Average NPS Scores: How to benchmark your NPS

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is one of the most effective tools to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction. But just by itself, it doesn’t tell you much about how you compare to your competitors in your industry. Without a benchmark, it’s hard to determine if your score is excellent, average, or needs improvement.  

Read on if you want to find out why benchmarking your NPS is important, what the current industry standards are, and how you can improve your NPS.  

Why your Net Promoter Score (NPS) is Essential for Customer Success 

A quick heads-up: In this article, we won’t go too deep into the basics of NPS and focus instead on how your NPS can influence your business success. If you haven’t started working with NPS yet, you can check out our guide to the Net Promoter Score. Already measuring NPS? Then you want to continue reading. 

The power of the NPS is in its simplicity. Ultimately, it comes down to one question:  

“How likely is it that you would recommend this company/product/service to a friend/colleague?”  

Based on their answer, people are put into three groups: People who would recommend you are called promoters, passives are people who are satisfied but unenthusiastic, while detractors are unhappy customers. NPS scores are calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters and range from -100 to 100. If your number is above 1, it means that more people would recommend your brand than not. So with one number, you can get a quick overview of how loyal your customers currently are. 

Your NPS can help you:

Identify the risk of churning

When your customers rate you low on NPS, they are at risk of leaving to your competitors. Again and again, research has shown that acquiring customers costs more than retaining current ones – depending on the industry you are in it can cost five to seven times more. With the NPS you can easily identify churn risk and focus on turning that unhappy customer into a satisfied one.  

Find brand advocates

Customers who rate you high on the NPS are more likely to refer your brand to their friends, family, or colleagues. A great chance to turn them into brand advocates by offering e.g. a special discount code, a referral program where they can earn rewards for recommending your brand or giving them early access to new products or offers.  

Send personalized responses and follow-ups

Depending on how your customers answer your NPS question, you can create automated personalized messages like “What could we have done better today, Anne?”. In the case of an unhappy customer, you can also set up triggers that ping your customer success team to reach out to them.  

Benchmarking your NPS: What is a Good NPS Score by Industry? 

You might have read somewhere that a good NPS score is between 0 and 50 or between 30 and 60 and everything above is excellent. But these are averages that are measured across all industries and there is quite some variance even then.  

If you want to gain an understanding of where your company currently is and find ways to become the best in class, you need to go one layer deeper with your comparison. You have to benchmark your NPS to your industry – and ideally the country you are operating in.  

We partnered up with Watermelon Research to do a benchmarking study across Europe to find out the current state of NPS in 2025. This research highlights the big discrepancies between different industries: While you might have a decent NPS score of 19 if you are offering financial services, as a retailer, this is way below average (41).  

Before we go deeper into the current state of the NPS by industry, here are a few general guidelines on how to benchmark in a meaningful way:  

Compare apples with apples  

Some markets might struggle to achieve high NPS scores due to industry-specific factors. When you benchmark your NPS against industry competitors, you get a more accurate and informative view. If the average NPS in your industry is already low, it’s even more important to understand why it is and how you can be different to your competition.  

Understand regional differences 

The region your customers are from matters when it comes to NPS: There are cultural differences on how enthusiastic people are. Europeans tend to err on the conservative side when scoring on a numerical basis and are less likely to give scores of 9 or 10. You can see this effect even more strongly in countries like Sweden, a culture famous for valuing modesty and moderation. In Netigate’s research, Sweden generally had a lower average NPS than Germany or the UK. If you are operating on a global level, you want to benchmark your NPS by region and compare the markets you are active in.  

Be consistent in your comparison 

While the industry and country affect the NPS, so do other factors – when the survey is sent, which channels are used and how questions are phrased. For example, you will get more meaningful answers over the phone or face-to-face. At the same time, social desirability can skew these results to be more positive. If you speak to someone directly, they are more likely to give you the answers you want to hear. Timing can similarly affect the results – for example, sending out an NPS survey after huge changes to your product. For an accurate comparison, you want to be consistent on how and when you measure and what you compare your data to.  

Look beyond the number  

While the NPS itself gives you an overview on how your customers feel, you want to follow it up with an open-ended question like “Why did you choose this answer?” to gain deeper insights. Reading this feedback helps you understand what makes customers unhappy or what leads them to be loyal to your brand. Tools like Netigate use generative AI to help you identify common themes or recurring concerns in your customer feedback. These comments can highlight areas of improvement and can guide you what you should invest more time and money in.  

Measure your NPS regularly 

The NPS is a dynamic metric that evolves with changes in your product, service experiences, market trends, and even economic shifts. Measuring your NPS isn’t a one-time task – it’s essential to regularly assess your company’s progress to ensure you’re on the right track. By continually benchmarking, you can track how your initiatives are influencing customer loyalty and adjust your strategies to improve customer satisfaction. 

