NPS survey questions: the core question, how to score it and 12 follow-ups

The NPS question asks how likely someone is to recommend you, on a scale from 0 to 10. The Net Promoter System’s own site words it as “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” and scores the answers “on a zero-to-ten scale” (Measuring your Net Promoter Score (opens in a new tab)).

Bain’s history of Net Promoter (opens in a new tab) gives the same question with your name in it: “How likely are you to recommend Company X to a friend or colleague?” The idea comes from Fred Reichheld, whose article The One Number You Need to Grow (opens in a new tab) ran in Harvard Business Review in December 2003.

To keep your score comparable over time, keep three things fixed:

• The wording. Swap “us” for your company or product name if you like, but don’t add adjectives or a sales pitch.
• The scale. Eleven points, 0 to 10. Not 1 to 10, not 1 to 5, not stars.
• The labels. Label only the two ends, for example “Not at all likely” at 0 and “Extremely likely” at 10.

Sort every answer into one of three groups, then subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. The result is a number between −100 and +100, usually rounded to a whole number and written without a percent sign.

• Promoters answered 9 or 10.
• Passives answered 7 or 8.
• Detractors answered 0 to 6.

Passives count toward the total but not toward either percentage, so they pull the score toward zero.

Ask one open question straight after the score. Bain describes its follow-up as simply asking customers, in their own words, why they gave the score. The 12 below are common practice rather than Bain’s wording: pick one question per group, not all of them.

Most mistakes change the number without changing anything about your customers. These are the ones to check before you send.

• Changing the scale. A 1–10 or 1–5 scale, or star ratings, gives you a different number that can’t be compared with NPS.
• Averaging the scores. NPS is not the average. Ten people who split evenly between 7 and 8 average 7.5 and score 0. Ten people, six answering 10 and four answering 4, average 7.6 and score 20.
• Leading the answer. “How likely are you to recommend our award-winning service?” asks for a high score. So does asking right after a free gift.
• Burying the question. Ask it first, or near the start, so earlier questions don’t colour the answer.
• Mixing two kinds of survey. A score taken after a support call and a score from a twice-yearly survey of all customers measure different things. Track them separately.
• Chasing benchmarks. The “good NPS by industry” figures we found all come from vendors’ own surveys, with methods that differ. Your most useful comparison is your own earlier score, asked the same way.
• Ignoring the reasons. The number tells you whether things moved. The follow-up answers tell you why, and detractors who left a way to reach them are worth a reply.

NPS is popular because it’s one simple number, but research doesn’t show it predicts growth better than a plain satisfaction question. It doesn’t clearly do worse, either.

MeasuringU, an independent UX research firm, has summarised the academic evidence (Has the Net Promoter Score Been Discredited in the Academic Literature? (opens in a new tab)). In its reading:

The method also throws away detail by design. A 0 and a 6 count the same, and so do a 7 and an 8, so a customer can move a long way without changing your score.

Use a Scale question set to 0–10, then add jump rules so detractors, passives and promoters each get their own follow-up. Ribbit routes each score group to the right question; download the CSV and the formula above gives you the score in one cell.

1. 1Start from the NPS survey templateOpen the NPS survey template and choose Use this template. It already has the 0–10 question, three follow-ups and the jump rules below. To build it yourself, add a Scale question instead, or start from the NPS prompt in our AI form prompts guide and add the rules by hand.
2. 2Set the scale to 0–10A new Scale question runs from 1 to 5, so set the minimum to 0 and the maximum to 10, and label the two ends.
3. 3Add three follow-upsAdd one Long text question per group. Put the passives’ question straight after the score, because anyone who matches no rule goes to the next question.
4. 4Add the jump rulesIn the score question’s Logic section, choose Add a rule: if the answer is at most 6, go to the detractors’ question. Add a second: if the answer is at least 9, go to the promoters’ question. Rules are checked in order and the first match wins; 7 and 8 fall through to Otherwise, which is the next question.
5. 5Send everyone to the same finishJumps only go forward, so put any shared question, like an optional email, last, and point each follow-up’s Otherwise at it. Or send each group to its own ending: you can have up to 10, free. The Flow board shows every path, and our conditional logic guide covers how to plan and test rules.
6. 6Preview and publishCheck it at phone and desktop size, then publish and share the link. People see one question per screen and don’t need an account.
7. 7Download and scoreOn the form’s Submissions tab, choose Download CSV, open the file in a spreadsheet and use the formula above.

Running NPS in another tool today? Ribbit vs Typeform and Ribbit vs Tally compare plans, logic and prices.