The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is one of the most powerful metrics that you can use to understand how customers truly feel about your business. It tells you whether customers would recommend you to others, which is a clear indicator of their loyalty and level of satisfaction with your brand. Improving your NPS doesn’t happen overnight, but it is possible to make incremental progress with intentional action and a customer-first mindset. In this article, you’ll discover 12 tactics to help you do just that—ranging from quick fixes to long-term strategies and cultural shifts that can elevate customer experience.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
Effective Strategies to Increase NPS
Quick Wins to Boost NPS Fast
One of the simplest ways to learn how to improve NPS scores is to start adopting small, impactful changes. These quick wins don’t require massive overhauls, but they can deliver fast results and set you up for longer-term success.
1. Close the Feedback Loop
When a customer gives you feedback, especially negative feedback, it’s crucial to respond quickly. Closing the loop or completing the communication circle means you acknowledge the issue, show that you care, and take meaningful steps to address the concern. This, in turn, builds customer trust and increases the chances of turning detractors into promoters.
Take the example of Vodafone New Zealand. After identifying key pain points in its support process, the company implemented a closed-loop system to allow managers to call back unhappy customers within 36 hours. This not only helped resolve issues quickly but also improved customer sentiment over time.
2. Ask the Right Supplementary Questions
Adding a simple “Why did you give us this score?” or “What could we do better?” to your NPS survey can unlock valuable insights. The use of open-text responses can help you understand the reasons behind a score, giving your team the context needed to take action.
Scoot, a Singapore-based budget airline, uses this strategy by enhancing its post-flight surveys with enquiry channels that support both text and audio inputs. This flexible interface lets customers express feedback in the format they prefer. The collected insights can then be shared across departments, including frontline staff, to directly inform service and experience improvements.
3. Time Your Feedback Collection
When you ask for feedback also matters. Sending an NPS survey right after a successful interaction, such as a product purchase or issue resolution, can result in higher response rates and more accurate reflections of customer sentiment. The day and hour can also matter, as respondents are more likely to complete surveys if they have free time. Hubspot has consolidated five studies that focus on the best time to send surveys to customers.
4. Make It Easy to Fill Out
Long surveys are a turnoff for many respondents. To improve response rates and data quality, keep your NPS survey short, mobile-friendly, and available on the customer’s preferred platform, be it email or in-app. Understanding this, popular e-commerce brand ASOS used mobile channels to conduct feedback surveys. This made it easy for customers to complete the survey in under a minute.
5. Empower Frontline Teams to Act
When frontline staff have access to real-time feedback and customer data, they’re in a better position to make things right on the spot. Customer experience platforms can help by surfacing relevant insights right where your teams need them. Resonate CX Platform, for instance, features a frontline dashboard that staff members can use to get real-time customer feedback, read it, and act on it.
Apple makes good use of this strategy. The brand’s retail employees are trained to spot dissatisfaction in the moment and resolve it on the floor. They also have access to previous interactions to avoid asking customers to repeat themselves.
These quick wins don’t require a full transformation—they’re about making the most of what you already have. By removing friction and reacting with care, you’re already setting yourself apart.
Strategic Moves for Sustained NPS Growth
To keep your NPS growing over time, you’ll need to go beyond surface-level changes. The following strategies focus on building stronger, more personalised, and resilient customer relationships.
6. Personalise the Experience
Customers want to feel seen by the businesses they transact with. You can make sure they feel valued by personalising their experiences. By customising emails, onboarding steps, or support journeys, you can boost loyalty. Netflix exemplifies this by offering recommendations that are tailored to each user based on viewing history and preferences. This level of customisation makes the platform more enjoyable and increases customer satisfaction.
7. Invest in Employee Experience
The link between employee happiness and customer satisfaction is well-established. Improving internal NPS (eNPS) helps foster a culture where employees are more engaged and motivated to deliver great service. This is a strategy that worked well for Adobe. The leading digital media and marketing solutions provider invested in employee well-being by offering flexible work policies and mental health resources. As a result, employee satisfaction improved, and their CX metrics—including NPS—saw sustained growth.
8. Always-On Relationship Feedback
Instead of only surveying at major touchpoints, some companies maintain ongoing feedback collection to keep their finger on the pulse. This helps identify emerging issues before they become serious problems. Spotify, for one, uses pulse surveys to monitor ongoing satisfaction with the service’s music discovery feature. These real-time insights help the company refine user experience.
Strategic improvements like these take time and coordination, but they pay off well. These help businesses achieve their goal of building a consistent, rewarding experience over the long haul.
Culture and Advocacy Building
The most successful companies don’t just measure NPS, as they also embed it into their culture. These strategies are about turning happy customers into advocates and making NPS everyone’s business.
9. Empower Promoters
Your most loyal customers are your best marketers. It’s in your best interest, then, to encourage them to leave reviews, share their stories, and refer friends. Dropbox did this well by offering bonus storage for referrals, turning promoters into active brand advocates. You can also spotlight top promoters in newsletters or social media, turning customer love into powerful, authentic marketing that doesn’t cost much but delivers high trust value.
10. Share NPS Insights Across Teams
NPS data isn’t just for the CX team. It’s important to share insights with marketing, product, and operations so they, too, can act on feedback in meaningful ways. M&S Bank, for example, deployed a cross-functional team that assessed the customer journey and made customer feedback accessible across departments. This allowed different teams to take ownership of improvements based on real-time insights. By embedding NPS data into everyday decision-making, M&S Bank created a culture where everyone plays a role in delivering better customer experiences.
11. Benchmark and Set Clear Targets
It’s also crucial to know where your company stands. You can find out by comparing your NPS to industry averages and setting quarterly goals. Knowing your current standing lets you set benchmarks for your organisation. Then, treat every improvement as a cause for recognition. These celebrations can help keep your team motivated and reinforce a culture of progress and accountability.
12. Make NPS Part of Your Culture
Building a customer-first culture starts at the top. Leaders must champion the importance of NPS, and businesses should form cross-functional teams to review scores, plan initiatives, and track KPIs. Some companies even share NPS results with shareholders to show their commitment to customer satisfaction. This practice ensures that NPS insights are reviewed regularly by senior leadership and discussed across teams to inform product and service enhancements.
When your company culture puts NPS at the centre, it changes everything. Culture-driven companies thrive because everyone is rowing in the same direction.
Achieve NPS Success by Adopting These Proven Winning Strategies
Learning how to increase NPS isn’t a one-and-done project. It’s a continuous cycle of listening, acting, and evolving. Start by picking 2–3 strategies that fit your business, and then adopt more from there. By taking these intentional steps, you’ll be able to drive real change—both in customer loyalty and business growth. Keep listening, keep adapting, and your NPS will reflect the value you bring to your customers.
