Understanding Custom NPS

Category: Custom NPS | Type: Overview | Part 1 of 2 in : Custom NPS

What you'll find in this guide:

1. Custom NPS Overview

2. What NPS measures

3. Who can create a Custom NPS question

4. How Custom NPS differs from eNPS

5. Using Custom NPS inside a Standalone Index

6. FAQs

Custom NPS - measure what matters to you, not just your employees

Hive's eNPS question has always given you a reliable way to measure how likely your employees are to recommend your organisation as a place to work. But what if you need to ask the same kind of question to a different audience - volunteers, contractors, line managers, or people who use an internal service?

Custom NPS makes that possible. You write the question. You name the metric. Hive handles the scoring.

What NPS measures - and why the formula is fixed

Net Promoter Score is a widely used way of measuring recommendation and advocacy. The formula is simple:

NPS = % Promoters − % Detractors

Respondents answer on a 0–10 scale. Their score puts them in one of three groups:

The final score runs from −100 (everyone is a Detractor) to +100 (everyone is a Promoter). Anything above zero means you have more Promoters than Detractors.

The 0–10 scale and the Detractor / Passive / Promoter boundaries are hardcoded. That's deliberate — it keeps your scores valid, comparable over time, and consistent with NPS methodology used everywhere else in the world.

How Custom NPS differs from eNPS

Your existing eNPS question is unchanged. It still lives in your question bank, is still scored exactly the same way, and still feeds Hive's cross-customer benchmarking.

Custom NPS is additive — it opens NPS-style scoring to any question you want to ask, of any audience. The two can coexist in the same survey without conflict.

A few things Custom NPS is not:

• Not a benchmark replacement. Because your question wording and audience are bespoke, Custom NPS scores are intentionally excluded from Hive's global eNPS benchmark. Including them would make the benchmark meaningless for everyone.
• Not a standard mean score. Custom NPS uses the NPS formula, not a 0–10 average. The two aren't directly comparable.
• Not a change to eNPS. Your Global eNPS question is untouched.

Who can create a Custom NPS question

Any Hive admin who manages your organisation's question bank. If you can't see the option in My Question Bank, speak to another admin in your organisation or contact Hive Support.

Using Custom NPS inside a Standalone Index

If your account includes the Standalone Indexes, a Custom NPS question can be included as one of the questions in a bespoke index.

When it's used inside a Standalone Index, it's scored two ways simultaneously:

• As part of the index — it converts to a 0–10 average, so it can be combined with the other questions in the index to produce a composite score.
• On its own — when viewed as an individual metric on the dashboard, it retains its native NPS scoring (−100 to +100).

This is what makes it possible to build something like a Volunteer Engagement Index — where a vNPS question sits alongside other bespoke questions, each contributing to the index while still being readable on its own terms.

Custom NPS is designed to work with the Standalone Indexes. If you're not sure whether this is part of your account, speak to your Account Manager.

FAQs

Can I change the 0–10 scale or the scoring boundaries?
No. The scale and the Detractor / Passive / Promoter splits are fixed. This is intentional — changing them would undermine the validity of the score and make it incomparable to any other NPS measure.

Can I use the same Custom NPS question in more than one survey?
Yes. Once saved in your question bank, you can add it to as many surveys as you like. Results aggregate against the same label on the dashboard, so you can trend it over time.

Why doesn't my Custom NPS score appear in the eNPS benchmark?
Because the question and audience are yours, not Hive's. The cross-customer benchmark only includes responses to the standard Global eNPS question, asked the same way across every customer. Mixing in bespoke questions would dilute its statistical integrity.

How is Custom NPS different from an index?
An index combines multiple questions into a single composite score. A Custom NPS is a single question using NPS scoring. If you want to include a Custom NPS question inside an index without being required to use Hive's standard Engagement Index questions, you'll need Standalone Indexes.

🎓 Other Useful Information

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• My Question Bank

• Indexes

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