Net Promoter Score comes from one survey question: how likely are you to recommend us, on a scale of 0 to 10. Customers who answer 9 or 10 are promoters, 7 or 8 are passives, and 0 through 6 are detractors. The score is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors, so it runs from -100, everyone a detractor, to +100, everyone a promoter. Deciding what NPS score is good starts with that math: the number is a balance, not a grade out of 100.
The honest conventions: anything above 0 means promoters outnumber detractors, the baseline for a good NPS. Above 30 is commonly read as strong. Above 70 is exceptional, territory few brands reach. Past those bands, NPS score benchmarks depend on sector: industry research puts the average NPS score by industry anywhere from single digits to the 50s, so NPS by industry comparisons only mean something against your own category. And a snapshot means less than a trend: a 20 that has climbed for three quarters beats a 45 in decline. A great NPS score is above your category average and moving up.
One caveat outranks every benchmark: NPS response rate. A good NPS on a thin response rate means little, because the customers who answer skew toward the delighted and the furious. The other caveat is that the score is a symptom, not a diagnosis. The drivers live in the support queue, where detractor commentary maps to specific contact reasons: the shipping question that took three days, the billing dispute that looped, the refund that needed a supervisor. The survey reports the temperature. The queue holds the cause.
Reading an NPS score at a glance
| Score band | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Below 0 | Detractors outnumber promoters; experience problems are structural |
| 0 to 30 | Good; more promoters than detractors, with room to work |
| 30 to 70 | Strong; customers actively recommend you |
| Above 70 | Exceptional; rare outside beloved brands |
Aide, the agentic AI platform for customer experience, closes the gap between the score and its causes. Because every conversation is classified by intent, a falling NPS stops being a mystery: detractor themes trace to specific intents with volume and resolution data attached, so the team fixes the contact reasons dragging the score down instead of filing a number in a dashboard.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a good NPS score by industry?
- Ranges vary too much for one answer: industry research shows sector averages running from single digits to the 50s. Compare within your own industry, then weight the trend more heavily than the absolute number. Steady improvement says more than a static comparison.
- What is a good NPS response rate?
- Convention treats response rates above roughly 30 percent as healthy for transactional surveys, but the working rule is simpler: the lower the response rate, the less the score means. Report the two numbers together.
- Is a negative NPS always bad?
- It is a real signal, detractors outnumber promoters, but some sectors average below zero, and a negative score climbing beats a positive score in decline. Read the direction, then find the drivers in the queue.