Key Step to Growth: Knowing Whether Customers Will Recommend You

In 2003, researchers everywhere were stunned by an article in the Harvard Business Review titled The One Number You Need to Grow by Frederick Reichheld, a director emeritus of the consulting firm Bain & Co. What Reichheld discovered in a study of more than 4,000 consumers is that a company...

By Rick Flaspohler | Updated on November 12, 2012

In 2003, researchers everywhere were stunned by an article in the Harvard Business Review titled “The One Number You Need to Grow” by Frederick Reichheld, a director emeritus of the consulting firm Bain & Co. What Reichheld discovered in a study of more than 4,000 consumers is that a company can, very accurately, anticipate its short-term success based on how customers answer the question: “How likely is it you would recommend (company X) to a friend or colleague?”

“If growth is what you’re after, you won’t learn much from complex measurements of customer satisfaction or retention,” Reichheld writes. “You simply need to know what your customers tell their friends about you.”

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