NPS stands for Net Promoter Score. It is a one-question survey asking customers how likely they are to recommend your company to a friend or colleague on a scale of zero to ten. Respondents scoring nine or ten are promoters, seven or eight are passives, and zero through six are detractors. NPS is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors. The number ranges from minus one hundred to plus one hundred.
It is a slow, brand-level signal. Useful for tracking direction over quarters. Not useful for diagnosing what went wrong in a specific support conversation.
How it differs from CSAT
NPS asks about the brand and the relationship. CSAT asks about a specific interaction. The two answer different questions and should not be conflated.
A customer can be a detractor on NPS because of pricing, missing features, or an industry trend, and still give a positive CSAT on a single ticket because the agent was kind and the answer was useful. Conversely, a lifelong promoter can have a bad CSAT after one frustrating exchange. Run both, look at both, do not average them.
What good looks like
NPS varies wildly by industry, geography, and product type. A score above thirty is generally considered healthy. Above fifty is strong. Above seventy is rare and often suggests selection bias (the unhappy customers churned silently and the survey only reaches the survivors).
For SMB software, EU consumer ecommerce, and B2B services, a mid-range NPS around twenty to forty is normal. The trend matters more than the absolute. A flat NPS combined with growing churn means the survey is not catching dissatisfied customers before they leave.
Why support teams should care, but not obsess
NPS is a board-room metric. It moves slowly, summarizes a lot, and is easy to game. Support teams sometimes get pressured to "improve NPS" but the lever is rarely in support. Better service stops some detractors becoming worse. Better product or pricing is usually what makes promoters.
Treat NPS as a trailing indicator of overall customer health and as a way to find detractors to call and learn from. Do not treat it as a scorecard for individual agents or interactions. For that, use CSAT.
In Keloa
In Keloa, we focus on CSAT and deflection rate inside the product, because those are levers a support team can move week to week. NPS belongs in your customer analytics stack alongside churn and revenue retention. See pricing for what's bundled.