FreshNetworks Blog

A metric we use a lot with clients at FreshNetworks is the Net Promoter Score (NPS). It’s a way of measuring the positive advocacy that exists for your brand; the word of mouth that is generated by your customers.

Generating the score is fairly simple. It asks customers not what they think about you themselves but how likely they would be to recommend it to a friend or colleague – ie how likely are they to be an advocate for your product. It’s easy to think about how this works. Think of the last place you went on holiday (for me it was Dublin) and then think, if this weekend you were out with friends and one mentioned they were thinking of booking a holiday, how likely would you be to speak out and recommend where you have just been? We’d ask you to rate how likely you would be on an 11-point scale (from 0-11) where (in my case at least) 0 means “I wouldn’t even mention I went away to Dublin” and 10 means “I would absolutely tell my friend to go on holiday to Dublin, recommend flights, hotels and what to do; I’d make them go”.

We then take the ratings that are given and divide them into Promoters (score 9 or 10, very strong advocates), Fence Sitters (those giving a score of 7 or 8 – where we’d expect most respondents to be), and Detractors (those giving a score of 6 or less, actively giving a poor score to your brand).

The Net Promoter Score is the difference between the percentage of people interviewed who are promoters and the percentage who are detractors. Or to put it more simply see the diagram below:

The NPS is known by some as the one number everybody in your business needs to know. And it is a powerful number – a way of encapsulating neatly and simply how likely people are to be advocates of your brand. Most companies would expect a score of between 5% and 10%, and those companies with fast-growing brands (such as Amazon or Dell) a score of between 50% and 80%. What’s more important than the absolute score, though, is the trajectory of travel – you want the number to be increasing over time.

We think that successful and sustained online engagement of customers online is the best way of increasing your Net Promoter Score – a way of building greater brand advocacy and more brand advocates.