Beyond the score: reimagining customer advocacy for the next era of marketing
Customer loyalty looks very different now than it did even a few years ago.
Expectations are higher. Switching costs are lower. And in an attention economy defined by infinite choice, loyalty has become increasingly fragile – with long-term commitment shaped by convenience, relevance, consistency and timing. At the same time, as artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes how experiences are delivered, measured and optimized, trust – hard-earned and deeply personal – has never been more critical, nor more consequential when lost.
Against this backdrop, many marketers are revisiting a familiar question:
Is Net Promoter Score (NPS) still the right north star for customer advocacy or is it time to rethink how we measure loyalty altogether?
The enduring role of NPS
Despite years of debate, NPS remains one of the most widely used indicators of customer loyalty and brand health across Canadian organizations.
Its appeal is unchanged: it is simple, intuitive and easy to communicate across teams and leadership levels. In an era of increasingly complex data ecosystems, that simplicity still matters.
What has changed is how NPS is being used.
In 2026, NPS is less likely to stand alone. Instead, it increasingly functions as:
- A signal, not a target
- A starting point, not a conclusion
- A connector between experience, trust and long-term growth
Rather than being optimized in isolation, NPS now comes into sharper focus when sentiment shifts, performance dips, or strategic decisions require grounding in the customer voice.
Where NPS fits in modern CX frameworks
Across industries, Canadian marketers are embedding NPS within broader customer experience and analytics frameworks.
Some organizations rely on business-as-usual NPS tracking to monitor long-term brand health. Others lean more heavily on transactional NPS, particularly in service-driven or regulated environments where post-interaction feedback supports operational accountability and service-level commitments.
Increasingly, mature organizations are using both:
- Relational NPS to understand overall relationship strength and brand perception
- Transactional NPS to diagnose friction at specific moments in the journey
This dual approach reflects growing measurement maturity. Relational NPS informs strategic direction; transactional NPS enables timely action. One without the other leaves blind spots.
From loyalty measurement to advocacy enablement
While NPS is often described as a loyalty metric, its true strategic value lies in its connection to advocacy.
NPS identifies promoters, or customers who are most likely to recommend, defend and amplify a brand. In 2026, advocacy is no longer a “nice to have.” It is a core growth lever.
Advocates:
- Drive trusted word-of-mouth in peer networks
- Influence discovery and consideration through reviews and social platforms
- Reduce acquisition costs by shortening decision cycles
Canadian market data reinforces this shift. Recent loyalty research shows uneven NPS performance across sectors – such as modest gains in insurance alongside persistently low overall scores – underscoring that advocacy is fragile and increasingly tied to experience quality, personalization and trust, rather than satisfaction alone.
But advocacy does not happen by accident. It is built on consistent value delivery, emotional connection and trust.
Trust in the age of AI: why advocacy matters more than ever
As AI becomes deeply embedded across customer journeys, a paradox has emerged.
Customers increasingly expect personalization, speed and relevance – often powered by AI. At the same time, concerns around transparency, data usage, bias and automation continue to grow. Many consumers are comfortable using AI-enabled services, yet uneasy about how decisions are made behind the scenes.
This dynamic varies across Canadian industries. Digital-first organizations, including fintechs, are outperforming traditional institutions on loyalty and recommendation metrics, while legacy brands face challenges keeping pace with rising expectations around relevance and ease.
This is where advocacy plays a stabilizing role.
A recommendation from another customer carries credibility that no algorithm can replicate. Advocacy humanizes brands in an increasingly automated world. It reassures customers that real experiences and real people stand behind the promise.
For marketers in 2026 and beyond, advocacy is no longer just about growth. It is about trust sustenance.
How Canadian marketers are evolving NPS usage
NPS usage in Canada is becoming more nuanced and contextual.
Beyond traditional tracking, organizations are:
- Applying journey-based NPS to critical moments rather than relying solely on end-to-end averages
- Adapting NPS by industry, recognizing that advocacy looks different in retail, financial services, B2B and public-sector-adjacent environments
- Connecting NPS insights to social amplification, understanding how promoters influence brand perception through reviews, communities and user-generated content
Younger consumers are accelerating this evolution. Research into Canadian Gen Z behaviour shows heavy reliance on peer validation, social proof and digital discovery – making advocacy increasingly visible, persistent and influential beyond survey data.
