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.