The Current State of CX in Europe: NPS Trends  

For our research, we compared three major industries – retail, financial services, and telecoms – across three European markets: Germany, the UK, and Sweden. Even if your company doesn’t fall into one of these industries, the findings are still worth reading, as some insights can be applicable across sectors. 

Our research found that the retail sector is best in class with an average net promoter score of 41, followed by financial services with 19. At the bottom is telecommunications with an average NPS score of 2. While Germany stands out for its consistency across sectors, the UK shows more variability across industries. The results in Sweden are more balanced but also on average lower than in Germany or the UK. This can also be attributed to cultural differences (see “Understand regional differences”).  

Now let’s dig a bit deeper into the current state of NPS by industry and how they can improve:   

The retail sector leads in NPS – but has the most variability among sectors  

While retail is leading the pack with an average NPS of 41, there is a 50-point gap between the best and worst performers which highlights inconsistent customer experiences. Some brands in this category are doing great like Samsung with an NPS of 61, while others are falling behind. 

How to improve the NPS: If you want to stand out in the retail sector, personalization plays a critical role contributing 25% to NPS improvement. The focus should be on making every customer feel individually valued. Flexibility is also key: customers expect retailers to adapt to their needs whether through tailored offers, seamless service or personalized interactions.  

Financial services have a moderate NPS with room for improvement  

In the financial services sector, the average NPS sits at a moderate 19, with the UK outperforming Germany and Sweden. A 40-point Customer experience gap – the difference between the best and worst NPS performance – signals significant opportunities for improvement. 

How to improve the NPS: Personalization is once again a major driver for boosting NPS, accounting for 26% of the impact. For your financial services company to stand out you have to prioritise providing services and products that truly fit customer needs. Equally important is developing a deeper understanding of what customers want and expect, allowing providers to deliver more meaningful and personalised experiences. 

Telecommunication struggles with low customer trust  

Telecoms struggle the most, with an average NPS of just 2. Most customers fall into the “passive” category, meaning they are neutral or indifferent toward their experiences. A narrower 30-point CX gap reflects a generally low level of performance.  

How to improve the NPS: To close the CX gap, telecom providers need to consistently “do the right thing”, even when no one is looking. Transparency is just as important, requiring companies to be honest, open, and reliable in every interaction. Most importantly, promises must be kept: customers need to see real actions that match the words. 

Best Practices for Improving Your NPS Score  

Not part of the three sectors we researched? We also collected some general best practices on how to improve your NPS.  

Improve the customer journey  

If you want to close the customer experience gap, you need to identify where your customers are experiencing dissatisfaction along the customer journey. Use your NPS results – particularly the feedback from open-ended questions – to pinpoint the main friction points.  

Look for common patterns in the responses to understand where improvements are most needed. For example, if many customers mention struggling with the onboarding process for your software, focus on making that experience simpler and more intuitive. 

Increase response times 

High NPS scores are closely tied to how responsive you are: customers appreciate it when their concern gets solved fast. To stay on top of this, you can automate a feedback-loop system that triggers follow-ups whenever someone leaves a low score in your NPS survey. Tools like Netigate make it easy to set up automated workflows that send internal alerts when negative feedback is received, helping your team act quickly and turning negative experiences into opportunities to retain the customer.  

Turn Passives into Promoters  

Passive respondents are often on the fence about your company, so it’s crucial to clearly communicate what makes your brand and product unique – and give them a reason to fall in love with you. Personalized offers and loyalty perks can help tip the balance.  

For example, if you run an e-commerce store, you might offer discounts to returning customers once they reach a certain order volume. Closing the customer feedback loop is just as important: let passives know how their feedback has influenced improvements, showing them that their voice truly matters. 

Use Tools to Turn Your Data into Actionable Insights 

With the right CX tool, you can easily analyze your feedback data. AI-assisted tools can help you understand customer sentiment. You can simply ask the AI to highlight the most common issues detractors are experiencing with your product or what your promoters appreciate about your company.  

You can also segment responses by channel, product, or country to make benchmarking more precise and meaningful. Once you have a clear view of the why behind your NPS scores, tools like Netigate enable you to automate follow-ups, close the feedback loop, and continuously improve the overall customer experience. 

Find out How You Compare to the Competition – Download the European Benchmarks Report 2025  

Do you want to learn more about where you stand compared to your competitors? Our report shows the average NPS scores across industries and countries in Europe in 2025 and offers actionable CX strategies to drive customer loyalty and business success.  

Apart from in-depth data on each industry, you can also learn about key trends that are shaping customer expectations and loyalty and proven solutions to bridge the customer experience gap.  

Download the NPS Benchmarks Report