AI and the next evolution of NPS
In 2026, the question is no longer whether AI will influence NPS programs; it already has. The real question is how effectively organizations are using it.
When implemented responsibly, AI can enhance how NPS insights are generated and acted upon, though this requires careful attention to privacy, transparency and ethical use principles:
- Advanced analysis of open-ended feedback, surfacing themes, sentiment and emotional intensity at scale
- Near real-time insight, enabling faster response than traditional reporting cycles
- Predictive modeling, using NPS alongside behavioural and transactional data to forecast churn risk or advocacy potential
- Closed-loop feedback systems, routing insights to the right teams with speed and accountability
Large language models are transforming unstructured feedback into decision-ready insight – reducing manual bias while increasing speed and depth.
At the same time, ethical considerations are front and centre. As AI-driven insights increasingly influence prioritization and decision-making, transparency, fairness and explainability are no longer optional.
Responsible AI use is becoming part of the trust equation itself. Organizations leveraging AI for customer insights should ensure compliance with applicable privacy legislation and emerging AI governance frameworks, maintaining transparency about data usage and algorithmic decision-making processes.
Beyond NPS: what else should marketers be measuring?
If advocacy is the outcome we care about, no single metric can capture it fully.
As organizations look ahead, many are expanding their measurement frameworks to include complementary signals that, together with NPS, provide a more complete picture of advocacy.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
Measures how easy it was for customers to achieve their goal. Friction is one of the fastest killers of advocacy, particularly in service-heavy and digital journeys.
Behavioural loyalty signals
Repeat usage, retention, tenure and feature adoption reflect what customers do, not just what they say. These signals ground stated loyalty in real-world action.
Referral and review metrics
Referrals, ratings, reviews and social mentions reflect active advocacy. NPS helps identify who might advocate; these metrics show whether they actually do.
Trust and sentiment indicators
AI-driven sentiment and emotion analysis adds texture to scores, revealing confidence, frustration or reassurance that numeric metrics alone cannot capture.
Employee advocacy signals (prospective indicator)
In relationship-driven and service-led industries, employee advocacy is often an early signal of customer advocacy, reflecting how clearly brand intent is understood and believed internally. In this sense, advocacy flows from the inside out. Employee trust in leadership direction, product integrity, and the responsible use of technology can serve as a leading indicator of how customers will perceive and ultimately recommend a brand. For organizations navigating change, particularly during AI-driven transformation, monitoring internal advocacy signals alongside customer metrics can provide early warning signs or clear validation that strategy is landing as intended.
So, what role does NPS play now?
In a modern advocacy system, NPS is no longer the destination. It is the entry point.
It works best when it:
- Flags shifts in sentiment
- Identifies promoters and detractors
- Triggers deeper investigation using complementary metrics
The most resilient organizations in 2026 are not abandoning NPS. They are contextualizing it – surrounding it with behavioural, emotional and trust-based signals that reflect how advocacy actually forms and spreads today.
Looking ahead
If we were to design the next generation of customer advocacy metrics, it wouldn’t replace NPS. It would move beyond it. It would combine sentiment with behaviour, trust with transparency, and AI-driven insight with human judgment.
The real question for marketers in 2026 isn’t which metric to choose. It’s whether we are building advocacy systems that reflect how customers actually decide, trust and recommend in a rapidly changing world.
Author:
Vineeta Menon, Director, Digital Analytics, OLG
References
- Qualtrics, Transactional vs. Relational NPS
- Meegle, NPS and Brand Advocacy
- CEOWORLD Magazine, The Impact of Customer Advocacy on Business
- Journal of Product & Brand Management (Emerald), Brand Advocacy: A Scoping Review
- NPS Canada, How Generation Z Is Reshaping the Canadian Consumer Landscape
- ScoutOS, AI NPS Analysis: Turning Feedback into Business Wins
- Insight7, AI Optimization Frameworks for Measuring NPS Improvement
- Edelman, Trust Barometer (Canada)
- Ipsos, Canadian Customer Satisfaction Index (Insurance)
- National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association of Canada, Fintechs Lead NPS Race
- Retail Insider / LoyalT 2025, Canadian Loyalty Trends
- ResearchAndMarkets, Canada Loyalty Programs Intelligence Report 2025
