Understanding Passives as a Net Promoter Score Customer Service KPI

Overview of Passives

Within the context of Net Promoter Score (NPS) and customer service, the term 'Passives' refers to a key performance indicator (KPI) that captures the number of customers who are indifferent or neutral towards a company's products or services.

Passives are identified through an NPS survey and are those customers who provide a score of 7 or 8 in response to the question "On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?"

Passives represent a segment of your customer base that sits in between Promoters and Detractors. While they might be reasonably satisfied with your product or service, they are not enthusiastic enough to promote your business and may switch to a competitor if given a more attractive offer.

Calculating Passives

The calculation of 'Passives' in an NPS survey is a count of the number of respondents who give a score of 7 or 8. Counting passives is straightforward—you simply tally up the number of responses in this range. However, to get the proportion of passives in relation to all respondents, which is more useful for NPS calculation, you need to use the total number of survey respondents.

Here's the formula represented in more detail:

Passives Percentage = (Number of Passives / Total Number of Survey Respondents) * 100

Understanding the Passives segment can help companies to identify potential improvements to their product or service that could convert these customers into Promoters. It also helps to identify vulnerabilities where these customers might easily switch to a competitor.