The NPS Blindspot: What’s Missing from Your CX Growth Strategy
NPS may be the industry standard, but by itself it’s not the key to financial success. Discover why leading indicators like CES and CSAT, in connection with a next-gen, actionable NPS, hold the power to transform customer loyalty and business performance.
By Rhonda Sheets, President, CEO, Founder, Support EXP
I was recently watching a speech by a senior government official visiting a U.S. Marine base. He shared a personal story about how, at just 18 years old, he was about to take out a high-interest loan from a used car dealer outside the base. A Marine Corps leader stopped him and directed him to Navy Federal Credit Union.
That one moment of intervention, more than 25 years ago, left a lasting impression. Fast forward to today, and that official is telling this story to a national audience — organically promoting Navy Federal not because they asked, but because they earned his trust and loyalty through a meaningful experience.
That’s the real aim of Net Promoter Score (NPS)®: to inspire advocacy that lasts decades, not days.
So, before you celebrate that high NPS, ask yourself one question:
"Is this really driving my company’s growth — or just giving me a false sense of success?"
NPS may be widely adopted in the financial services industry, but relying on it alone is like checking your car’s rearview mirror to navigate forward. By the time you realize something is wrong, it’s already too late. A sky-high Net Promoter Score might feel like a victory — until customers quietly start leaving, revenue declines … and you’re left wondering what went wrong.
Consider another analogy: pure NPS is like a final grade on a report card — it tells you how the semester ended, but not how the student did on each assignment, where they struggled, or what study habits led to success. It’s a summary metric.
Learn more:
- Behavioral Economics for Banks: Big Results from Small CX Moments
- NPS Under Fire: Inside 3 CX Giants’ Push for a Better Metric
- For This Bank, Branches Are Key to Defending Its Market Primacy
Lagging Metrics, Losing Customers
Without analysis beyond the NPS question, you’re missing the diagnostic layer. You don’t know what specifically contributed to the score — whether it’s friction in the digital banking experience, poor in-branch service, or confusing loan processes. You’re also not capturing when or where the experience fell below expectations — and by how much.
As a result, you’re not getting intel to guide the precise, targeted action you need to fix the problem or improve future performance. By the time you notice a dip in NPS, the damage has already been done. Customers have taken their business elsewhere, when many of them would have been receptive to (even appreciative of!) efforts to remedy the situation.
If you’re serious about customer loyalty, financial performance, and sustainable growth, you need to shift your focus to what actually drives success: leading indicators like Customer Effort Score (CES) and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), along with what may be called Actionable NPS.
As shown by the examples above, the basic Net Promoter Score — a customer’s response on an 11-point scale to the question "Would you recommend this organization to others?" — is what analytics professionals call a lagging indicator — a metric that reflects past performance but does not, by itself, drive success. A high Net Promoter Score may be a positive outcome, but it’s not the ultimate goal. It’s just a number — it doesn’t "pay the bills."
Leveraging Leading Indicators
Right now, you should be asking: if improving NPS does not directly create better business results…what does? Success in achieving financial goals comes from focusing on leading indicators, the key drivers that ultimately influence NPS.
Even though NPS tends to correlate with customer loyalty and financial growth over time, it does not cause it. Growth, in fact, results from the underlying and ongoing efforts to improve customer experience, measured by leading indicators such as CES and CSAT.
These metrics — along with Actionable NPS — provide insights that allow organizations to make real-time improvements that directly influence outcomes. THEY are the drivers of the outcomes you want most.
Think of these metrics as the Trifecta of CX Success:
- CES (Customer Effort Score) pinpoints friction in key customer journeys — because if doing business with you is difficult, customers won’t stick around. It tells you where you need to act to make it easier for customers to do business with you.
- CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) gives you feedback on customer satisfaction at critical touchpoints, helping you fine-tune interactions before they impact loyalty. Measuring satisfaction after a specific transaction shows you promptly how closely your service is meeting customer expectations.
- Actionable NPS first tells you how likely customers are to recommend you; then it digs deeper to reveal the motivation behind that customer sentiment. Only when you get behind the number to find out what’s driving those scores do you have information you can act on — not just a lagging indicator.
It should be clear that measurement, by itself, is not enough for success. While there’s a famous quote in performance management that "What gets measured, gets improved," that adage must be modified to account for the need to act: only what gets measured and acted upon gets improved! The virtue of leading indicators is that they allow you to ACT to influence outcomes.
Customer Effort Score (CES): Make It Easy or Lose Them
If you want real improvement — not just a flashy NPS — it’s also time to focus on what truly drives customer loyalty: ease of doing business.
One of the best leading indicators, Customer Effort Score (CES), measures how easy (or frustrating) it is for customers to interact with you — whether they’re applying for a loan, opening an account, or making a simple transaction. Every potential friction point matters, and CES pinpoints exactly where customers are struggling.
The numbers don’t lie:
- 81% of customers who have high-effort experiences with you will bad-mouth your business.
- 96% of them will leave you for good.
- On the flip side, 94% of customers having low-effort experiences stay loyal — and 88% will do more business with you.
The Simple Truth: If you make life hard for your customers, they won’t stick around. But remove the friction, and they’ll reward you with loyalty — and their business.
Measuring CES shines its spotlight on friction points, allowing companies to make targeted fixes that improve the customer experience where it matters most. The question is simple: How easy is it to do business with us? But the impact is huge — because when customers find interactions effortless, they’re far more likely to recommend you.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): Your Loyalty Engine
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) is a pulse check on how customers feel about doing business with you. Are you meeting their expectations? Whether it’s a single interaction, a full customer journey (like the loan process), or their overall relationship with your brand, CSAT tells you if you’re winning them over — or pushing them away.
Want customers to champion your brand? You need to get them into the "zone of affection" — that sweet spot where satisfaction turns into loyalty, and loyalty turns into advocacy. Because satisfied customers don’t just stick around; they bring others with them.
Data proves it: To turn customers into loyal promoters, you need an overall satisfaction score of at least 4.8 to 4.9 on a 5-point scale. Fall below that threshold, and you’re not just missing out on advocacy — you’re opening the door for customers to walk away. High satisfaction isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s the make-or-break factor for long-term loyalty and financial success.
The Bottom Line: The CX Trifecta That Drives Performance
NPS may be the industry’s go-to metric, but on its own, it’s not enough. Boards, stakeholders, and customers don’t care about a single number; they care about results. And the only way to deliver results is by proactively managing the experiences that create loyal customers — not just measuring them after the fact.
NPS at its most basic doesn’t drive growth because there’s no guarantee that someone who says they will recommend you will follow through on that stated intention. But when they do, the effect it can have on your brand can be enormous. That’s why you want more than just the number — you want your customer saying your name and singing your praises to others, loud and proud, for years to come.
To build a CX strategy that wins this kind of visible brand advocacy, financial institutions need to focus on the three key metrics that work together to drive customer loyalty and business growth: CES, CSAT, and Actionable NPS — the Trifecta of CX Success.
