Which of your customers are detractors or promoters and why?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) categorises your customers into three groups based on a single question: how likely are you to recommend this company to a friend or colleague?

Promoters (score 9–10) are loyal customers who return and actively refer others. Passives (score 7–8) are satisfied but vulnerable—competitors can reach them and win them over. Detractors (score 0–6) are unhappy customers who damage your brand reputation through negative word-of-mouth, often before you even know they are unhappy.

The most underappreciated point in NPS analysis is not what detractors say online—it is what creates them. A lazy, disgruntled employee who is customer-facing actively converts potential promoters into detractors. The financial damage of that dynamic is more substantial than most organisations realise, because every detractor represents not just a lost customer but the lost customers they influence.

Companies with higher NPS scores than their competitors attract more promoters and create fewer detractors, leading to natural market share growth over time. That is the compounding power of the framework.

But NPS is only as useful as the action you take on it. Measuring and addressing the specific factors that create promoters versus detractors—at the individual employee and touchpoint level—should be a core business priority. The score itself is not the outcome; the improvements you make because of it are.