Selected Product:
| The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth
Hardcover
Edition: 1
Author: Fred Reichheld
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Release Date: 2006-03-02
ISBN-10: 1591397839
ISBN-13: 9781591397830
List Price: $29.95
Average Customer Rating:
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Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
ISBN-10: 0066620996
ISBN-13: 9780066620992
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
CEOs regularly announce ambitious growth targets, then fail to achieve them. The reason? Their growing addiction to bad profits. These corporate steroids boost short-term earnings but alienate customers. They undermine growth by creating legions of detractors - customers who complain loudly about the company and switch to competitors at the earliest opportunity. Based on extensive research, "The Ultimate Question" shows how companies can rigorously measure Net Promoter statistics, help managers improve them, and create communities of passionate advocates that stimulate innovation. Vivid stories from leading-edge organizations illustrate the ideas in practice. Practical and compelling, this is the one book - and the one tool - no growth-minded leader can afford to miss.
5% content, 95% filler
| Customer Rating: | Unfortunately, this is another business book that would be a lot better as a 3-5 page magazine article. Reichheld starts with some good ideas such as using a more simple metric, viewing customer relationships as an entire experience instead of a set of transactions, and viewing customers as "promoters," "passives," and "detractors." He then proceeds to beat these good ideas to death with a bunch of non sequitur case examples and conclusions that aren't very helpful or actionable to anyone in a position to put this system into place.
I would say that the majority of this book is dedicated to this kidn of content that doesn't add any value. The fact that he has to constantly say how the idea of NPS is new and revolutionary should be a red flag in itself.
The book isn't a whole waste, so it still might be worth checking out. Just be careful not to buy into its own self-hype.
At some points I thought that the book might just be a huge advertisement for Bain and Satmetrix. Since NPS by its nature is very broad and general, maybe not very actionable, it's a great excuse to suggest consulting services to help you implement the system. How convenient!
The fact that they also dare to charge this amount for a book of such little actual content is also laughable. |
Organization changing ideas and easy to understand
| Customer Rating: | | A well researched and easy to understand book, that if used with a focus to increase service quality through customer interaction and feedback will offer short cuts to success. |
Food for Thought
| Customer Rating: | | As the owner of a very small business I am not going to be implementing any type of large-scale statistical analysis to determine NPS as the book suggests - it is just too expensive for my company. However, this book does provide a lot of fodder for thinking about customer service, what your company is doing, what it could and should be doing better and how you can keep in contact with your customers to keep honest and proactive in making their interactions with your firm as positive as possible. I think that tracking your Net Promoter Score is less important than making the Golden Rule a "philosophical cornerstone" of your business. I don't know if companies like USAA, Amazon and E-Bay track their NPS, but they would be delighting their customers and receiving tons of word-of-mouth advertising from happy "promoters" even if Fred Reichheld had never written this book. The short story: I got a lot of great ideas for my company from this book. |
Not Enough Content for An Entire Book
| Customer Rating: | | The points in this book could have easily been stated in a pamphlet. The author states the same points over and over in different words for two hundred pages. The most impressive thing about this book is that the author manages to say the same thing in so many different ways. You could get the entire content of the book by reading the first two pages of the preface. I only read this book because it was given to me by my boss who insisted I read it over the weekend. I never would have chosen to read it on my own. I can't imagine how anyone could possibly need to have two points repeated so many times over so many pages. Also, what's with the "all rights reserved" symbol on the phrase "net promoter score?" Why would you bother? What's the likelihood that someone is going to steal the phrase "net promoter score..." Reading this book is like taking a road trip with a used car salesman. It's full of fluff and pushy salesman-like jargon. Also, many of the points expressed are not just off, they're completely wrong. The author presents eBay as an example of a company that is supportive of their customers and highly rated by them as having excellent customer service, when in fact eBay's weak point is that customers frequently complain that eBay sends them canned answers that have nothing to do with their questions in response to their inquiries. Also, the author outright states that there was a point in time where all businesses were small businesses and then suddenly businesses became larger and lost focus on their customers. Not only is this completely wrong it doesn't make any sense at all. There have been large and small businesses as long as there have been accounting practices. I highly discourage consumption of this book unless your boss makes you read it. |
Closed Loop
| Customer Rating: | I recently read a book called, The Ultimate Question, Driving Good Profits and True Growth by Fred Reichheld. He also wrote the the Loyalty Effect. Reichheld is a huge advocate of offering premium customer service and measuring this as one of the driving forces of any company.
Most of the points that he makes in the book are that there are bad profits and good profits. Bad profits are those that are short term and can detract from and strangle a company. Good profits are those that are sustainable.
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about strategy and mission statements. He really points to what the ultimate mission statement is for customer service organizations and that is simply the golden rule -- how do you want to be treated?
His book talks about the ultimate question to ask customers which is, how likely is it that you would recommend company X to a friend or colleague? This tends to be a more accurate indicator of customer satisfaction than just asking them how satisfied they are with a customer.
He also talks about closed loop feedback. Whenever there is error or a problem, closing the loop very quickly makes total sense. Although I dislike the paperwork in ISO9000, closed loop is one of its positive attributes.
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