How likely are your customers to recommend your business to a friend or colleague?
That’s the only question behind the Net Promoter Score (NPS): a deceptively simple but incredibly powerful way to measure customer satisfaction and predict business growth.
Why the Net Promoter Scale Matters
When your NPS is higher than your industry average, it signals that your customers are not only satisfied, but loyal. They’re the kind of customers who return, refer others, and rave about you to anyone who’ll listen. In short: your best marketing team isn’t on payroll—it’s your promoters.
Breaking Down the Net Promoter Scale
- Promoters (9–10): Enthusiastic fans who tell others about you and keep coming back.
- Passives (7–8): Generally satisfied, but not emotionally connected enough to promote your business to others
- Detractors (0–6): Disappointed customers who are unlikely to return, and may even discourage others from doing business with you.
To calculate your NPS, simply subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters.
You can (and should) follow up by asking why they gave you the score they did. That’s where the gold is.
Feedback You Can’t Afford to Ignore
Let’s be honest: no one enjoys hearing criticism. It’s tempting to avoid opening the door to negative feedback altogether, “Let sleeping dogs lie,” right? But here’s the truth: avoiding feedback is not a strategy, it’s a risk.
If customers are frustrated and you never ask, they’ll quietly leave, and possibly loudly complain online.
But if you invite feedback directly, you’re sending a strong signal that we care enough to ask, and we’re committed to improving. And if someone loves your company, they won’t just be NICE (“Nothing Inside Cares Enough”)—they’ll be truthful. That honesty, while uncomfortable, is a gift. It tells you exactly where the pain points are, so you can fix them.
Peter Drucker Was Right. The Management guru once warned:
“The danger is acting on what you believe satisfies the customer. You will inevitably make the wrong assumptions. Leadership should not even try to guess at the answers; it should always go to the customer in a systematic quest for those answers.”
The Net Promoter Score is one of the most effective tools for doing exactly that—taking the guesswork out of leadership and turning feedback into strategic insight.
Where the Journey to Excellence Comes In
At this point, you may be wondering: "What does leadership development have to do with NPS?"
Everything.
The JTE (Journey to Excellence) program equips business leaders to grow from the inside out: starting with personal mastery, then expanding to organizational excellence. When leaders commit to this kind of growth, their organization’s culture begins to reflect the same.
And here's the link: Companies that score high on NPS are typically those with strong, healthy cultures. Cultures shaped by clarity, accountability, service, and mission—the very things JTE helps leaders build.
In our experience, improving your NPS often starts with transforming the culture behind the service. When customers encounter a great business culture, they notice. They tell others. And they come back.
NPS is not just a metric; it’s a mirror. What it reflects about your business depends on what kind of leader is looking into it. The good news? If you don’t like what you see, you can change it. And we’re here to help.
Journey to Excellence can help you build the kind of organization that earns more than loyalty: it earns trust. And that’s the foundation for sustainable growth.
