.→ NPS is a difference of percentages, not a mean. A 7 counts for nothing; an 8 and a 9 are categorically different.
Mixing in-app and email responses in one trend.→ In-app NPS skews toward active users and scores higher. Segment by channel, or trend them separately.
Where does this metric apply?
This metric commonly uses data from Pendo, Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Tally, plus any warehouse models that provide the same grain.
Related
Dashboards
Integrations
Metrics
Analytics
FAQ
What is a good NPS?
It varies so much by industry and channel that external benchmarks mislead. The durable use is internal: trend your own score, segment it, and read the verbatims behind detractor spikes.
Should passives (7-8) really count for nothing?
In the score, yes — that's the standard definition and changing it breaks comparability. But track the passive share separately: a growing passive pool is where both future promoters and future detractors come from.