Is Net Promoter Score Flawed?

For more than a decade, brands have clung, mostly blindly, to the Net Promoter Score as the way to measure loyalty. A report from the loyalty marketing publisher COLLOQUY took a hard look at the increasingly criticized metric.

The major weakness it identifies is that NPS is a “rear-facing metric.” Consumer attitudes are shaped by their last experience, so the number tells you how someone felt about the most recent thing that happened to them rather than what they are likely to do next. The research also found that only 13 percent of customers actually go on to make a recommendation after answering that they would.

That second finding is the one worth sitting with. A metric built on stated intent is only as good as the gap between what people say and what they do, and here the gap is enormous. The report is a valuable read for any brand marketer who has been reporting that single number upward for years.