TLDR:
- Benchmarks act as a compass, moving you beyond guesswork to contextual strategy.
- NPS Benchmarks are essential because an isolated NPS score is meaningless. A “good” score in one industry is different from another due to factors like competition, regulation, and switching costs.
- To use them correctly, you must avoid generic global averages and focus on industry-specific ranges (e.g., Telecom averages 25-35; E-commerce averages 40-50). By comparing your score to your peers and specific touchpoints, you can find high-leverage friction points, set realistic CX goals, align executive expectations, and justify resource investments—ultimately driving measurable loyalty and business growth.
Every business knows the goal is customer happiness, but how do you know if you’re hitting the mark or just playing catch-up? It’s like checking the speed limit: you need a standard to compare against. NPS benchmarks provide that standard.
These benchmarks provide a structured way to observe how your net promoter score compares to others in your industry, helping you find strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. By looking at scores systematically, you can go beyond simple gut feelings and plain old stories, making informed decisions that actually improve customer loyalty.
Let’s explore these comparisons so you can swap gut instinct for strategy and start making meaningful strides in customer loyalty.
Why Businesses Need Contextual Benchmarks, Not Isolated Scores
In our intensely competitive world, customer loyalty is fickle—a decent product just doesn’t cut it anymore. That’s why relying on a single, isolated NPS score is risky business.
Think of it this way: a score that’s great for one industry might be terrible for yours. To truly know where you stand, you need contextual benchmarks. But watch out! It’s easy to fall into the trap of blindly copying global averages. Because customer expectations, market maturity, and even cultural scoring habits vary wildly around the world, taking these nuances into account is critical.
Benchmarks aren’t a cheat code; they’re a compass that helps you set realistic goals and avoid costly mistakes in your CX strategy.
What NPS Actually Measures (and Why It Varies by Industry)
At its core, the net promoter score captures one simple yet powerful question: how likely your customers are to recommend your service or product to others. But while the concept is helpful universally, the NPS benchmarks by industry can vary drastically, and knowing why is the key to using your NPS score correctly:
1. Switching Costs
Industries where customers face high switching costs, like B2B, software, or financial services, usually show higher NPS ranges. Customers are less likely to abandon and more likely to produce a higher score, even if small annoyances are present.
2. Competitive Density
In markets saturated with choices, such as e-commerce or Fintech, even small improvements in service or product experience can critically affect customer scores. NPS benchmarks in these sectors often mirror a more sensitive, competitive environment.
3. Regulation
Highly regulated industries, like healthcare or banking, impose restrictions on features, pricing, and interactions. These limiters can affect customer expectations, ergo, the net promoter score.
4. Emotional Engagement with the Product
Services or products that inspire strong emotional attachments, think SaaS, short for Software as a Service, platforms that integrate deeply into daily inflows, usually observe higher NPS scores. Customers invested emotionally are more than likely to boost your brand willingly.
Understanding these dynamics helps you dodge comparing apples to bananas and guarantees your analysis of NPS benchmarks is both grounded in reality and practical.
NPS Benchmarks by Industry (2024-2025): Understanding What Makes a Good Score
To meaningfully interpret your Net Promoter Score, you must understand NPS benchmarks by industry. Whilst the fundamental NPS calculation remains consistent across sectors, what constitutes a “good” score varies dramatically depending on your industry’s inherent characteristics, customer expectations, and competitive dynamics. Based on the latest data from NPS Prism by Bain & Company, here are the current industry performance ranges:
| Industry | Average NPS Range | Excellent Score | World-Class Score |
| Technology & B2B SaaS | 30–45 | 50+ | 60+ |
| E-commerce & Retail | 40–50 | 55+ | 65+ |
| Consumer Banking & Financial Services | 30–40 | 45+ | 55+ |
| Insurance | 30–40 | 45+ | 55+ |
| Telecommunications & Internet Providers | 25–35 | 40+ | 50+ |
| Healthcare & Wellness | 30–40 | 45+ | 55+ |
| Pharmacy | 35–45 | 50+ | 60+ |
| Airlines | 25–40 | 45+ | 55+ |
| Automotive | 35–45 | 50+ | 60+ |
| Grocery & Convenience Retail | 40–50 | 55+ | 65+ |
| Utilities & Government Services | 10–30 | 35+ | 45+ |
| Video Streaming | 35–50 | 55+ | 65+ |
Using this table, companies can quickly see where they stand relative to peers and focus on areas with the greatest potential to improve loyalty and satisfaction. But if you want a detailed version per industry:
1. Technology & B2B SaaS
Average NPS Range: 30-45
Excellent Score: 50+
World-Class: 60+
Why These Scores: Tech companies, particularly B2B SaaS providers, typically achieve higher NPS scores due to deep product integration, rapid iteration cycles, and emphasis on user experience. Scores above 60 are considered world-class, indicating higher levels of customer satisfaction, upgraded products, and brand loyalty.
