The Big Idea
Fred Reichhelds 2006 book The Ultimate Question ? that question being, "How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?"-challenged the conventional wisdom of customer satisfaction programs. It coined the terms "bad profits" and "good profits" and pointed to a faster, much more accurate way of gauging customers real loyalty to a company, introducing a quantitative measure (the Net Promoter Score) for establishing a baseline and effectively tracking changes going forward. Richard Owen and Laura Brooks are co-developers, along with Reichheld, of the methodology behind answering the question. In this book, Owen and Brooks tell how - based on a variety of real case studies - to actually embed Net Promoter discipline in organizations of all types.

Answering the Ultimate Question builds on the link between Net Promoter Scores and business growth and profitability. Combined with an operational discipline to increase Promoters and reduce Detractors, Net Promoter represents a potential win-win for businesses and their customers. The Net Promoter Score offers a metric closely coupled and correlated with precipitating actions. Instead of looking in the rear view mirror of customer satisfaction surveys, Net Promoter will affect real, positive change every day for those organizations that apply it correctly.

About the Author
Laura Brooks, PhD, is vice president of research and consulting at Satmetrix. She is the acknowledged expert in applying the Net Promoter discipline at an operational level. Brooks has conducted and published over thirty studies on Net Promoter, customer loyalty, and word of mouth marketing.

Richard Owen is CEO of Satmetrix. Satmetrix was instrumental in developing the concept of Net Promoter and is dedicated to helping organizations apply and benefit from this revolutionary approach using innovative technology and services.