You just ran your first Net Promoter Score survey. The number came back: 37. But is that good, bad, or somewhere in between? Should you celebrate or scramble to fix things?
Here’s the reality: A “good” NPS isn’t universal. Your 37 might be excellent in insurance but mediocre in software. That’s why understanding NPS benchmarks and how to interpret your score by industry context is critical for e-commerce, retail, and service teams.
Understanding What NPS Actually Measures
Before diving into benchmarks, let’s clarify what you’re measuring. Net Promoter Score asks one simple question: “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our company to a friend or colleague?”
Responses fall into three categories:
Promoters (9-10): Your brand advocates who drive growth through referrals. These customers are loyal, enthusiastic, and more likely to make repeat purchases. They’re the ones leaving five-star reviews and telling friends about your business.
Passives (7-8): Satisfied but unenthusiastic customers vulnerable to competitors. They won’t actively harm your brand, but they won’t promote it either. One better offer from a competitor could pull them away.
Detractors (0-6): Unhappy customers who can damage your brand through negative word-of-mouth. They’re at high risk of churning, and worse, they may actively discourage others from doing business with you.
Your NPS is calculated as: % Promoters - % Detractors
This means your score ranges from -100 (everyone’s a detractor) to +100 (everyone’s a promoter). Any score above zero means you have more promoters than detractors—that’s your baseline for “good.” But context determines what truly matters.
The General NPS Scale: What Your Number Means
According to Bain & Company, who developed NPS, here’s how to interpret your raw score:
- Above 0: You’re doing something right—more customers like you than dislike you
- 20+: Great customer satisfaction that drives organic growth
- 50+: Fantastic performance indicating strong customer loyalty
- 70+: Industry-leading, exceptional advocacy (companies like Apple and Tesla territory)
But these are just starting points. Your industry context matters more than the raw number. An NPS of 35 in telecommunications would be exceptional, while the same score in hospitality would signal significant room for improvement.
2025 NPS Benchmarks by Industry
Here’s where your score should actually land for your sector:
E-Commerce & Retail
The retail sector shows significant variation. E-commerce NPS typically ranges from 20-65, with specific retail segments performing as follows:
- Grocery Retail: 41
- Big Box Retail: 37
- Top-performing retail: 40-70 range
If you’re running an online store and your NPS is above 40, you’re in strong territory. Below 20? You have clear retention issues to address. E-commerce faces unique challenges—customers can’t touch products before buying, shipping delays create friction, and return processes become critical touchpoints in the customer journey. Each of these moments shapes your NPS.
Services & Hospitality
Service businesses generally score higher due to the personal nature of interactions:
- Hotel and Hospitality: 44
- Property Management: 52
- Travel & Hospitality range: 50-80
The lesson? When customers interact directly with your team, expectations—and scores—rise. Service quality becomes the primary driver of loyalty. A friendly hotel staff member who remembers your name can turn a 7 into a 9. But a rude interaction drops a potential promoter straight into detractor territory. The balance between AI and human customer support becomes especially important in these high-touch industries.
Financial Services
Banks and financial institutions face unique challenges with trust and complexity:
- Banking and Financial Services: 41
- Insurance: 33
- Overall financial services range: 30-60
Financial services customers are naturally more cautious with recommendations. Nobody casually recommends their bank the way they might recommend a restaurant. Complex products, regulatory requirements, and the high stakes of financial decisions all contribute to more conservative scoring. An NPS of 35-45 in this sector represents solid performance.
Technology & SaaS
The B2B software world has its own standards:
- B2B Software & SaaS: 41
- Cloud & Hosting: 37
- Technology sector range: 30-60
SaaS companies often see higher scores because customers who stay past the trial period are already invested. If your B2B software scores below 30, customer retention strategies need immediate attention. The subscription model means customers re-evaluate their relationship with you every month or year, making consistent experience delivery critical.
The Laggards: Challenging Industries
Some sectors consistently struggle with NPS:
- Telecommunications: 0-30
- Construction: 34
- Insurance: 33
These industries face structural challenges. Telecommunications is highly commoditized with frequent service issues and complex billing. Construction involves long timelines, cost overruns, and multiple stakeholders with competing interests. Insurance requires customers to pay regularly for a service they hope never to use. These friction points create natural headwinds for advocacy.
Percentile vs. Raw Score: Which Matters More?
Here’s something most businesses miss: Your percentile ranking within your industry matters more than your absolute score.
