June 13, 2012, Stanford Social Innovation Review—Nonprofits are starting to use the tool to measure the loyalty and engagement of their clients, and the stories emerging from the nascent practice—such as the early success of the Durham Performing Arts Center—are promising.
June 2, 2012, The Age—Qantas has launched a trial of a system that allows 12,700 frequent travelers to rate the service of flight attendants and other staff using a Net Promoter score. The airline's goal is to reward staff based on those scores. ''Incentivizing people for doing a good job is absolutely the way we have to go,'' said Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce.
April 19, 2012, CNNMoney—When Jim Bush was put in charge of customer service at American Express, he transformed it by switching to the Net Promoter score developed by Bain's Fred Reichheld. Bush's decision to make conversations less structured and more human has paid off: Customer spending is up, attrition is down.
January 9, 2012, American Banker—Leading banks are reinventing the industry's business model to reap the economic benefits of customer loyalty.
December 19, 2011, Forbes.com—When delighting the customer becomes the goal, everything must be measured against that goal. Two powerful methodologies can help. One is the Net Promoter Score.
December 2, 2011, FORTUNE—The much buzzed about cloud computing provider is planning to take on industry giants not with pure technology, but radical customer service through the Net Promoter® System.
November 22, 2011, Knowledge@Wharton—Rob Markey, co author of The Ultimate Question 2.0, speaks with Peter Fader, Wharton marketing professor and co-director of The Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative to provide an in depth look at the Net Promoter® System.
October 26, 2011, Forbes.com—Banks generally do a poor job today in delighting their customers. As The Ultimate Question 2.0 shows, the average Net Promoter Score (NPS) of US banks is only 13%: in other words, promoters barely outnumber detractors. The average NPS for a national bank with branches is minus 6%: i.e. detractors actually outnumber promoters. Banks have much to learn from the experience of USAA, which enjoys a plus 88% NPS; in other words, most of USAA's customers are delighted with it-more on USAA below.
October 10, 2011, HanifinLoyalty.com—The topic was a new book, The Ultimate Question 2.0 "How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World", which Markey co-authored with Fred Reichheld and published in September. The book was a revised and expanded edition of The Ultimate Question, the original book published in 2006 which introduced the world to the Net Promoter Score (NPS). When I spoke with Mr. Markey, he was quick to shift my focus from "book review" to developing an understanding of how NPS had evolved from a scoring metric to a system which had developed through the collective experience of the thousands of companies working with NPS since 2006. With so much to talk about in a brief period of time, I have crafted a three part series of posts covering the interview, of which this is the first.
October 17, 2011, HanifinLoyalty.com—My interview with Rob Markey about the new book, The Ultimate Question 2.0, "How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World", continues today with a closer look at how the "score" has evolved into a "system". The book includes a number of case studies ranging from Charles Schwab to Apple Retail to The Progressive Group of Insurance Companies. One common element of execution employed by each firm was to include a short-cycle, closed-loop feedback mechanism that turns survey results into usable business intelligence that front-line managers and employees can use to better serve customers.
October 20, 2011, HanifinLoyalty.com—Listening to the results that do come in and making change on the front lines will earn your way to 30-40% response rates over time. Rackspace, one of the examples cited in The Ultimate Question 2.0 gets above 60% response rates to its surveys. "Here's why" stated Markey "Rackspace earned participation in its surveys because they are meaningful to the customer."
October 20, 2011, Future of Business, Rob Markey of Bain Rob Markey is more charitable, though. A partner in the management consulting firm Bain & Company, he says: "Lots of companies invariably want to create a great company. They want to treat employees with dignity and respect in a way that earns loyalty." The problem, he adds, is that it is "really hard to do". The concept of creating loyalty - among both employees and customers - and enjoying the benefits of that is not intellectually demanding. It is just that "other things" distract executives. Chief among these is the pressure from investors and others to produce short-term performance, and profit and loss accounts are imperfect at capturing information in such areas as future intention to buy. However, thanks to Markey and his Bain colleague, Fred Reichheld, business leaders have less excuse. Having worked on this issue for many years - Reichheld wrote a seminal book on the subject, "The Loyalty Effect", back in 1996 - the pair have come up with a system that enables companies to understand what their customers really think of them and to see what the effect of this rating will be on their future health. It's a "tool kit" that lets leaders earn the loyalty of their customers over the long run, explains Markey.
October 23, 2011, Business Line (The Hindu)—Say 'profit,' and it perhaps sounds cool and makes you feel good. It can, therefore, be disturbing to open The Ultimate Question 2.0 (Harvard) and find Fred Reichheld discuss two types of profits, viz. bad and good. In his view, good profits are earned with customers' enthusiastic cooperation, when the company so delights its customers that they willingly come back for more - and not only that, they tell their friends and colleagues to do business with the company. In contrast, bad profits are earned at the expense of customers, the author rues. Bad profits, he notes, choke off a company's best opportunities for true growth, the kind of growth that is both profitable and sustainable. Acknowledging that accountants cannot tell the difference between good and bad profits - because all those dollars look the same on an income statement - Reichheld observes that bad profits are easy to recognise even when these do not show on the books.
September 20, 2011—Cathy Mosca includes The Ultimate Question 2.0, by Fred Reichheld with Rob Markey, in her list of new, must-read publications on TomPeters.com's "Dispatches from the New World of Work."
September 13, 2011—Rob Markey of Bain & Company is featured in an interview about the bestselling book, The Ultimate Question 2.0, which he wrote with Bain Fellow Fred Reichheld. In an interview with Alain Thys, Rob explains why he and Fred wrote the second book and some of the most important lessons companies have learned about Net Promoter.
September 1, 2011—Harvard Business Review talks with Fred Reichheld and Rob Markey, authors of The Ultimate Question 2.0, about using Net Promoter in a world in which changes in corporate reputation are amplified and accelerated by social media.
August 26, 2011—Forbes.com's Steve Denning debunks the idea that Apple makes its market decisions based on gut instinct, citing the The Ultimate Question 2.0. as proof that in fact "Apple listens very closely and systematically to its customers."
August 25, 2011—Concepts from the latest book by Fred Reichheld and Rob Markey, The Ultimate Question 2.0, inspires an 800ceoread blogger to contemplate the importance of customer satisfaction and recommendation after speaking at a PRSA panel on blogger/publicist relationships.
Cheryl Krauss cheryl.krauss@bain.com 646-562-7863
Frank Pinto frank.pinto@bain.com 917-309-1065
Submit a contact request
To arrange an interview with Fred Reichheld or Rob Markey, please contact:
Cheryl Krauss cheryl.krauss@bain.com 646-562-7863 Frank Pinto frank.pinto@bain.com 917-309-1065
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