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The Only Way to Grow a Business
He seems to know what he is talking about. A recent Enterprise
press release notes that they are the largest car rental company
in North America and the fastest growing rental company in the
airport segment. They also happen to be number 16 on Forbes list
of largest privately held companies.
What is their secret? This is what Taylor says: "Our success in
growing our airport business can be attributed directly to the
highly personalized brand of customer service that we extend to
each renter." Just words? Apparently not. Over the last four
months Enterprise was ranked #1 by Market Metrix for customer
satisfaction in the car rental industry and JD Powers ranked
them highest in customer satisfaction among airport car rentals.
I hope it is obvious that it is not just a coincidence that
Enterprise keeps their customers happy and they have been
growing like crazy. Happy customers come back and they tell
their friends about their experience. So how happy are your
customers and do you know how to find out?
That is the question that Fred Reichheld (author of Loyalty
Rules) and his team at Bain Consulting set out to answer. Is
there one "customer satisfaction" type question that explains or
can predict growth for a company? You can listen to a summary of
their findings here
(http://resultsbrief.bain.com/videos/0402/main.html).
What they found is that there is one question that has a very
high correlation to growth across most industries. The question
is:
"How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend?"
Makes sense, doesn't it? If your customer is willing to put
their reputation on the line for you they must have had a pretty
good experience. So that should be the goal: give every customer
an experience so great that they would be willing to recommend
your business to their friends.
Now the question becomes, "how do you measure that?" There are
probably lots of ways to do it, my bias is that PromoterZ(tm)
(http://promoterz.com) is probably the quickest and easiest way
to implement a measuring process. The PromoterZ(tm) feedback
survey is built around the "recommend us to a friend" question.
It also automatically calculates the net promoter score that
Reichheld and his team developed to predict company growth.
However you decide to measure and manage customer loyalty, don't
think of it as a "one time" event or a seasonal activity. Andy
Taylor, CEO of Enterprise Rent-A-Car can rank order his 5,000+
facilities based on customer scores every week. He also ties the
compensation of his employees to those scores. It is an integral
part of his organization's operating metrics. If you are serious
about growth, it should be a key part of yours as well.
About the author:
Dave Free is president of Zeryn, makers of PromoterZ(tm) (http://promoterz.com), a customer care
system for small business growth. Mr. Free received an MBA from
BYU and has worked as an Intel executive domestically and
internationally, at a Washington think tank, and entrepreneur.