According to 2023 benchmarking data, here’s what percentile performance looks like:
Professional Services:
- Top 25%: +73 or higher
- Median (50th percentile): +50
- Bottom 25%: +19 or lower
Technology Sector:
- Top 25%: +64 or higher
- Median: +40
- Bottom 25%: +11 or lower
Consumer Goods:
- Top 25%: +72 or higher
- Median: +50
- Bottom 25%: +21 or lower
Let’s say you’re a B2B software company with an NPS of 42. Your raw score is “good” by general standards. But you’re actually slightly above median in your sector—meaning half of your competitors are doing better. That’s the competitive context that should drive your strategy. Your customers are comparing you not to abstract perfection but to the other software tools they use. Being slightly better than average means you’re competitive, but there’s limited differentiation through customer experience alone.
Think of it this way: if you’re an e-commerce retailer with an NPS of 45 and your industry median is 41, you’re outperforming half your competitors. That’s a meaningful advantage. But if your closest rival has an NPS of 65, they’re capturing significantly more organic growth through referrals and repeat purchases. The gap between you matters more than your absolute number.
Setting Realistic NPS Targets for Your Business
So what should you aim for? Here’s a practical framework:
Year One: Establish Your Baseline
Don’t benchmark against Apple (NPS ~72) right away. Your first goal is understanding where you actually stand.
Conduct quarterly NPS surveys across key customer segments. Track your score trend, not just the absolute number. Identify which customer groups score highest and lowest—you might discover your enterprise customers love you while small businesses are frustrated, or vice versa. Aim to stay above zero and understand your detractor reasons through follow-up questions.
For example, if you’re a home and garden e-commerce site, you might find customers who purchase furniture score higher than those buying plants, revealing different experience quality across product categories.
Year Two: Beat Your Industry Median
Once you have baseline data, target the 50th percentile for your sector:
- E-commerce? Aim for 40+
- B2B SaaS? Target 40-45
- Hospitality? Push for 50+
Why the median matters: It means you’re competitive. Customers choosing between you and competitors will find similar satisfaction levels, so other factors—price, features, convenience—become your differentiators. You’re no longer losing deals because your customer experience is noticeably worse than alternatives.
Year Three and Beyond: Top Quartile Performance
After establishing competitive parity, aim for top 25% performance in your industry. This is where NPS becomes a growth engine. Companies in the top quartile enjoy significantly higher customer lifetime value, two to three times more organic referrals than median performers, and greater pricing power because customers will pay more for superior experience.
Top performers like Princeton Mortgage (NPS 98), Tesla (97), and Nutanix (92) maintain their positions through relentless focus on customer experience, not by coasting. They’ve built systems that make exceptional service repeatable and scalable.
What Actions to Take Based on Your Score
Your NPS number should trigger specific actions. Here’s what to do:
If Your NPS is Below 0
You’re in crisis mode. More customers are actively unhappy than happy. This isn’t just a customer experience problem—it’s an existential business risk.
Immediate actions:
Interview your detractors directly. Don’t rely on survey responses alone. Get on the phone, ask what went wrong, and listen without defensiveness. You need to understand the core issues driving dissatisfaction.
Audit your customer support quality. Are response times acceptable? Do customers reach resolution on first contact? Is your team trained properly? According to industry research, CSAT below 80–85% typically indicates emerging service process issues requiring attention.
Map your customer journey to identify where experiences break down. Is it during checkout? When products arrive? When customers need help? Each breakdown point creates detractors.
Implement quick wins—fix obvious pain points that require minimal resources. If customers consistently complain about confusing return policies, rewrite them today. If shipping notifications are unclear, update the templates this week.
For e-commerce businesses, this often means addressing checkout friction, shipping transparency, or return policies. For service businesses, it’s usually response times and communication quality. The good news? When you’re below zero, almost any improvement moves the needle visibly.
If Your NPS is 0-20
You’re in neutral territory. Customers aren’t actively promoting or bashing you, but they’re vulnerable to competitors. You have roughly equal numbers of promoters and detractors, with a large passive middle.
Priority actions:
Convert passives into promoters. These customers scoring 7-8 are closest to advocacy. What would push them over the edge? Often it’s small touches—a thank-you note, faster response times, proactive communication about their order status.
Implement proactive support touchpoints. Reach out before problems escalate. If you know shipping typically takes five days, send a status update on day three rather than waiting for customers to ask. This reduces anxiety and demonstrates you’re on top of things.
Personalize your experience. Generic interactions keep customers passive. Use their purchase history, browsing behavior, and past support interactions to provide relevant help. When a customer contacts you, knowing they bought product X last month and are now asking about product Y lets you connect the dots.
