How to calculate NPS and what your score means

Your Net Promoter Score (NPS) is based on a simple calculation, but it says a huge amount about your company’s worth.

It’s all based on one question: “How likely are you to recommend X to a friend or family member?”

Your customers then answer this question on a scale from 0-10 – and their answers can be split into three main groups:

• Promoters (9-10) – fully-satisfied users who will be your leaders in loyalty, ratings, and referrals
• Passives (7-8) – users who are sufficiently satisfied with your product but lack the motivation to really affect your business
• Detractors (0-6) - unhappy users who need things to change or may have a harmful effect on your business

Turning your survey results into a Net Promoter Score

NPS = % of promoters - % of detractors

This is the simple calculation for working out your NPS. Your score can then range from -100 (all your respondents are detractors) to 100 (all of your respondents are promoters).

Let’s look at an example:

• 100 people take your NPS survey
• 60 users are promoters, 40 are passives, and 10 are detractors
• 60 - 10 = 50
• So your Net Promoter Score is 50

You’ll notice that your passives don’t factor into this calculation. This is because their impact on your product and brand is neither positive nor negative.

Understanding your NPS’s margin of error

Margin of error (MoE) is the percentage of error you can have in your Net Promoter Score. It’s calculated automatically as part of Copilot.cx’s NPS system, but we’ll cover the basics of how it works here too.

MoE is important because you can’t get every single customer to answer your NPS survey. So instead you need to rely on statistical significance to work out how accurate your score is.

In cases where you have both detractors and promoters, both percentages are being used to calculate your Net Promoter Score. And because the response rate is random, your score is more reliable. This gives you a lower MoE from fewer responses.

As a general rule, 5% is the standard deviation of NPS. It states that this number will not change much statistically and is therefore a reliable result. Everything over 20% MoE is considered unreliable.

What your NPS means and how to use it

NPS can vary substantially between industries, so it’s most useful for benchmarking your company against the competition. 

And because it’s so widely adopted, you can measure your brand against Fortune 500 companies and use your score in your marketing.

In fact, NPS is considered so important for company growth that some leaders get promoted or fired based on their end-of-year NPS.

Read more about what it means to segment your NPS and how to improve it.