Have you ever wondered about the origin of the term “Net Promoter Score” (NPS)?
I did, so I decided to do some research.
In December 2003 a consultant named Fred Reichheld published “The One Number You Need to Grow” in the Harvard Business Review.
He claimed that a single survey question could predict a company’s growth better than long satisfaction surveys: “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?”
The name of the concept is pretty literal:
- Customers who answer 9-10 on a 0-10 scale are “promoters.”
- Those who answer 0-6 are “detractors.”
- Passives count toward the total responses, but neither as promoters nor detractors.
- Your Net Promoter Score is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors, hence “net.”
Reichheld had tested a range of survey questions against actual customer behavior, and “would you recommend us” correlated best with repeat purchases and referrals in most industries.
He went on to popularize the metric in his 2006 book The Ultimate Question, and it became the KPI we all know today.
Academics still debate how well it predicts growth. But a single question and a single number was simple enough to stick for over 20 years, which says a lot about how much people value simplicity in a metric.