If you can only ask your customers one question to determine their level of satisfaction with your product or service, you need to ask them “How likely would you be to recommend our company to a friend?” So says loyalty expert Fred Reichheld in his book “The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth”.
He suggests that customers that become your advocate and are willing to risk their reputation by recommending you to a friend are unquestionably loyal. This is the type of customer that a company can build long term growth upon. They typically will pay a higher price and they will forgive an occasional error or quality problem. In fact, he suggests that this is the only kind of growth that can be sustained over the long term. He calls this type of customer a “Net Promoter”.
He feels that the real challenge for companies is to make employees just as accountable for providing a superior customer experience as they now feel for delivering superior profits. And that message starts at the top with key executives touting customer service over profits.
Implementing this approach is simple according to Reichheld. Companies need to ask this all-important question in a regular, systematic, and timely fashion. They need to regularly track the answers, publish the results, and they need to put the information to work immediately. Companies that actively use this process can manage customer loyalty and the growth it produces just as rigorously as they can manage profits.
I agree with the concept, but I think he is asking the wrong question. The question should be, “Have you recommended our company to a friend?” It is one thing to say that you will do it and another to actually do it. Real advocates are people who actually recommend your firm to their friends. They are not people who just talk about it.
John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2006 All rights reserved.
Please visit my website at www.firstbestordifferent.com