Reduce customer effort. According to research, effort reduction drives loyalty more effectively than delight. You don’t need to wow customers with surprise gifts—you need to make basic interactions smooth and painless. Can they find answers themselves before contacting support? Does your website load quickly? Is checkout frictionless?
Consider deploying AI-powered chat support to provide instant answers and reduce friction. Studies show live chat delivers 82% customer satisfaction rates across industries. The immediacy matters—66% of customers expect live chat responses within 10 minutes, and delivering on that expectation moves passives toward promoter status.
If Your NPS is 20-50
You’re in good company. You have more promoters than detractors and are likely around industry median. You’re not bleeding customers, but you’re not building a loyalty moat either.
Growth actions:
Activate your promoters. Create referral programs and testimonial campaigns. Your 9-10 scorers are willing to recommend you—make it easy for them. According to research, 29% of customers share positive live chat experiences with friends, generating organic word-of-mouth marketing. Capture those moments.
Segment your NPS by customer type, product line, and geography. You might discover your West Coast customers score 15 points higher than East Coast, revealing fulfillment issues from one warehouse. Or your subscription customers love you while one-time purchasers are lukewarm, suggesting your ongoing relationship-building works but initial impressions need work.
Close the feedback loop. Show customers you act on their input. When multiple customers mention the same pain point, fix it and tell them you did. One company tied team bonuses to NPS and achieved a 23% improvement in customer satisfaction within a year. That’s the power of organizational alignment around a clear metric.
Invest in digital customer experience transformation. Move from good to great through systematic improvement. This might mean implementing multilingual support if you serve diverse markets—72.4% of customers prefer to purchase from websites in their native language, and multilingual customer support capabilities can significantly boost NPS for international businesses.
If Your NPS is 50+
You’re in the top tier. Customers actively advocate for you. You’re outperforming the vast majority of competitors in your industry.
Optimization actions:
Study your promoters. Understand exactly what drives advocacy and double down on those elements. Is it your product quality? Your support responsiveness? Your brand values? Interview your 9-10 scorers and ask what they tell friends when recommending you. Their language reveals what truly differentiates you.
Expand your reach. With strong loyalty, you can grow into new markets or segments with lower risk. Your existing customers will provide testimonials, case studies, and referrals that reduce acquisition costs and increase conversion rates in new territories.
Command premium pricing. Customers paying more should receive experiences that justify the cost, but when you have an NPS of 50+, you’ve earned the right to charge more. Your promoters are less price-sensitive because they value the total experience, not just the transaction.
Don’t get complacent. Top performers can slide quickly if competition improves. Continue measuring, listening, and evolving. The moment you assume your NPS will stay high without effort is the moment it starts declining.
Common NPS Interpretation Mistakes to Avoid
Focusing Only on the Number
Your NPS of 35 means nothing without understanding why customers scored that way. Always ask a follow-up question: “What is the primary reason for your score?” The qualitative feedback is where actionable insights live. A score tells you if customers are happy or unhappy; their explanation tells you what to fix or amplify.
Ignoring Sample Size
An NPS of 60 from 20 responses isn’t statistically meaningful. You need at least 100-200 responses per quarter for reliable insights, more for segmented analysis. If you’re a smaller business and can’t reach that threshold yet, track trends over time instead of obsessing over month-to-month fluctuations.
Comparing Across Different Survey Timing
Post-purchase NPS (transactional) will differ from annual relationship NPS. A customer right after a great delivery experience will score higher than one evaluating your brand holistically after six months. Track both, but don’t compare them directly. Transactional NPS measures specific touchpoints in the customer journey, while relationship NPS measures overall brand perception.
Overlooking Cultural Differences
If you serve international markets, cultural differences affect scoring patterns. Some cultures avoid extreme ratings—a score of 8 in Japan might represent the same satisfaction as 10 in the United States. Don’t assume scoring behavior is universal. Segment by region and look for trends within each market rather than comparing absolute numbers across borders.
Treating Passives as Neutral
Customers scoring 7-8 are satisfied but not loyal. They’re one competitor promotion away from leaving. Passive customers represent your greatest conversion opportunity—moving them to 9-10 has a bigger ROI than converting detractors, who may have fundamental misalignment with your product or service. Focus energy where it will yield the highest return.
Tracking NPS Over Time: The Real Measure of Success
A single NPS reading is a snapshot. Trend lines reveal whether your customer experience is improving or declining.
Track these patterns:
Quarter-over-quarter changes help you spot seasonal patterns and initiative impacts. Did your NPS jump after you implemented faster shipping? Drop after you changed return policies? These trends reveal cause and effect.
