Net Promoter Score (NPS)
A single-number metric that measures customer loyalty by asking one simple question: 'How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?' Customers rate you 0-10, and the score tells you whether your brand is growing or shrinking based on word-of-mouth.
Full Explanation
The core problem NPS solves is this: traditional satisfaction surveys are long, complex, and don't predict whether customers will actually recommend you or leave for a competitor. NPS strips away the noise and focuses on the one behavior that matters most—advocacy.
Here's how it works in plain terms. You ask customers one question on a 0-10 scale. Those who rate 9-10 are 'Promoters' (loyal evangelists). Those who rate 7-8 are 'Passives' (satisfied but not enthusiastic). Those who rate 0-6 are 'Detractors' (unhappy and likely to spread negative word-of-mouth). Your NPS score is calculated as: (% Promoters) minus (% Detractors). The result ranges from -100 to +100.
In marketing practice, NPS shows up everywhere. SaaS platforms use it to track customer health and predict churn. E-commerce brands use it to benchmark against competitors. Marketing automation tools embed NPS surveys into email campaigns or post-purchase flows. A B2B software company might discover their NPS is 45 (good), but when they segment by customer size, enterprise accounts score 65 while mid-market scores 20—instantly revealing where to focus retention efforts.
Why this matters for AI tools: many marketing platforms now use AI to analyze the qualitative feedback that follows the NPS question ('Why did you give that score?'). Natural language processing can automatically categorize thousands of responses into themes—product quality, pricing, support, onboarding—without manual coding. This turns a single number into actionable intelligence.
The practical implication: when evaluating AI-powered customer feedback tools, ask whether they can automatically analyze NPS comments at scale. A tool that gives you NPS plus AI-driven sentiment analysis and topic clustering is far more valuable than raw survey data.
Why It Matters
NPS is a leading indicator of revenue growth. Companies with NPS above 50 typically grow faster than competitors with NPS below 30. For CMOs, this means NPS directly impacts your ability to hit growth targets through organic word-of-mouth and customer retention—often at lower cost than paid acquisition.
From a budget perspective, NPS helps justify marketing spend. If your NPS is declining, no amount of new customer acquisition will fix your growth problem; you're leaking revenue from the bottom. This shifts budget conversations from 'How many leads did we generate?' to 'Are we keeping customers happy enough to refer us?' AI-powered NPS analysis also reduces the cost of customer research—instead of hiring agencies to analyze feedback, automation handles it.
Competitively, NPS benchmarking against industry peers reveals whether your brand is winning or losing. A CMO armed with NPS data can identify which customer segments are most loyal, which product features drive advocacy, and where competitors are beating you—enabling smarter positioning and messaging.
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Related Terms
Sentiment Analysis
AI technology that reads text and automatically determines whether the tone is positive, negative, or neutral. It's like having a team of people reading every customer comment, review, and social post to tell you how people actually feel about your brand—but instantly and at scale.
Customer Success
A business function focused on ensuring customers achieve their desired outcomes while using your product or service. Unlike customer support (which fixes problems), customer success proactively helps customers get value and reach their goals. For marketing leaders, it's the bridge between acquisition and retention that directly impacts revenue and brand advocacy.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
A metric that measures how easy or difficult it is for customers to interact with your brand—whether that's getting support, making a purchase, or resolving a problem. It's typically measured on a simple scale (like 1-5 or 1-10) and directly correlates with customer loyalty and lifetime value.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
A metric that measures how satisfied customers are with your product, service, or specific interaction, typically on a numerical scale. CMOs use CSAT to track whether marketing promises match actual customer experience and to identify where AI-driven improvements can have the biggest impact.
Related Tools
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Related Reading
Get the Full AI Marketing Learning Path
Courses, workshops, frameworks, daily intelligence, and 6 proprietary tools — built for marketing leaders adopting AI.
Trusted by 10,000+ Directors and CMOs.