How to use it
- 1Ask the one question. On a 0 to 10 scale, how likely is the respondent to recommend you. Changing the wording or the scale breaks comparability with every published benchmark.
- 2Enter the count at each score. Not the average, and not the percentage. The distribution is the input, because promoters and detractors are counted separately.
- 3Read the band, not just the number. A score of 34 and a score of 41 sit in the same band. Movement inside a band is usually noise, particularly under fifty responses.
- 4Track the mix over time. Two cohorts can post the same score with very different distributions. Watch whether detractors are shrinking or passives are converting.
Who it's for
L&D leaders measuring program reception. Run it per cohort and compare across facilitators, formats, and locations.- HR business partners reporting upward. The band language travels well in an executive summary, where a raw score does not.
- Anyone running a post-event survey. Workshops, onboarding, internal tools. The calculation is the same wherever the question is asked.
The research behind it
Net Promoter Score groups respondents into promoters at 9 and 10, passives at 7 and 8, and detractors at 0 through 6, then subtracts the detractor percentage from the promoter percentage. The asymmetry is deliberate: a 7 is not a mild endorsement, and treating it as neutral is what gives the measure its sensitivity.
The published guidance is that anything above zero is good, above twenty is favorable, above fifty is excellent, and above eighty is world class. Those bands are industry-agnostic, so a score that reads as excellent in one sector may be unremarkable in another. We report NPS alongside behavioral measures for every cohort we run, because reception and skill transfer are different questions.
See how we measure a cohort.
We pair reception scores with team-rated behavior change at thirty and ninety days.
Explore the Gravity workshop: "Measure Learning and PROVE Effectiveness"