152: Loyalty Redefined! How to Enrich the Lives of Your Customers – The Unbeatable Strategy with Fred Reichheld
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Fred Reichheld is the creator of the Net Promoter) system of management, the founder of Bain & Company's Loyalty practice and the author of five books including The New York Times bestseller, The Ultimate Question 2.0). He is currently a Fellow and Senior Advisory Partner at Bain, where he has worked since 1977. Fred is a frequent speaker at major business forums and his work on customer loyalty has been widely covered in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Fortune, Businessweek and The Economist.

His upcoming article to be published in November marks his 15th contribution to the Harvard Business Review. In 2012, he became one of the original LinkedIn influencers, an invitation only group of corporate leaders and public figures who are thought leaders in their respective fields. In 2003, Consulting Magazine named Fred as one of the world's 25 Most Influential Consultants.

According to The New York Times, he put loyalty economics on the map. The Economist refers to him as the “high priest” of loyalty. Reichheld graduated with honors both from Harvard College (B.A., 1974) and Harvard Business School (M.B.A., 1978). He's based in Cape Cod and Miami.

Questions

• Could you share a little bit about your own journey? How is it that you got to where you are today?
• Could you explain to us what the Net Promoter system is and how companies should really be using it to yield the best results?
• Could you share with us maybe two or three things that you believe are contributing drivers of loyalty?
• What are some things that companies should look at in trying to enrich the lives of your customers? Do they need to understand what type of customer they're serving and does the generation matter?
• Could you share with us what is Customer Capitalism exactly? And how does that impact the consumer?
• Could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
• Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you?
• Could you share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? It could be something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
• Where can our listeners find you online?
• Do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to keep you on track, or at least get you back on track if for any reason you get derailed. Do you have one of those?

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Highlights

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Fred’s Journey

Fred shared that early in his career at Bain & Company, he noticed companies similar to us all, some brand new, some quite mature, but they were all outperforming all of the things he learned at the Harvard. Some were crushing it and a good example was enterprise Rent-A-Car, who started out as a tiny little rental leasing agency in St. Louis, and has grown now to become the largest car rental company on Earth without ever having to tap public equity markets, it's still a private company. And you think, Gosh, what I learned at Harvard was a capital intensive business, low growth industry, low margins, there's no way that you could grow on internally generated cash.

So, when he went to meet with Andy Taylor, their CEO, he said, “Fred, there's no secret, there's only one way to grow a successful business sustainably.”