What Drives Loyalty: Seamless onboarding, responsive support, continuous product innovation, and clear value demonstration. A “good” score represents devoted users who actively promote your platform, indicating strong engagement and retention potential.
2. E-commerce & Retail
Average NPS Range: 40-50
Excellent Score: 55+
World-Class: 65+
Why These Scores: Retail experiences are highly transactional, making NPS particularly sensitive to logistics, fulfilment speed, and returns processes. NPS leaders in this space excel through seamless operations and service that exceeds customer expectations.
What Drives Loyalty: Fast, reliable delivery, hassle-free returns, accurate product information, responsive customer service, and consistent quality. High NPS indicates customers trust the end-to-end experience enough to recommend it.
3. Consumer Banking & Financial Services
Average NPS Range: 30-40
Excellent Score: 45+
World-Class: 55+
Why These Scores: Financial services involve high-stakes, trust-based relationships where customers expect security, transparency, and support. Consumers are increasingly opting for digital channels, with a 15% rise in mobile and online usage since 2022.
What Drives Loyalty: Security assurances, transparent fee structures, responsive support for sensitive issues, seamless digital experiences, and personalised financial guidance. Digital-first banks achieve superior NPS scores by excelling in first-contact resolution and transparent communication.
4. Insurance
Average NPS Range: 30-40
Excellent Score: 45+
World-Class: 55+
Why These Scores: Insurance involves complex products, infrequent positive interactions (most touchpoints involve claims or issues), and inherent customer scepticism. Achieving high scores in this industry requires excellence across the entire lifecycle from selection to claims resolution.
What Drives Loyalty: Clear policy explanations, fair claims processing, proactive communication during stressful moments, transparent pricing, and feeling genuinely supported when needed. A “good” score indicates customers trust you’ll be there when it matters most.
5. Telecommunications & Internet Providers
Average NPS Range: 25-35
Excellent Score: 40+
World-Class: 50+
Why These Scores: Telecom historically scores lower due to service reliability challenges, complex billing, difficult cancellation processes, and high customer frustration levels. NPS Prism provides insights available for consumer mobile, home internet, linear paid TV, OTT, B2B wireless, and B2B wireline, revealing significant variation across these segments.
What Drives Loyalty: Reliable network performance, transparent billing, responsive technical support, easy plan changes, and fair pricing. A “good” score in this cluster represents measurable improvements in issue resolution, responsiveness, and transparency—often harder-won than in other industries.
6. Healthcare & Wellness
Average NPS Range: 30-40
Excellent Score: 45+
World-Class: 55+
Why These Scores: Healthcare involves highly personal, often stressful interactions where provider trust is paramount. Scores reflect the entire experience from scheduling to treatment to follow-up care.
What Drives Loyalty: Compassionate care, clear communication, minimal waiting times, seamless coordination across touchpoints, and feeling genuinely cared for as an individual. A “good” NPS indicates patients trust their provider enough to recommend them for potentially life-impacting decisions.
7. Pharmacy
Average NPS Range: 35-45
Excellent Score: 50+
World-Class: 60+
Why These Scores: According to NPS Prism’s latest research, local independent pharmacies and Publix emerge as industry leaders by prioritising personalised customer experience, with helpful and knowledgeable staff holding great significance.
What Drives Loyalty: Customer feelings when filling new scripts, disputing coverage decisions or co-payments, and talking to pharmacists significantly influence NPS. Personalisation and expertise distinguish leaders from average performers.
8. Airlines
Average NPS Range: 25-40
Excellent Score: 45+
World-Class: 55+
Why These Scores: Airlines face inherent challenges, including delays outside their control, crowded spaces, and high passenger stress levels. NPS varies significantly between budget carriers (lower) and premium full-service airlines (higher).
