[txmx2017]

In customer service, a 10 is good, a 9 is good with room for improvement, and everything below an 8 is bad. The author makes a big deal about the difference between a 0 and 6. But both mean the customer is disatisfied. There’s no real difference.

[fotbr]

No real difference? Six might mean I'm willing to give you another chance. Zero might mean I'm so disgusted I'm going to bad-mouth your company at every opportunity, and do everything I can to see you fail.

For a big company (Forbes 500), or one with an effective monopoly (cable companies, airlines), or one with big enough backers (some SV startups) it may not matter. In those cases, the company doesn't need any single individual, and the individual doesn't have the power to really hurt the company.

For your local "mom and pop" company in a small town with only a few employees, the difference between a 6 and a 0 might be massive, perhaps to the point of staying in business or not.

[lbotos]

I work in Support and have for almost 10 years now. In NPS theory, you wanna focus first on the 8s, as they are closest to a promoter (9) and then work your way down. Usually the 8s have easier fixes than the 0s as well.

You can choose to go down and focus on the 0s too, but they help to often spot bigger pain points that could shape the product.

Again, the thing to remember with any number is we optimize for what we measure. NPS can be helpful but you need to have the NPS feedback machine running smooth or else you are going to spend your time building/running that vs. actually doing your thing.

[reynard_le_faux]

Agreed. NPS isn’t perfect but what is? The non linear scale encourages measuring excellence rather than incremental improvements to mediocrity (which is a common problem in the corporate world).

The simplicity of NPS also encourages its implementation rather than the most common alternative of measuring nothing.

[Arainach]

That doesn't account for external scale, though. Let's say I go and check in to the Holiday Inn. The bed is clean, the receptionist smiles. They met my expectations, but if I call that a 9 or a 10, what do I call the experience at a proper 5 star hotel?

[smacktoward]

So why not just ask the customer to choose between "good/good but with room for improvement/bad", rather than picking a point value on an 11-point scale? Simple questions are more likely to be answered honestly than complicated ones.