Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2812 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-02
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 210 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Almost everyone appreciates the importance of customer satisfaction in business, but this book takes that idea to two extremes. First, it claims that customer satisfaction is more important than any business criterion except profits. Second, it argues that customer satisfaction is best measured by one simple question, "Would you recommend this business to a friend?" Pressure for financial performance tempts executives to seek "bad profits," that is, profits obtained at the expense of frustrating or disappointing customers. Such profits inflate short-term financial results, Reichheld writes, but kill longer-term growth. Only relentless focus on customer satisfaction can generate "good profits." One unambiguous question, with answers delivered promptly, can force organizational change, he claims. Reichheld makes a strong rhetorical case for his ideas, but is weaker on supporting evidence. The negative examples he gives are either well-known failures or generic entities like "monopolies," "cell phone service providers" and "cable companies." When presenting statistics on poor performers, the names are omitted "for obvious reasons." On the other hand, the positive examples are named, but described in unrealistically perfect terms. Believable comparisons of companies with both virtues and flaws would have been more instructive. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Washington Post
Among management books, this one's a keeper.

About the Author
Frederick Reichheld is a director of Bain & Company in Boston. He is the author of The Loyalty Effect (over 125,000 copies sold), as well as several articles in the "Harvard Business Review" and "The Wall Street Journal."

Customer Reviews

Not Enough Content for An Entire Book
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
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
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.