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The Net Promoter Score Interview with Rob Markey – Part One

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The Net Promoter Score Interview with Rob Markey – Part One
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In a previous post I mentioned that I was the beneficiary of a serendipitous moment in which I was given the opportunity to interview Rob Markey, a partner in Bain & Company’s New York Office and head of the firm’s global Customer Strategy and Marketing practice.

The topic was a new book, The Ultimate Question 2.0 “How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World”, which Markey co-authored with Fred Reichheld and published in September. The book was a revised and expanded edition of The Ultimate Question, the original book published in 2006 which introduced the world to the Net Promoter Score (NPS).

When I spoke with Mr. Markey, he was quick to shift my focus from “book review” to developing an understanding of how NPS had evolved from a scoring metric to a system which had developed through the collective experience of the thousands of companies working with NPS since 2006. With so much to talk about in a brief period of time, I have crafted a three part series of posts covering the interview, of which this is the first.


Having received a copy of Fred Reichheld’s book, The Loyalty Effect upon walking into the doors of Frequency Marketing in 1999, I was more than familiar with Reichheld’s ground breaking thought that “loyalty” had to be formed with top-down strategy that included not just customers, but also employees, shareholders, even suppliers.

This timeless path to creating sustainable competitive advantage has been followed by thought leaders in the loyalty marketing industry, though much of what we see in the market today known as loyalty or rewards programs have fallen short by focusing on customers, while giving a disappointing hand-wave to the interests of the other constituents.

There are voices in darkness supporting Mr. Reichheld’s original thesis. One industry group has emerged, the Enterprise Engagement Alliance, which is “dedicated to the concept that engagement is an enterprise-wide endeavour that begins with people and ends with profitability”. The organization’s principle mission is to support research and education to help brands “make the connection between engaging people in business and long-term financial performance”. Colloquy has a renewed focus on Enterprise Loyalty, and I have taken my stand by preferring to frame our work for clients as delivering Customer Strategy. In my opinion, every organization needs a well planned and executed Customer Strategy, while not all need a “Loyalty program”.

Markey started off by sharing that his initial interest in this topic came through reading Reichheld’s 1990 article “Zero defections: quality comes to services”. Markey’s curiosity to identify tools for making decisions on behalf of customers instead of just shareholders led him to Bain and Company and he has been working closely with Mr. Reichheld ever since.

Markey told me that this 20 year quest has led him to adopt a simplified notion of the ultimate objective – to transform the golden rule from something nice to say about customer relationship management, to something that can be implemented and drive tangible results to a business. Working with Reichheld, a system of thought was developed that, if implemented as intended, would lead to sustained market improvement and to making good decisions to earn customer loyalty.

When asked about the central point of the new book, Markey explained that the 2006 “one big question” book was meant to introduce the thesis, explain the metric construct, show how to measure, it and lay out the argument for adoption. In essence, it was a starting point.

When asked what he had learned in the years between 2006 and today, Markey pointed to the fact that Bain & Company has worked with dozens of companies around the world to implement NPS in their operations and have seen tremendous results returned, from lower churn rates, lower acquisition costs, and improved sales and profitability per customer.

In short, the “score” had become a “system” with a solid methodology to help firms guide implementation and enough market feedback to confidently predict results. Part Two of the three part series will cover how the systems works as well as share the three essential elements to successfully putting NPS to work in your business.


Editor’s Note: Frequency Marketing has since become LoyaltyOne, while The Loyalty Effect still sits on the shelf in my office, dog-eared as all good books should be.

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