A high NPS score does not make you successful

A 9. Even a 10. A great result, you might think. The customer is satisfied. Mission accomplished. But is that really the case? After a visit to a garage, an online purchase, or a call with customer support, we all get the same: a short survey. “How likely are you to recommend us?” One number. Done. It’s convenient, it gives an overview. Tracks trends. Enables comparisons. Provides benchmarks. But the question too often left unasked is: do these numbers really predict what customers will do?

Written by Yvette van der Weele

Research Consultant at Forum Research

Published on 01/12/2025

From Scores to Behaviour: The Gap is Bigger Than You Think

In practice, things often play out differently.

Customers give high ratings, yet still leave. Or they say they would recommend you, but never do.

It’s not unwillingness. It’s human.

What happens in our minds when we decide to stay, buy, or leave rarely fits neatly into a single score question.

We do not choose rationally

Extensive research into human behavior has made this clear for years: most decisions are intuitive, not rational.

Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate in Economics, described this with his two-system model:

System 1: Intuition (fast, automatic, emotional)

System 2: Reason (slow, effortful, analytical)

And System 1 dominates! We decide based on feeling and later rationalize it with a logical story.

This also applies to customer loyalty. We remain loyal to brands and providers that make us feel good.

The Problem With Score-Based Questions

Scores like the NPS primarily engage the rational system.

People pause briefly and give a reasoned assessment of their experience.

And those assessments often focus on functional elements:

Product availability
Delivery speed
Price or product performance

If something goes wrong here, it leads to frustration or disappointment. These are hygiene factors: things that must simply be done well.

But here lies the trap:

Just because everything functions properly doesn’t mean a customer is loyal.

In fact, some brands have incredibly devoted fans, even if their functional performance leaves room for improvement. Think Alfa Romeo or McDonald’s.

True emotional connection lies elsewhere.

Loyalty lives beneath the surface

Anyone who truly wants to understand loyalty needs to look beyond rationality. You have to understand what happens in the intuitive system, beneath the surface.

And that cannot be captured in a number.

That is why, at Forum, we measure differently. No score-based questions, but images, associations and stories. The intuitive brain is highly associative by nature. People often feel more than they are able to put into words, and working with images helps unlock that.

Only when you understand what truly moves people can you set loyalty in motion.

Walking around with a high NPS score feels good.

Understanding why customers stay or leave is far more valuable.

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