What is NPS and what industry benchmarks should be important to you?

Every company wants to have satisfied, loyal customers who are likely to recommend your business to others – friends or family members. The reason is apparent – with happy customers, you get a reliable company that can grow with confidence. And that’s what NPS (net promoter score) is all about – customer loyalty and satisfaction. Let’s have a closer look at this measurement and examine some of the industry benchmarks that you should follow.

In its basic form, NPS is all about just one critical question: How likely are you to recommend our company to your friends or colleagues? To make answering this question (and measuring results) more effective, there is also a scale from 0 to 10. 

Depending on the answer a given person has provided, they are assigned to three groups:

• Detractors (answers from 0 to 6) – these people surely won’t promote your company. Moreover, they can even discourage others because they are not satisfied with the service provided.
• Passives (answers 7 and 8) – as the group’s name suggests, these people won’t do anything, either positive or negative, concerning your brand.
• Promoters (answers 9 and 10) – this group is satisfied with the cooperation, and people in it are likely to promote your brand to others.

Of course, every organization’s interest is to get as many promoters as possible because these are the people who can be the brand’s evangelists. They are likely to talk about your brand and recommend it to other people. It is highly unlikely, though, that you will get 100% of answers 9 and 10. There are always some passives and detractors. That’s why it’s crucial to calculate the NPS value. Let’s talk a bit more about that.

How to calculate NPS and what it means

In general, net promoter score is always a specific number ranging from -100 (only detractors) to +100 (only promoters). To calculate it, you have to subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. Let’s use a quick example:

The number of answers received: 100

Detractors: 60%

Passives: 10%

Promoters: 30%

NPS = 30% – 60% = -30

That’s our result. The valid question now is what does it mean? There are a few elements to consider. The rule of thumb says that any score above 0 is good (more promoters than detractors), and every score below 0 is bad (more detractors than promoters). But it doesn’t actually say much, does it? You know that your customers are unlikely to recommend you to others, but why?

That’s the reason why the vast majority of companies measuring their NPS results usually ask some follow-up questions, with the main one being “Why did you answer this way?” With more in-depth answers, you can discover what you’re doing wrong and what you can do to improve your product or customer service. 

That’s one side of the story. The second one is also important, and it’s all about industry benchmarks. In other words – how other companies are doing in this test. Your result of -30 can seem poor, but when you compare it with other outcomes and find out that your competitors got -50 or -70, it doesn’t look that bad anymore, right? Thankfully, such knowledge is available for free!

NPS industry benchmarks

Retently.com is a company that regularly measures NPS in several industries (both B2B and B2C). See how they classify NPS results:

It confirms what we told you earlier – you can be satisfied with any result above 0. And if your NPS is above 30 – you have a good reason to be happy; you have a solid brand that customers appreciate.

Now, let’s go back to industry benchmarks. In their Retently 2022 NPS Benchmark, they included only industries with at least 10 clients, and they used samples with at least 10,000 surveys.

NPS BENCHMARKS IN B2B 

Here, we have three clear leaders – consulting, technology & services, and digital marketing companies. On the other hand, cloud and hosting companies struggle with getting satisfied customers, which indicates there is some room for improvement. 

NPS BENCHMARKS IN B2C

Here, insurance is a leader with the highest result both in the B2B and B2C world. Online and brick-and-mortar stores are also ranked quite high. Communications, media, and internet services companies, though, should work on their NPS. 

Both these charts tell one story – people are usually satisfied with the service they get. In 14 examined sectors, 6 got the result above 50 and 4 above 30. None of the examined sectors landed below 0, which is a good thing. This doesn’t mean, though, that you should rest on your laurels. There is always something to do better. For example, you could set yourself a goal to minimize the number of passives. They are close to becoming promoters, so maybe there is some way to win them over?

NPS INDUSTRY BENCHMARKS FROM 2021

Retently also shows results from 2021, but it was a study conducted by a different company – Satmetrix. Let’s take a look at them:

As you can see, NPS is not something constant. Peoples’ opinions about companies can change even after one poor experience. That’s why it’s so important to measure net promoter score regularly. This way, you can stay on top of things and implement adjustments when necessary.

Measure NPS with iPresso

At iPresso, we help our clients improve and automate their marketing campaigns. One of the elements of our offer revolves around NPS measurement. We can help you with creating NPS surveys under your domain. Use a simple drag-and-drop editor to create a survey with additional questions. And once your survey is online, our system will gather and analyze answers for you.

Do you want to know more? See our NPS surveys offer and schedule a demo or start a free trial.