Cohort analysis answers whether customers acquired six months ago score differently than new customers. If newer customers score lower, your onboarding or initial experience may have deteriorated. If older customers score lower, you may have a retention problem where enthusiasm fades over time.
Segment performance shows which products, regions, or customer types drive your score. Your overall NPS might be 40, but if enterprise customers score 60 and small businesses score 20, you need different strategies for each segment.
Correlation with business metrics determines whether NPS predicts revenue growth, churn, or customer lifetime value in your business. Some companies find NPS strongly correlates with repeat purchase rates, while others see limited connection. Establish what’s true for your business rather than assuming NPS alone drives outcomes.
Set alert thresholds for early intervention. If your churn rate increases more than 5% month-over-month, investigate immediately. An NPS drop of more than 10 points requires executive attention—something fundamental has broken in your experience. A specific segment decline of more than 3% suggests targeted retention campaigns are needed before the problem spreads.
The most successful companies integrate NPS into their customer loyalty measurement systems alongside metrics like Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Customer Effort Score (CES), and retention rates. NPS tells you about willingness to recommend; CSAT tells you about transaction satisfaction; CES tells you about ease of doing business. Together, they provide a complete picture.
Using Technology to Improve NPS at Scale
Manual NPS tracking doesn’t scale. You can email surveys and read responses manually when you have 100 customers. When you have 10,000, that approach breaks down.
Modern support teams need integrated tools that deploy surveys at optimal moments across the customer journey. The best time to ask for NPS isn’t random—it’s after key interactions like purchase completion, support resolution, or product onboarding. Automated systems trigger surveys contextually rather than bombarding customers with requests.
AI sentiment analysis can analyze free-text responses automatically, categorizing thousands of open-ended answers into themes. Instead of reading every comment, you see that 40% of detractors mention “slow shipping” and 25% mention “confusing checkout”—clear priorities emerge from the noise.
Route detractor alerts to support teams in real-time for immediate follow-up. When someone gives you a 3, your support team should know within minutes, not after a quarterly review. Reaching out immediately to unhappy customers can sometimes convert detractors into promoters if you resolve their issue quickly and genuinely.
Predict churn risk based on NPS patterns and engagement data. Customers who score 6-7 and haven’t contacted support in three months may be silently churning. Proactive outreach—a check-in email, a special offer, a request for feedback—can pull them back before they leave.
For example, implementing AI chatbot customer service can reduce response times from hours to seconds, directly addressing a primary driver of detractor scores. Research shows businesses with live chat see 48% higher revenue per chat hour and 40% better conversion rates. The immediacy matters—when customers have questions during the purchase process, instant answers remove friction that otherwise creates passive or detractor scores.
The goal isn’t replacing human support—it’s using automation for routine queries so your team can focus on the complex, high-stakes interactions that build promoters. Questions like “Where’s my order?” or “What’s your return policy?” don’t require human judgment. But a customer frustrated after three failed delivery attempts needs empathy, problem-solving, and perhaps compensation. That’s where balancing AI and human support becomes critical.
The Bottom Line: What’s “Good” For Your Business
Here’s the truth: A “good” NPS is one that’s better than last quarter and moving toward top-quartile performance in your industry.
If you’re e-commerce with an NPS of 25, don’t obsess over hitting 50 next month. That’s unrealistic and will lead to shortsighted decisions. Instead, focus on understanding your detractors’ primary complaints, fixing the top two to three issues systematically, converting your passives (7-8 scorers) into promoters through strategic touchpoint optimization, and tracking your improvement trend.
The companies with exceptional NPS didn’t get there overnight. They built a culture of continuous customer experience improvement, measured religiously, and acted on feedback consistently. They made NPS a visible metric tied to team goals. They closed the loop with customers who provided feedback. They invested in systems—customer support platforms, training programs, process improvements—that made great experiences repeatable rather than random.
Your NPS journey starts with understanding where you stand, setting realistic targets based on your industry, and implementing systematic improvements that move the needle quarter after quarter. The score is just the starting point—what you do with it determines whether you build a base of loyal advocates or watch customers drift to competitors who deliver better experiences.
Ready to improve your customer support experience and drive better NPS scores? Explore how Askly’s AI-powered chat platform helps businesses reduce response times, automate routine queries, and deliver the seamless, multilingual support that converts detractors into promoters. With features like real-time translation, abandonment detection, and intelligent routing between AI and human agents, you can create the effortless experiences that drive loyalty at scale.