This is a guest post from Andy Sernovitz — CEO of WordofMouth.org and SocialMedia.org and New York Times bestselling author of “Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking.”
That question may be the most important question you can ask — and the business innovation of the decade. It comes from Fred Reichheld‘s Net Promoter Score concept and his book The Ultimate Question. You should read the book and start using it immediately.
Of course, I love it because it’s a word of mouth question. Measuring your success in terms of working for the referral takes a lot of complicated business goals and boils it down to one simple idea — is the customer so happy that they will refer us?
It’s a question that works for every department. The CEO knows that referrals are important, but so does the delivery guy. Each employee can succeed by defining their job in terms of the did I earn the referral today? objective.
You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to start asking this question and how quickly it aligns your company around what really matters: customers that love you so much that they sing your praises to their friends.
Here’s a great email I got from Rackspace:
Learn more from NetPromoter.com.
About Andy Sernovitz
Andy Sernovitz builds organizations that help people help each other. His company, GasPedal, builds peer-to-peer communities for people leading meaningful change at the world’s biggest companies, including SocialMedia.org and SocialMedia.org Health. He wrote the best-selling book Word of Mouth Marketing, which teaches you how to earn the respect and recommendation of your customers.
