‘Would not recommend’: Why Net Promoter Score is dangerous

Would you recommend our company to a friend or colleague?

This innocent-sounding question has spawned a multi-billion dollar measurement industry. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) has become the default measure of customer satisfaction and loyalty for most major corporations. Two-thirds of Fortune 1000 companies use it.

There's just one small problem - it doesn't work.

The Birth of a Management Fad

NPS was created by Fred Reichheld, a Bain & Company consultant, in 2003. The promise was seductive - measure customer loyalty with a single question. Simply ask customers to rate how likely they are to recommend your company on a scale of 0-10.

The scoring system works like this:

• Scores of 9-10 are "Promoters"
• Scores of 7-8 are "Passives"
• Scores of 0-6 are "Detractors"

Take the percentage of Promoters and subtract the percentage of Detractors. That's your NPS score.

Simple.

The claim was that this one number could predict company growth better than any other metric.

It was revolutionary.

It was also wrong.

Why NPS Fails

Let's look at the three big problems with NPS:

1. The Original Research Cannot Be Reproduced

The foundational research that launched NPS couldn't be replicated when other researchers tried. A 2007 study found zero evidence that NPS predicted growth better than basic customer satisfaction scores. Even Reichheld himself later acknowledged issues with the statistical backing.

Reichheld (2006b) acknowledges "imperfections" in the analytics that were used to support Net Promoter: All we did was quantify this common sense in a way that made sense to business leaders-the target audience for my book. These practical leaders have little interest in advanced statistical methods. Frankly, we see little value in continued debate about cause versus correlation, time-frames, or statistical methods.

Source: A Longitudinal Examination of Net Promoter and Firm Revenue Growth

2. The Scoring System Makes No Sense

The NPS scoring bands are completely arbitrary. Why is someone who scores 6 a "Detractor" while someone who scores 7 is suddenly neutral? There's no logic to it.

Even worse, the system completely ignores real improvements. If you move masses of customers from scoring 1 to scoring 6, your NPS doesn't change at all. That's madness.

3. You Can't Compare Scores

Companies love to benchmark their NPS against competitors. The problem is, you can't make meaningful comparisons.

When you ask someone if they'd recommend a company, their answer depends on countless variables:

• Would their friends be interested?
• Do they discuss this type of product with friends?
• What alternatives are available?
• What's the cost?

A perfect example comes from the UK's National Health Service. They found only 40% of NPS variation came from patient satisfaction. The rest came from what procedure the patient had. Hip replacements scored 71, while knee replacements scored 49.

If you can't even compare procedures within one hospital, how can you compare different companies?

The Dark Side of NPS

The problems with NPS go beyond bad science. It actively drives harmful business behaviours.

Gaming the System

Any metric that becomes a target will be gamed. With NPS, common manipulation techniques include:

• Only surveying after positive interactions
• Offering incentives for good scores
• Pressuring customers to give high ratings
• Cherry-picking which customers to survey

One survey by Madhur Chadha found 30% of companies with NPS targets let the same people control both when surveys are sent and how to handle unhappy customers.

It's a recipe for manipulation.

False Sense of Security

High NPS scores can mask serious problems. Companies have gone bankrupt despite great NPS numbers. It creates dangerous blind spots.

Wasted Resources

Companies spend enormous effort trying to move NPS numbers that don't actually mean anything. It's like a cargo cult - going through elaborate rituals that have no real impact.

What Should You Measure Instead

If you want to know if customers like your product or service, measure things that matter:

Actual referrals and word of mouth

• Customer retention rates
• Repeat purchase rate
• Customer lifetime value
• Cost of customer acquisition

These metrics tell you what customers actually do, not what they say they might do.

The Most Dangerous Number in Business

The real tragedy of NPS isn't just that it doesn't work. It's that it gives companies a false sense of security while distracting them from metrics that matter.

NPS is popular because it's simple. But running a business isn't simple. Customer loyalty is complex and multidimensional. Trying to reduce it to a single number is dangerous magical thinking.

As a consultant, I am deeply suspicious when a company touts their NPS score but can't show solid business metrics to back it up.

As an investor, I would ignore NPS completely unless supported by real performance data. It's too easy to manipulate and too disconnected from business reality.

The next time someone proudly tells you their NPS score, ask them what their customer retention rate is. Their answer will tell you everything you need to know about whether they're measuring what matters.

The Bottom Line

NPS isn't just useless - it's actively harmful. It creates false confidence, wastes resources, and distracts from meaningful metrics. Twenty years of real-world data has thoroughly debunked its core claims.

It's time to put this zombie metric to rest and focus on measuring things that actually matter to business success.

After all, as Richard Hemming (American mathematician, Manhattan Project, Bell Labs and Turing prize winner) said...

"You get what you measure"

Make sure you're measuring something real.