Comments

A short positive one liner from a customer is worth a ton of glossy fliers. Great to see someone putting hard quantitative evidence to back something we all know intuitively - thanks for the link.

I sent over 300 fliers to health organisations about a workshop we offer (Yes I know it was a stupid idea) and got ZERO response. We did one workshops and got 8 more through word of mouth recommendation!

Rocket Science? - I think not

Posted by Trevor Gay at December 2, 2005 8:28 AM

New Zappos.com shoes story in the new BusinessWeek on customer worship - have a Nordstrom guy designing their amazing CS and support of employees.

Posted by Sean at December 2, 2005 10:27 AM

Reichheld's question is magnificent. I first read it in an HBR article, December 2003. It works.

We implemented this in a former company. It is an unyielding and valid figure.

I'm using it now in measureing employee satisfaction as well...phrasing it "Would you recommend a friend to seek employment at our company?"

It speaks volumes. Simple. Clear.

Don't trip over the simplicity.

Posted by Joe Ely at December 2, 2005 12:33 PM

Amen Joe - I rest my case on Simplicity :-)

Posted by Trevor Gay at December 2, 2005 6:00 PM

I am a little shocked this needs to be remainded. Probably what we need to really question is our concept of friendship or camaraderie, could it be?
Personally, I tend to question not on whether recomending a friend to a company, sorry, but on whether recomending a company to my friend.

Posted by Omara at December 3, 2005 3:37 PM

I am a Christian and pro life activist. Which means I cry out in outrage at millions of dead aborted babies...it is all neat and legal but oh so wrong.
So who are you? and what would you live and die for if anything?
God knows you and your answer..honest.

Posted by Jo at December 4, 2005 7:01 PM

If you are not pro life do not bother to answer. We WILL reverse Roe vs Wade with or without you.
How bnice if you cared enough to cry out in outrsage at millions of dead aborted babies.

Posted by Jo at December 4, 2005 7:10 PM

I work in customer support and I really hate that question. Maybe it's a cultural thing and it doesn't go down well in the UK.

The problem is that the question can be interpreted in many different ways depending on who answers it. I know plenty of IT people who would answer no - not because they are dissatisfied but because they literally don't know people who they would recomend too!

Also in big corp software the person getting the service is often far removed from the decision makers. You can get very different answers depending on who you talk to within the same customer.

The challenge for vendors (especially frontline technical people)is around manageing the relationship at many different levels

Interestingly we see more emphasis on Cust Sat in IT now - margins etc in Software are much tighter and customers are unwilling to just throw money around. Be prepared to see more of this

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