Rating: 
Summary: Why Keeping Your Customers Happy Makes Good Business Sense
Review: It is a well known fact, but almost impossible to document in most companies, that it is less expensive to keep customers than to find and acquire new ones. Yet, new marketing efforts, incentives based on growth in customers, new sales or even sales calls are often the stated goals. No wonder we send the wrong message to the field. This is the first book I have seen that analytically demonstrates the cost benefit of building customer loyalty. If you are not frequently and periodically surveying your customers to find out how happy they are, what can be improved and what else you can do for them, you are making an expensive mistake. In THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION, by Mitchell, Coles and Metz, there is a Communications Stall chapter. Using analogies and examples, it describes the problems of not communicating openly and clearly, frequently and in many ways, and how to excel in communicating. There are also chapters on The Disbelief Stall - we can't possibly lose so many customers; The Bureaucracy Stall - you mean our policies make it difficult to work with us?; and The Procrastination Stall - okay, we'll survey our customers next year. Read THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION to learn how to identify your stalls, hurdle over them, and find 2,000 percent solutions. Read THE LOYALTY EFFECT to develop your 2,000 percent solutions to retaining happy customers. (Solving a problem is a 100% solution. Getting 20 times that benefit, the goal of this new process gets you a 2,000 percent solution).
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Summary: Loyalty-A Business Imperative!!!!!
Review: Many perceive the word loyalty to be a concept collecting dust. After all, employee turnover across industries today is ten to thirty percent. Businesses are losing customers at a rate of fifteen to twenty percent a year. And we all know that Wall Street is very unpredictable reporting investor turnover for many companies to be as high as one hundred percent annually. Despite these statistics, Frederick Reichheld is optimistic that loyalty is possible and even should be the goal for employees, customers, and investors. He and his colleagues have been studying successful companies for several decades and have found that there are specific key principles and practices that enable organizations to reap high profits, attract talented employees, and maintain investors. He calls these organizations Loyalty Leaders. By reading his book you will not find a "cookie cutter template" to turn your organization around. The process of developing loyalty is much more personal. He will, however, tell you what principles drive loyalty success and share best practices among the strongest Loyalty Leaders. From concrete demonstration and articulation of what some organizations are putting into practice, you can work in your organization to ask the more effective questions, collect the most pertinent data, and design a network that will lead your organization successful forward into the new economy. The underlying principle of The Loyalty Effect is building trust with your constituents-whom Reichheld has as customer, employee, and investor (respectively in order of importance). Customers must trust your ability to deliver, offer service, and most importantly offer value. Everything revolves around value and trust. The Loyalty Leaders introduced in this book all have systems in place to make sure that loyalty practices are built into their business plans. Loyalty does not belong to a specific department like marketing or customer service. Successful loyalty initiatives are owned and articulated at the executive level. The CEO's of Loyalty Leaders are very involved in monitoring and managing loyalty. Loyalty should be at the heart of the business plans. The Loyalty Leaders highlighted in The Loyalty Effect are MBNA, State Farm, Lexus, and Chic-Fil-A. Although there are many industry differences among these organizations, they all have put into their business systems these key loyalty practices:1. Build Superior Customer Value 2. Find the Right Customers 3. Earn Customer Loyalty 4. Find/Keep the Right Employees 5. Reward Loyalty Performance (Loyalty-Based Compensation) 6. Build Mutually Beneficial Relationships One awareness that comes to life in the reading of this book is the idea that companies should target their customers with as much care as they choose their employees. Targeting the right customers will help you best serve those customers, reduce marketing expenditure, and ensure wallet share. All customers are not equal. Loyal customers are more profitable when you look at the big picture. For instance, when you look at the acquisition cost, base profit, revenue growth, potential for referrals, and price premium it is easy to see that a customer that has been with you longer is a better return on your investment in acquiring that customer. Especially because some industries don't even break even until a customer has been with the organization from between three to seven years. This same equation can be applied with loyal employees. There is so much information in this book that it is difficult to determine the most significant key points. What surfaces as the key takeaway is that Reichheld asserts that building loyalty is not "a nice thing to do"-it is a business necessity. Loyalty Leaders are setting new records in productivity and surpassing financial goals and objectives. Many perceive the "loyalty effect" to be a good idea, but somewhat "non-tangible." There is an entire chapter call The Economics of Customer Loyalty where Reichheld actually demonstrates how organizations can capture, quantify, and measure the impact of loyalty. This is not "soft skill"-it is a business imperative.
Rating:
Summary: The most valuable business book I've ever read
Review: Reichheld lays out both why loyalty matters, and why difficulty in measuring the impact of loyalty has made managers undervalue it in the past. He shows how loyal relationships with employees, suppliers, customers and investors all contribute to a company's long term success. His insights are profound for anyone building a company. We have used his insights to build our business, and have benefited enormously from the viewpoints expressed in this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Very insightful...yet somehow flawed
Review: Reichheld's The Loyalty Effect is by far one of the most mediocre books on business loyalty that I have ever read. Instead of having the Tumba Wumbas, as the other leading book on loyalty did, this book simply presented the facts. True, it's interesting to some extent...but when analyzed in detail, there's not much there that I'm sure you didn't already know.
Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: Simply the best business book I've read in years. An invaluable framework for long-term success.
Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: Simply the best business book I've read in years. An invaluable framework for long-term success.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent analytical overview to loyalty's importance
Review: The book covers the process and hard benefits of building loyalty among 3 areas - customers, employees, and investors. The authors give solid examples and formulas in each area for readers to compare their own companies against - obviously retaining a customer if you're a car company will worth more than if you sell only tennis balls. Very recommended even if you are looking at only the first steps or trying to justify spending dollars on a loyalty program.
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Summary: This book accurately describes hidden forces in economics.
Review: The Loyalty Effect is a book that describes in plain english the forces that seem to be changing the face of modern business. The Loyalty-based system that is described showy why many modern businesses that should be flourishing are actually in decline. In addition, this book lays out much of the groundwork to discover the reason that the international marketplace is passing up goods manufactured in the USA. The Loyalty Effect provides insight into the problems of short term thinking from the financial world (destructive investment) and from within the company itself (management that is only thinking of the short tem profitabliity and employees that have no loyalty to the company or the customers). The examples given are excellent and demonstrate the accuracy of the ideas across a variety of industries. This book is a must read for any individual or group that wants to invest in the future.
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Summary: The most valuable business book I've read in years!!!
Review: The Loyalty Effect takes a long, detailed look at the economics of loyalty, providing concrete examples to support the conclusion that the goal of a business must be the creation of sustainable value for customers employees and investors. Reichheld takes that which many of us hold as "intuitively correct" and adds substance to our intuition. By translating loyalty into the language of accounting and finance, for example, he proves over and over again, that loyalty is a pre-requisitie for proitability. He doesn't argue against profitability...he merely clarifies the order of priorities for management. I'm a former IBMer and I now run my own management consulting firm. Reichheld's firm is in fact a competitor, and yet I strongly recommend this book to any decision-maker who is interested in breaking through the fluff and securing real-world advice regarding specifc ways to sustain the health of any company. Rather than reading the "visionaries", the turnaround specialists and the various and assorted geniuses read this. Reichheld, offers a straightforward summary of empirical evidence that correlates high retention rates (of customers and employees) with long-term profitability. While many other authors seem to be pushing their own agendas (and egos), Reichheld is summarizing the collective experience of numerous companies around the world. Read this book. It will guide you to better business performance whether you're in marketing, finance, engineering, operations, HR or window-cleaning. If you're tired of losing customers and employees, this book may help save your butt! (if you're patient and willing to ask some difficult questions).
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Summary: About the Book- From the publisher and editorial reviews
Review: The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value
FROM THE PUBLISHER
The business world seems to have given up on loyalty: many major corporations now lose-and have to replace-half their customers in five years, half their employees in four, and half their investors in less than one. Fred Reichheld's national bestseller The Loyalty Effect shows why companies that ignore these skyrocketing defections face a dismal future of low growth, weak profits, and shortened life expectancy. Reichheld demonstrates the power of loyalty-based management as a highly profitable alternative to the economics of perpetual churn. He makes a powerful economic case for loyalty-and takes you through the numbers to prove it. His startling conclusion: Even a small improvement in customer retention can double profits in your company. The Loyalty Effect will change the way you think about loyalty, profits, and the nature of business.
Author Biography: Fred Reichheld is a Director Emeritus of Bain & Company and a Bain Fellow. He is also the author of Loyalty Rules!. BACK COVER: "Deserves to become a business classic."
-Financial Times
"The Loyalty Effect put loyalty economics on the map."
-The New York Times
"The Loyalty Effect is . . . as close to a religious experience as one can get in the business realm."
-Sun-Sentinel
"[Reichheld's] message is simply this: The best, most profitable employers are those that inspire loyalty among three constituencies: customers, investors, and employees."
-Fortune
SYNOPSIS
In this reprint of a 1996 work, published with a new preface, business strategy consultant Reichheld outlines an approach to doing business that he calls loyalty-based management. Stressing the importance of building a loyal customer base, he argues that even a small improvement in customer retention can double a company's profits. He also shows the connections between customer, employee, and investor loyalty. He goes on to describe in detail the changes in compensation, organization, and strategy necessary for companies to build relationships worthy of loyalty. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
Fortune
Reichheld's message is simply this: The best, most profitable employers are those that inspire loyalty among three constituencies: customers, investors, and employees.
New York Times
The Loyalty Effect put loyalty economics on the map.
Financial Times
Deserves to become a business classic.
Sun-Sentinel
The Loyalty Effect is as close to a religious experience as one can get in the business realm.
Booknews
In this reprint of a 1996 work, published with a new preface, business strategy consultant Reichheld outlines an approach to doing business that he calls loyalty-based management. Stressing the importance of building a loyal customer base, he argues that even a small improvement in customer retention can double a company's profits. He also shows the connections between customer, employee, and investor loyalty. He goes on to describe in detail the changes in compensation, organization, and strategy necessary for companies to build relationships worthy of loyalty. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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