What Drives Loyalty: On-time performance, comfortable seating, responsive rebooking during disruptions, friendly staff, and feeling valued as a passenger. High scores require excellence across multiple touchpoints in a complex operation.
9. Automotive
Average NPS Range: 35-45
Excellent Score: 50+
World-Class: 60+
Why These Scores: NPS Prism’s automotive tool captures data on over 26 automotive and powersports brands, providing insights into the purchasing and financing process, in-vehicle experience, and servicing experiences.
What Drives Loyalty: Transparent pricing, low-pressure sales environment, vehicle reliability, convenient service, and feeling respected throughout ownership. High NPS often reflects the entire ownership experience, not just the initial purchase.
10. Grocery & Convenience Retail
Average NPS Range: 40-50
Excellent Score: 55+
World-Class: 65+
Why These Scores: NPS Prism for Grocery provides unbiased, detailed NPS results from over 50,000 surveyed consumers shopping at over 40 competitors, making it one of the most comprehensively benchmarked sectors.
What Drives Loyalty: Product quality and freshness, store cleanliness, checkout efficiency, staff helpfulness, and competitive pricing. In a highly commoditised market, experience differentiation drives NPS.
11. Utilities & Government Services
Average NPS Range: 10-30
Excellent Score: 35+
World-Class: 45+
Why These Scores: Utilities and government services consistently score lowest due to limited consumer choice, monopolistic or near-monopolistic market positions, and historically high friction in interactions. Many customers interact primarily when there’s a problem.
What Drives Loyalty: Whilst “loyalty” is less relevant given limited alternatives, higher scores reflect efficient processes, transparent communication, proactive outreach, and feeling treated with respect. A “good” score represents genuinely improved service delivery that mitigates inherent structural challenges.
12. Video Streaming
Average NPS Range: 35-50
Excellent Score: 55+
World-Class: 65+
Why These Scores: Streaming services benefit from convenience, personalisation, and content variety, but face challenges with pricing changes, content library fluctuations, and technical issues.
What Drives Loyalty: Content quality and variety, intuitive interface, reliable streaming, fair pricing, and personalised recommendations. High NPS indicates customers find sufficient value to recommend despite competitive alternatives.
How to Use NPS Benchmarks to Drive Strategy
It’s only beneficial to comprehend NPS benchmarks by industry if you use the information to enhance customer experience, direct strategy, and impact decision-making. Here’s how to use benchmarking:
1. Setting Priorities for CX Initiatives
Whether it’s onboarding, support, or product experience, concentrate on areas that will have the biggest influence on your NPS score. You can find high-leverage improvements with the aid of benchmarks.
2. Finding Friction Points Through Comparative Gaps
By comparing your net promoter score to that of your peers or historical data, you can find areas where customers are dissatisfied and where features or processes require improvement.
3. Establishing Objectives
Benchmarks give you a sense of what constitutes “good” in your industry, allowing you to set realistic objectives rather than chasing arbitrary figures.
4. Aligning Executive Expectations
Show leadership where the company stands in relation to rivals and internal trends by communicating performance to them using industry and micro-benchmarks.
5. Using Benchmarking to Support CX Resources
You can make a business case for investments in tools, personnel, or training by showing how improvements in particular touchpoints could increase your NPS score.
6. Determining Whether Performance is an Anomaly or Systemic Trend
Long-term strategy is informed by benchmarks and time-based data that show whether changes in your net promoter score are one-time spikes or represent larger systemic problems.
Once you’ve established these useful techniques with benchmarking, you can improve your NPS to set priorities, make decisions, and prove the observable benefits of customer experience projects.
Introducing Resonate CX Benchmarking
Many organisations struggle because their NPS benchmarks are outdated, too generic, or simply irrelevant to their unique market. Resonate CX’s NPS Platform solves this challenge by transforming static numbers into dynamic intelligence. Our platform provides real-time comparisons and contextual insights that are highly specific to your customer segments and industry clusters. This allows you to interpret accurately
By combining these functions, Resonate CX turns raw NPS data into actionable information that directly informs strategy defends, and drives measurable business growth.
Stop waiting for annual benchmarking reports and explore these powerful insights in real-time with Resonate CX.
