The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth | 
| Author: Fred Reichheld
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  66 reviews
Sales Rank: 3953
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
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: March 2, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Hardcover. Dust jacket has minor shelf wear, lightly read, highlighting. Binding intact.
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Product Description
One Question Can Determine Your Businesss Future. Do You Know the Answer? 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 detractorscustomers who complain loudly about the company and switch to competitors at the earliest opportunity. Now loyalty expert Fred Reichheld shows how to reverse the equation, turning customers into promoters who generate good profits and true, sustainable growth. The key: one simple questionWould you recommend us to a friend?that allows companies to track promoters and detractors and produces a clear measure of an organizations performance through its customers eyes. In industry after industry, this "Net Promoter Score" is the single most reliable indicator of a companys ability to grow. 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 bookand the one toolno growth-minded leader can afford to miss.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 61 more reviews...
 Organization changing ideas and easy to understand October 9, 2008
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 August 23, 2008
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 May 29, 2008
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 February 13, 2008
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.
 Irritating February 9, 2008
1 out of 15 found this review helpful
If any of my employees are caught reading this tripe I fire them on the spot. This book is worthless and I think the reasoning behind why is superbly laid out by the other one-star reviews found here; I won't delve further except to say that only the dumbest, most gullible of employee would read this, and even if they were found to be my vice, I'd kick 'em out on the curb. On second thought, maybe I should give this book a five-star review, because it did allow me to easily select which members of my company were fat. And by that I mean uneeded, and certainly unwelcome.
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