If you’re a customer experience (CX) leader, chances are you’ve heard one CX phrase more than most: Net Promoter Score (NPS). For nearly two decades, NPS has been the go-to metric — praised as the simple, efficient way to measure customer loyalty and predict business growth. Yet as we enter an AI-driven era of customer insights, it’s time to ask: is NPS still the winning formula it once seemed for measuring customer experience and satisfaction?
The Rise and Reign of NPS
When Fred Reichheld introduced NPS in 2003, it was a game-changer. The concept was powerful: ask one straightforward question — “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” — and use that as a proxy for customer loyalty. The simplicity made it easy to deploy at scale and benchmark against competitors, while research linked a higher NPS with revenue growth, churn reduction, and customer lifetime value. The appeal was clear. As a result, CX teams rallied around improving scores, convinced that boosting NPS would automatically translate into better customer relationships and business results.
What NPS Doesn’t Tell You
Here’s the problem: customer experience is complex. Buyers don’t make decisions based on a single sentiment, especially in today’s hyper-connected, digital world. There are multiple touchpoints, emotional drivers, and contextual factors influencing loyalty — things one question can’t capture fully.
NPS alone doesn’t tell you why customers feel loyal or frustrated. It doesn’t identify specific pain points or moments that are “breaking” the experience. What’s more, organisations focus their NPS investments on Detractors. But really, NPS should be about Promoters. It’s even in the name!
Why Promoters Matter — Beyond the Score
While companies celebrate high NPS segments, they rarely engage promoters beyond a survey prompt, missing opportunities to deepen those relationships or turn advocates into co-creators that inform future strategy.
Promoters are your brand’s champions. Engaging them through loyalty programs, feedback forums, or early access to innovations can deliver a wealth of actionable insights. They can validate new ideas, flag emerging needs, and vocal ambassadors in crowded, noisy marketplaces.
For example, a major grocery chain added a third question to its NPS survey that sought actionable feedback from loyal customers (promoters) on how to enhance their experiences. For example, when a promoter noted difficulty finding a favourite craft beer, the store manager was able to personally contact the customer and ensure availability for future visits. This approach fostered continued dialogue and helped the grocery chain make meaningful operational changes that enhance overall customer satisfaction.
Beyond Surveys: Embracing AI and Multiple Listening Channels
CX teams no longer need to rely on a single metric to measure success. In fact, many companies are moving towards unified customer health scores that measure customer effort, customer loyalty, churn rate, customer lifetime value, emotional sentiment and brand engagement.
Porsche provides a great example of this approach. They discovered that while 9 out of 10 customers were satisfied, not all felt truly exhilarated by their experience. For example, while providing accurate information and timely delivery drives satisfaction, what truly excites customers is personalised communication during vehicle delivery. Porsche’s attention to detail extends even to small interactions, such as call centre etiquette and the design of their market research questionnaires. They found this genuine exhilaration is what truly breeds Porsche loyalty.
Advances in AI and data integration allow leaders to analyse insights from diverse channels to pinpoint their biggest customer experience drivers.
Text analytics powered by natural language processing analyses open-ended survey feedback and social media conversations for themes and sentiment — unearthing frustrations or delights not reflected in a score. Behavioural data on digital channels reveal usage patterns or drop-offs that customers may not even articulate.
AI agents help organisations find and fix broken experiences in real time. These systems interact directly with customers to autonomously improve customer experience – such as fixing issues raised in customer surveys, personalising product recommendations based on specific customer needs, and analysing behavioural data to resolve difficulties customers might be encountering online. This layered listening approach creates a deeper, holistic understanding of your customer. It shifts CX measurement from reactive scoring to proactive experience management — delivering real-time impact rather than periodic snapshots.
Five Ways CX Leaders Can Show Impact
If you manage CX programs today, here are a few ways to rethink your approach:
- Keep NPS, but don’t stop there. Use it as a directional indicator rather than the whole story. Segment your promoters and detractors to understand what drives their scores.
- Engage your promoters actively. Create forums, advisory panels, or beta programs that invite your best customers into the innovation process. Their enthusiasm can fuel new growth and greater loyalty. Even something as simple as – when you identify a promoter, ask them for ideas as an adaptive AI follow up in the survey. They are your biggest champions, figure out what made them fall in love with your products, and do that more!
- Identify the key drivers of NPS and expand your listening channels purposefully to influence those key drivers. Incorporate social sentiment, product usage data, and open-ended feedback analysis to get a richer picture of experience. The future is omnichannel.
- Once you have customer experience data flowing in from different channels and different parts of the customer journey, leverage AI to move from insight to action by identifying broken experiences automatically and surfacing opportunities for improvement before issues escalate.
- Tie CX insights to business outcomes. Show how specific key drivers relate to NPS, and how they influence retention, revenue, and customer lifetime value — because at the end of the day, CX programs need to prove their business impact.
Customer Experience success is more than a single number
NPS has earned its place in CX history; it’s a useful guiding metric that’s easy to understand and benchmark. But to achieve real transformation, leaders need to think deeper and create a program that embraces complexity, uses new technologies, and actively engages loyal customers.
So, ask yourself: are you still treating NPS as your only CX North Star? Or are you ready to evolve your programs to listen smarter, dig deeper, act faster, and – ultimately – delight your customers?
Your customers — both promoters and detractors — are speaking in more ways than just a number. The biggest opportunity lies in how well you hear and respond to the full conversation.
This article was written by Manisha Powar, Head of Product, XM for Customer Experience Suite at Qualtrics.