Google “ultimate question” and the first two results will be references to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The answer to Fred Reichheld’s ultimate question isn’t 42, but it may be more difficult to answer: “How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend of colleague?” It’s a good question, touching everything from corporate culture to product quality to customer service.

Reichheld’s book uses a metric called NPS (net promoter score) to measure a company’s health. NPS (which has its own site over here) is based on the idea that a company’s customers can be segmented into three groups: promoters, passives and detractors. It’s an interesting device that may get you thinking a bit differently about your company. If nothing else, Reichheld has managed to apply a quantitative model to the important qualitative notion of customer satisfaction. Apple’s NPS: 66%. Harley-Davidson’s NPS: 81%. The average U.S. company’s NPS: 10%.

Consider all the customer touchpoints across your entire organization and ask: Is your company better at creating promoters, passives, or detractors?

(Full disclosure notice: The Ultimate Question landed on my too-tall stack of reading material because I’m registered over at BzzAgent.)

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 12th, 2006 at 10:48 am and is filed under Marketing Stuff, This 'n' That.