Guest Survey

Harvard Business Review – December 2003 – Frederick F. Reichheld

Reichheld, Frederick F. “The One Number You Need to Grow” Harvard Business Review Dec. 2003: 46-54.

The One Number You Need to Grow

• Through extensive research with successful companies such as Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Amazon, and EBay, the most important question to ask customers to determine their level of loyalty to a company.
• This question is “How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?”
• Based on a scale of 0-10, a company can determine how many customers are Extremely Satisfied (9-10), Passively Satisfied (7-8), and Unsatisfied (0-6).
• When guests are willing to recommend Twiddy & Company to friends or colleagues, they’re putting their own reputations on the line. This makes them accountable for a friend or colleague’s experience with Twiddy. This is a risk that people are only willing to take if they’re intensely loyal to the company.
• When a guest acts as a reference for Twiddy & Company, they’re indicating that they’ve received great service and value from their personal, positive experiences with the company. This results from how well each guest is treated by frontline employees and extends to all the functional areas that contribute to a customer’s experience.