| The Ultimate Question | 
 enlarge | Author: Fred Reichheld
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Category: Book
List Price: £16.99
Buy New: £10.97
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Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 21237
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 210
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 1591397839
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.1554
EAN: 9781591397830
ASIN: 1591397839
Publication Date: February 1, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Powerful message based on common sense February 20, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This surprising book offers a powerful message based on common sense: Companies that treat their customers ethically and honestly will build a dedicated client base, and thus grow steadily and earn "good profits." The opposite lesson is that companies that take advantage of their customers through predatory pricing or shoddy products earn "bad profits" while building an army of disenchanted buyers who tell their friends to stay away. Fred Reichheld makes his point in black and white: Rip off your customers at your peril. He amply illustrates his message with powerful case studies, and includes details about using the "ultimate" question - "How likely is it that you would recommend this business to a friend or colleague?" - and the resulting "Net Promotor Score" to identify your best customers. We commend this book to service or product providers who want to achieve solid growth by nurturing their core consumers.
Perfect Sense September 19, 2006
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book is essential reading, well written, engaging and rips through the over complicated world of customer surveys. The proof Fred Reichheld offers about the link between client satisfaction and growth is attractive and powerful. I will be implementing many of the ideas immediately in my business and believe that many organisations will be forced to look again at their approch to customer surveys. There will be a lot of overpriced marketing survey companies quaking in their boots when this information reaches a wider audience. I suggest you and they read it now.
 Easy to read, simple approach, but with fundamental flaws. June 6, 2006
21 out of 23 found this review helpful
Reichheld proposes you just need to ask one question in order to drive business success. This is "How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague". This is commendably simple and the resulting `promoters minus detractors' used to derive the Net Promoter Score (NPS) gives an easy to understand measure of how well your business is doing.
However, this approach has not gone down well with his peers. He bravely acknowledges the storm of criticism (p183), but then does not address the fundamental flaws they raise, arguing merely that people are against it because they can't believe something so simple can be effective.
Two fundamental flaws which he doesn't deal with are:
*A simple measure like NPS doesn't tell you what needs fixing. A measure which tells you you're not doing very well, but which doesn't guide you towards the priorities for improvement is frustratingly useless.
*While simplicity is a good thing to have, the NPS can be a danger to your company profits. You can't buy customer satisfaction, but you can buy loyalty by cutting prices. Improving an NPS score can lead to `buying loyalty' behaviour, and damage shareholder value.
He argues that the Net Promoter Score is a better approach than measuring customer satisfaction, and takes the whole of chapter 5 to make this point. However, he just uses the weaknesses of poor quality customer satisfaction programmes to highlight the advantages of the NPS. Most would agree there are many companies wasting small fortunes on inadequate customer satisfaction programmes, and these would be better spending less money on a Net Promoter Score approach, but this doesn't mean the NPS is better than a properly run customer satisfaction programme, i.e. from an agency who can do the mathematically complex cause and effect modelling to identify the priorities for improvements.
There are unfortunately too many examples of simplistic thinking in this book to recommend it. For instance, on page 84 he claims that his research shows that "the links between satisfaction-survey scores and customer behaviours that drive profitability or growth are tenuous at best", and argues instead in chapter 3 that the NPS can drive growth. However, a moment's thought on what drives people to `recommend this company' shows the weakness here. People will recommend because they are significantly more satisfied with the product or service than with other competitor products, and because the price is right. He defeats his own argument for the NPS as a driver for growth by trying to claim satisfaction does not drive growth, and further illustration of this is in the appendix where he lists high NPS companies as the ones which show high growth - a little research on the American Customer Satisfaction Index website shows these high NPS companies are also leaders of customer satisfaction.
In summary, if you just want to measure how well your business is doing and don't want to spend much money, then the Net Promoter Score approach may be for you, but watch out you don't target your workforce on the results or your margins might suffer. On the other hand, if you want to improve from where you are now, there's no shortcut to investing in a decent customer satisfaction programme which will tell you what needs fixing.
....to obtain the absolutely essential answer February 14, 2006
6 out of 11 found this review helpful
Those who have already read Reichheld’s two previous books, The Loyalty Effect and Loyalty Rules!, are already well-aware of his exceptional reasoning and writing skills. Throughout most of his career, he has demonstrated those skills when rigorously examining one of the most important and yet least understood business subjects: loyalty. Now more than ever before, the success or failure of individual careers and even entire organizations has depended on the presence or absence of loyalty in one form or another. Obviously, loyalty depends upon trust which must be earned over time but quickly lost, sometimes permanently. In this volume, The Ultimate Question, Reichheld again examines various dimensions of loyalty while extending his attention beyond it to what I consider to be an even more important issue: knowing what is most important to customers by accurately measuring the nature and extent of customers’ satisfaction. As Reichheld explains,“What this book offers...is a wholly new kind of measurement, a measurement that can focus an entire organization on improving every customer’s experience day in and day out. The process is both simple and radical. Companies need to ask just one question -- the Ultimate Question -- in a regular, systematic, and timely fashion.” After struggling with one issue, I have decided not to reveal the question itself but can assert that it is the one question which must be asked because the responses to it are needed to guide and inform efforts to achieve “good profits and true growth.” Unlike bad profits which are earned at the expense of customer relationships, good profits are earned with customers’ enthusiastic cooperation. “A company earns good profits when it so delights its customers that they are willing to come back for more -- and not only that, they tell their friends and colleagues to do business with the company.” True growth is based on good profits. It is real, verifiable, and sustainable. Of course, most companies try to grow but only a few succeed. In Chapter 1, Reichheld cites this statistic: almost 80% of the world’s firms failed to meet a true-growth threshold of 5% a year in real terms from 1994 to 2004. Why? “The reason is that growth and short-term profits are often antithetical. Most companies can boost their short-term profits simply by following the practices just mentioned [in Chapter Ten]. But no company can do that and achieve sustained growth, because its customers will resent the company and will leave at the earliest opportunity.” Hence the importance of formulating and then applying “a measurement that can focus an entire organization on improving every customer’s experience day in and day out.” Reichheld recommends what he calls the Net Promoter Score (NPS) which he explains in Chapter Three. Once again, I have decided not to provide any details. Both the Ultimate Question and NPS are best revealed within the context of Reichheld’s lively narrative. But I can assert that for decision-makers in most (if not all organizations), what Reichheld has to say about both the Ultimate Question and NPS could well be the difference between success or failure. Here’s what I consider to be Reichheld’s most valuable insight: there is a direct and practical link between NPS and profitable growth. Therefore, have customers determine your current NPS. Their responses to the Ultimate Question will suggest what must be done to increase your NPS. Moreover, by continuing to use what is indeed “a wholly new kind of measurement,” your organization (regardless of its size or nature) can then sustain profitable growth which will increase in direct proportion to an ever-improving NPS. Reichheld’s latest book is a brilliant achievement. Bravo!
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