Create an NPS survey

Last updated: 16 Oct 2026

Use this guide to create a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey, set up its rating question and see where the scores go. For survey creators.

About NPS surveys

An NPS survey measures customer loyalty with one question:

"How likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or colleague?"

Respondents rate their likelihood. With the default scale of 10, they pick a number from 1 to 10. The scores fall into three groups:

• Detractors (0-6): unhappy customers who may discourage others.
• Passives (7-8): satisfied but not enthusiastic customers. The question editor calls this group Satisfactory.
• Promoters (9-10): loyal customers who are likely to recommend you.

NPS = % of Promoters − % of Detractors

Follow-up questions

To learn more, add follow-up questions:

• For Detractors: "What can we do to improve your experience?"
• For Passives: "What could we do to earn a higher score from you?"
• For Promoters: "What do you like most about our product/service?"

Uses

• Customer feedback: understand customer sentiment and what to improve.
• Benchmarking: compare your performance over time or against industry standards.
• Growth: find your Promoters and use them for word-of-mouth marketing.

Create the survey

1. Open InPoll and go to the Surveys tab.
2. In the left panel, click Create survey.
3. Enter a Survey title (up to 70 characters).
4. Open the Survey type list. General Survey is selected by default.
5. Select NPS Score Survey.
6. Optional: enter a Description (up to 250 characters).

7. Click Create survey. InPoll opens the new survey in the survey builder.

Set up the rating question

An NPS survey allows only rating questions, so InPoll does not show a question type list. The question has three rating groups: Detractor, Satisfactory (Passive) and Promoter.

1. On the Questions tab, enter your question in the Title box.
2. For each group, choose a Color, for example red for Detractors, orange for Passives and green for Promoters.
3. In the Detractor Shape list, choose Star, Smiley, Thumb, Heart or Number.
4. Optional: change the Satisfactory Shape or the Promoter Shape.
5. To collect a written comment for a group, turn on its Opinion switch.
6. Click Done.

Shape rules

• When you choose a shape for Detractor Shape, InPoll sets Satisfactory Shape and Promoter Shape to the same shape. You can then change them to other shapes. They do not have to match the Detractor Shape.
• If you choose Number for Detractor Shape, the other two groups must also use Number. If you choose a shape, you cannot choose Number for the other groups. InPoll disables the options that do not apply.
• When you choose Number, respondents see only numbers and no shapes.

How respondents see the question

When the survey is live, the ratings take the color of their group as the respondent picks a score. If you turned on Opinion for a group, a text box appears for that group.

A 1 to 10 scale shows the number under each icon. On a phone, the scale fits in one row.

Set the survey settings

NPS surveys have two extra options on the Survey Settings tab. You can change them until you publish the survey.

• Scale: choose 3, 5 or 10. The scale sets how many ratings the question shows. The default is 10.
• No. Of Questions in NPS: an NPS survey usually has one question, but you can set up to five. The default is 1. InPoll does not let you add more questions than this number, and it does not let you set a number lower than the questions you already added.

Where the scores go

InPoll stores the NPS score on every response. It uses the answer to the survey's first rating question. If your scale is 3 or 5, InPoll converts the answer to a score from 0 to 10. It also stores the category: Promoter, Passive or Detractor.

• Summary > Responses: the Score column shows each score with its category, for example 9 · Promoter.
• Summary > Analytics: the Net Promoter Score tile shows the score with the share of promoters, passives and detractors, and a gauge from -100 to +100. The tiles above it show submitted responses and the response rate.

• Salesforce reports: the NPS by survey report and the other InPoll reports use these scores. See Reports: CSAT, NPS and response rate.

Need a satisfaction survey instead?

To ask how satisfied a customer is, for example after a Case is closed, use the Case closed: quick CSAT template. It asks for a 1 to 5 star rating and an optional comment. See Create a survey from a template.

InPoll stores the star rating as the CSAT score on each response, with the scale (for example 4 of 5). A response counts as satisfied when the rating is at least 80% of the scale, for example 4 or 5 out of 5. The Analytics tab shows the average CSAT and the percent satisfied, with one bar for each rating.

Next: Publish a survey

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