On average, all companies plan to grow at twice the rate of their underlying markets, meaning obviously that they all plan to gain share versus their competitors.  In the fierce competition to win the battle for growth, a loyal customer base is among a company's most valuable weapons.

As an innovator in loyalty work, Bain helps clients realize the full lifetime potential of their customer relationships. Our studies show that a 5 percent increase in customer retention can increase a company's profitability by 75 percent.

Moreover, we help our clients go beyond customer retention to develop customer advocates. Using our Net Promoter® disciplines, Bain clients develop more Promoters who buy more, stay longer, tell their friends and colleagues, and invest their time to help the company improve. Our clients also learn to eliminate defects in their business system, reducing the number of Detractors who can sap the life from your customer base.

Learn how to measure NPS on The Ultimate Question website

• Play to win/win: Profiting at the expense of partners is a short cut to a dead end. We help clients identify investment opportunities where they have real potential to build sustainable assets and relationships.

• Be picky: We help our clients become loyalty leaders who target only the right customers-those for whom their firms have been engineered to deliver truly special value.

• Keep it simple: Complexity is the enemy of speed and responsiveness. We help clients to identify sources of profit-draining complexity and to simplify their organization's structure, systems for measuring progress, and rules for decision-making.

• Reward the right results: Worthy partners deserve worthy goals. Bain helps clients generate lasting customer loyalty by building the outstanding teamwork that sustains exceptional levels of performance. Using the Net Promoter Score, we help clients develop the disciplines to become loyalty leaders who use actionable feedback from customers to motivate and reward employees from front-line customer representatives to senior business managers.

		In his new book The Ultimate Question, Bain loyalty expert Fred Reichheld shows how to turn customers into promoters who generate good profits and true, sustainable growth. The key: elevating customer metrics to the same level of rigor and importance as financial metrics like revenue growth or return on equity.
	The best way to accomplish that? Using one simple question:  How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague? Learn more at www.theultimatequestion.com.

To find out more about Bain's work in this capability area, please contact the practice.