Net Promoter Score: one question worth asking, if you act on the answers
One question after an order: how likely are you to recommend us? The score's a rough trend line. The reasons people give for it are where the value is.
- 089Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- A metric that measures customer loyalty and satisfaction by asking customers how likely they are to recommend a business to others.
- The question
- How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?
- Scored on
- A scale of nought to ten
- Worked out as
- The share of promoters minus the share of detractors
- Run it in
- A one-click email in your post purchase flow
How Net Promoter Score is worked out
Bain and Company, who publish the method, ask one question: how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague? Answers run from nought to ten, and they fall into three groups.
- Nine or ten: promoters
- Seven or eight: passives, counted in the total and nowhere else
- Nought to six: detractors
Work out promoters and detractors as shares of everyone who answered, multiply each by a hundred, and take detractors away from promoters. The result runs from minus a hundred to a hundred, so a score below zero is possible.
Running an NPS survey from Klaviyo in one click
Put the question in an email in your post purchase flow, with each number from nought to ten as its own link. One tap is the whole survey. Klaviyo logs which link each person clicked, so you can build segments of promoters, passives and detractors straight off it.
Send it once the order's arrived and had a chance to be used, and to each customer once, not after every order. Then ask one more thing on the page the link opens: what's the main reason for your score? That answer's worth more than the number.
What to send promoters, passives and detractors next
| Group | What happens next |
|---|---|
| Detractors | A personal reply from a real person within a day, asking what went wrong |
| Passives | Nothing special. They're who your fixes are for |
| Promoters | A referral offer, or an invitation into your loyalty programme |
One thing not to do: use the score to decide who gets asked for a public review. Inviting only satisfied customers to review can count as cherry-picking under the CMA's fake reviews guidance. Send the review request to everyone, whatever they scored.
Related terms
FAQs
What is a good Net Promoter Score for an ecommerce brand?
Yours, last quarter, asked the same way. Published averages mix industries, survey timings and sample sizes, so they say very little about your customers. Track your own score month by month, and pay more attention to the reasons detractors give than to the headline number.
Does Net Promoter Score predict repeat purchases?
Not reliably on its own. Someone can love your candles and not need another for months. In a shop, repeat purchase rate and the time between orders tell you more about loyalty than a survey answer does. Use NPS as a reason to talk to customers, not as a forecast.
How often should a shop send an NPS survey?
Once per customer, at a fixed point after their first or latest order, is plenty. Asking after every order trains people to ignore it. Keep the timing the same every time, so this month's score and last month's are measuring the same moment in the customer's experience.
Rather we explained it on your own account?
Bring your Klaviyo account to a growth consultation. We'll walk through what this means for your numbers, in plain English, and what we'd fix first.
Half an hour with Theo, our founder.
We're all about relationships built on trust, mutual respect and a shared vision for success. If that sounds like your vibe, let's make some waves together 🌊
