Net Promoter Score Considered Harmful (and What UX Professionals Can Do About It)

Jared Spool on the harmful measurement of NPS, the metric that many businesses use, especially in the Bay Area, to define customer satisfaction:

We can’t reduce user experience to a single number
this is the biggest flaw of NPS. It tries to achieve an outcome that can’t be achieved. It’s appealing to our management because it promises to solve a problem that can’t be solved so simply.

Customer experience is the sum total of all the interactions our customers have with our products, sites, employees, and the brand. Every sequence of interactions will differ for every customer.

People who believe in NPS believe in something that doesn’t actually do what they want. NPS scores are the equivalent of a daily horoscope. There’s no science here, just faith.