9.4
Net Promoter Score
A single-question metric scoring likelihood to recommend on a 0–10 scale and reporting the share of promoters minus the share of detractors.
Fred Reichheld, HBR (2003)
What it does
One question producing a recommendation score, giving teams a shared language and a comparable time series.
When it breaks
The growth-prediction claim has been repeatedly refuted. Keiningham et al. examined 21 firms and 15,500+ customer interviews across five industries and found no support for NPS as the best predictor of growth — correlations were inconsistent and mostly non-significant, and in two of the three US industries Reichheld showcased, ACSI outperformed it. Useful as an internal trend; not an external truth.
Case
Bain's flagship deployment is British Gas Services, which raised Net Promoter from 45% to 75% over two years while complaints fell 75% and bad debts more than 90%. Vendor-reported — Bain sells the metric — and worth reading immediately before 9.5.
Bain — good profits and growth ↗Diagram — not yet drawn
The 0–10 scale with the promoter/passive/detractor cuts shown, and beside it the information discarded by collapsing eleven points into one number.
In the wild
Unvetted · not part of the tier assessment
What has been written about this tool in the last twelve months. Machine-retrieved and unchecked — everything above this line was checked.
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