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How to Turn NPS Passives into Promoters: Top 5 Ways to Checkout in 2024
Article written by Pragadeesh Natarajan
pragadeesh
11 min read
23 February 2026
Best Of
Article written by Pragadeesh Natarajan
pragadeesh
11 min read
23 February 2026
You’ve probably come across the term NPS passives before. But it hasn’t meant much to you until now. You’ve focused on leveraging your promoters and detractors to grow your business.
And sure, your reasons are valid and obvious. Stop the angry, disappointed customers from leaving your business and get happy customers to promote your brand.
But what about your passive customers, who comprise a significant portion of your customer base?
Most businesses often neglect this group of people. One main reason is you do not include passive customers while calculating the NPS score. And since they’re focused on the score, it’s easy to ignore this customer segment.
This would be a sadly lost opportunity at a time when retaining customers is far more important than acquiring new customers.
In this article, we’ll explain who passive customers are, the NPS scoring system, why focusing on this group of customers is critical, and the different ways to turn passive customers into promoters. Ready? Let’s dive in.
The NPS, or Net Promoter Score, is a metric for customer loyalty and satisfaction. Fred Reichheld introduced it in a 2003 Harvard Business Review article.
The NPS is calculated based on responses to a single question: “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?”
Respondents are categorized as follows:
To calculate Net Promoter Score (NPS):
NPS = % of Promoters – % of Detractors
Passives are your customers who gave you a score of 7 or 8. Passives have neutral feelings about your product or service.
They are not dissatisfied with your product and actually might like it. But they are not satisfied or enthusiastic enough to recommend it to others.
They might continue to use your product. But they’re vulnerable to competitive offerings and will shift to a competitor product if they think it’s a better deal.
The good news is that your passive customers can often be turned into your promoters with small improvements or fixes to your product or service. This process is simpler if ticketing software is embedded in your feedback system, like SurveySparrow’s Case Management.
You can sign up below to try all of SurveySparrow’s features FREE for 14 days.
You’re missing out big time if you aren’t leveraging your passive customers. Here are some reasons you need to try to turn your NPS passives into your promoters.
Passives are open to alternatives. Your product happens to be one of the tools available to them. They’ve got plenty of other options to get their job done.
On top of that, they’ve had a neutral experience with your brand and thus have neutral feelings associated with your product. They’re indifferent to your product and lack solid feelings for it.
This indifference makes them more likely to leave than your detractors. Passives will shift to a competitor at the slightest opportunity.
According to ChurnZero, “Passives have no problem switching to a different brand if the price or offering is slightly better.”
In another study done by HBR, 20% of passives indicated they were ready to leave, while 28% of detractors expressed interest in staying.
They’ll easily switch to competitors if they offer a slightly better deal, price, or product.
When you ignore the passives, you’re overlooking a large portion of your target market that’s most likely to churn
Let’s say 50% of your customers are your promoters and 20% are detractors—that means the rest of the 30% are your passive customers who are ready to leave you!
You can’t afford not to address this group of customers. Retaining your existing customers takes much less effort and money than acquiring new ones.
Unlike your detractors, your passives are not passionate enough about your product to voice their opinions.
Your detractors care enough about your product to be vocal about it. They’re vocal about your product because they have strong feelings for it.
Passives, on the other hand, don’t care. Your product is just like any other product out there. They see little or no difference between your product and other products.
This is why they are much less engaged with your product or business than your promoters or detractors.
Passives are customers who scored you 7 or 8.
That’s close to a score of 9 or 10 that makes your customers your promoters.
Passives think your product is good but not good enough to deserve a score of 9 or 10.
This means the effort to convert them into your promoters is much less than it would take to transform even your least angry detractors.
We’ll show you how to turn your passives into promoters later in the article.
Since your passives don’t see much difference between your product and your competitor’s, price becomes a huge factor when deciding which product to stay with or switch to.
Therefore, the most important thing you can do is to get their thoughts on your product’s pricing.
Do they feel that the price they pay exceeds the value they get? Do they think that your product is worth the cost?
The key question you must ask yourself is: What could I do to increase our product’s perceived value?
Identifying the reasons behind your customers’ passive responses involves understanding various factors contributing to their moderate satisfaction levels. Here are some key reasons:
Below, we show some top ways to turn passive customers into promoters in 2023.
Passives aren’t as interested in your product as you think they are. You should avoid sounding neutral to this group of your customers.
If your message is generic, your passives will ignore it. A nondirect and transparent statement might come off as shallow and insincere.
Your passives need to know that you are serious about their concerns and are genuinely interested in solving their problems.
You need to reach out to them and ask them direct questions that would help you improve their experience with your product or service. Ask them how you can help and what they want to see in your product or service.
Question them about the unique needs they’re looking to solve with your product and how you can better serve those needs.
Your passives might be using your product out of sheer necessity. They could seldom use your product and use it along with many other alternative solutions in the market.
Due to the above reasons, it’s easy for passive customers to completely ignore a generic question such as What is the reason for your score?
Questions like the one above might be taken lightly and neglected by passive customers. It would pay to follow up until you get the answers you seek from your inactive customers.
Here are some open-ended questions you can ask your passive customers:
While passives might not seem as crucial as your detractors, you can gain valuable insights from your passives that you can use to improve your product.
Since your passive customers gave you a score close to a promoter’s score, it really shouldn’t take much effort to turn them into advocates. A slight improvement or two might keep a passive from becoming your promoter.
For instance, a new feature might be all that they need. They might request a feature to solve your product’s unique problem.
In some cases, you might only have to make a minor tweak to an existing feature.
Your NPS passives are vulnerable to better deals from your competitors. So it would help if you watched what your competitors offer to lure your customers away from you.
You need to analyze your competitors frequently and determine the reasons that might lead to churn. Here are some reasons you need to be aware of:
Your passives think that there’s nothing unique about your offering. They believe they have nothing to lose if they switch to a competitor’s product.
They even think they could probably get more value from other products.
It would be best to show them your product is different and more valuable than the competing products.
Here are some ways to do that:
SurveySparrow‘s NPS module provides several features that can help you convert passives into promoters:
Here are some simple ways to use SurveySparrow’s NPS module to turn passive customers into promoters:
A personalized walkthrough by our experts. No strings attached!
You could grow your business much faster if you focused on turning your passive customers into your promoters.
Focusing on your NPS passives can prevent most of your customer base from switching to other products.
Are you focused on retaining your customers? Check out our article on how to turn your detractors into promoters.
Do you have any questions on turning your NPS passives into promoters? Are there any exciting tips or techniques you use to convert your passives into promoters? Let us know about them in the comment section below. Looking to conduct effective NPS surveys that your customers will love answering? Feel free to check out SurveySparrow.
Thousands of brands trust SurveySparrow to turn feedback into growth. Try it free today!
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