Fred Reichheld’s book The Ultimate Question is facinating stuff for those interested in loyalty marketing. Who isn’t? Reichheld is known today for that esoteric Net Promoter score used by companies like GE for some years. It’s sort of the new, new thing for companies. Coming on the heels of continuous improvement and six sigma, (also adopted by GE) there’s some suspicion that its another fad.

However, there’s nothing faddish about tracking customer referrals and checking the pulse of your loyalty, no matter what you call it. Reichheld observes on a MarketingProfs presentation how he once had a converston with Harley Davidson CEO about retention as a measurement criteria for loyalty, and found that Harley wasn’t concerned about that number. Harley, he was told measures the percentage of customers who had the company tattooed on some body part. Hard to believe that, but then again, it’s Harley. He also says that if he had listened more closely, he would have written this book much earlier. You own customers’ loyalty when they cobrand their reputation with yours, Reichheld notes. It’s not word of mouth, it’s word of biceps for Harley.