There's Only One Question That Matters

Brand building is a customer loyalty labor of love. People will talk about your products and services. They'll talk about your brand. Satisfied customers are free marketing and PR for your brand. They're repeat purchasers as well as referrers. There are also unsatisfied customers who contribute negative word-of-mouth advertising, destroying your brand. Then there are the in-between-customers who are satisfied but passive. They're not talking about you and they're happy to go to a competitor if there is a better deal. Fred Reichheld, author of The Ultimate Question, classed these groups of customers into three distinct groups and named them Promoters, Passives, and Detractors. In this book, the ultimate question posed to customers is: How likely is it that you would recommend Company X to a friend or colleague?" Answers are given as a number on a scale from one to ten.

• Promoters:
  Customers who talk positively about your brand, products, or services to their friends and family. These customers are those who assert that they would be extremely likely to recommend your company to a friend or colleague, answering with a nine or a ten.
• Passives:
  Customers who have nothing bad to say about your company, but aren't as likely to recommend it to others. These customers answer with a seven or eight.
• Detractors:
  Customers who are more likely to have negative things to say about your company. These customers' answers range from zero to six.

Start a Conversation

Opening a dialogue with your customers, making it easy and keeping it flowing is essential to building your brand and your promoters. One classic and very successful example is eBay's feedback and customer review capabilities. Not only are customers interacting with the brand, but with each other, and eBay stays out of their way while enhancing the user experience and gaining important information.

So how do you improve your score? That's part 2…