Since its introduction, in 2003, the Net Promoter System, which measures how consistently brands turn customers into advocates, has become the predominant customer success framework. But as its popularity grew, NPS started to be gamed and misused in ways that hurt its credibility. Unaudited, self-reported Net Promoter Scores undermined the usefulness of NPS. Over time its creator, Fred Reichheld, realized that the only way to correct this problem was to introduce a hard, complementary metric that drew on accounting results. In this article he and two colleagues from Bain introduce that metric: the earned growth rate, which captures the revenue growth generated by returning customers and their referrals. To calculate their earned growth rates, firms must have systems that gather data on the costs and revenues for each customer over time and must ask all new customers why they came on board. If the reason is a referral or recommendation, a customer is "earned"; if it's advertising, a promotional deal, or a persuasive salesperson, the customer is "bought." Earned growth rates reveal the real-world impact of customer loyalty. Because they're auditable, they can help firms validate investments in customer service and convince investors of their businesses's underlying strength.
Most companies aim for exceptional customer service, but too few are attentive to the subtle discrimination by frontline employees that can alienate customers, lead to lawsuits, or even cause lasting brand damage by going viral. This article presents research about the way bias occurs in the provision of core products and services ("exchanges"), the furnishing of help that exceeds the minimum required ("extras"), and the manner in which service is delivered ("etiquette"). By breaking customer service into these three dimensions, the authors offer a framework for identifying and addressing frontline bias in your own organization. They recommend talking to your customers, examining available data, and running experiments to get a better sense of what biases exist among your customer service workers. Armed with that information, you might try to mitigate prejudiced behavior by broadening employees' exposure to people of diverse backgrounds, giving them standard procedures to follow when they interact with customers, and encouraging a sense of responsibility to act fairly.
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands such as Allbirds, Casper, Peloton, and Warby Parker have creatively found a weakness in the marketing citadel of incumbent brands. By using data gleaned from daily interactions with customers, these brands have been able to adapt how they serve their unique customer communities across a start-to-finish purchase journey. The best of them have parlayed that ability into a profitable business model applied across multiple channels and customer segments. But as successful DTC brands mature, they must recognize the need to evolve. The authors offer four principles for continued success: (1) Focus on deepening customer relationships, not just making comparisons with competitors. (2) Accompany the customer beyond the initial transaction. (3) Omnichannel is about value addition, not cost reduction. (4) Strengthen the core first; consider extensions later.
For decades, negotiators have been working out agreements by focusing on interests, not positions. But the messy problem of how to share the gains created by deals has remained unresolved--until now. The answer, argue Yale's Nalebuff and NYU's Brandenburger, lies in accurately identifying and sizing the negotiation "pie," which they define as the additional value produced by an agreement to work together. It's the value over and above the sum of the two sides' best alternatives to a negotiated agreement, or BATNAs. The pie most people have in their heads, however, is the total value available to be split. Because of this, they argue over the wrong numbers and issues, taking positions that they think are reasonable but that are in fact self-interested. Once the pie is properly understood, the allocation rule is simple: The parties in a negotiation have an equal claim on the pie, so it should be divided evenly. This is true regardless of what they can accomplish on their own, because both are equally needed to create the gains. This principle can be applied in a variety of increasingly complicated real-world scenarios, which the authors walk readers through in this article.
Corporations are facing growing pressure--from investors, advocacy groups, politicians, and even business leaders themselves--to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from their operations and their supply and distribution chains. About 90% of the companies in the S&P 500 now issue some form of environmental, social, and governance report, almost always including an estimate of the company's GHG emissions. The authors describe these as "catchall reports that are often made up of inaccurate, unverifiable, and contradictory data." They propose a remedy: the E-liability accounting system, whereby emissions are measured using a combination of chemistry and engineering, and principles of cost accounting are applied to assign the emissions to individual outputs. The authors provide a detailed method for assigning E-liabilities across an entire value chain, using the example of a car-door manufacturer whose furthest-removed supplier is a mining company, which transfers its products to a shipping company, which transports them to a steel company, and so on until the car reaches the end customer.
Just as people can develop skills and abilities over time, they can learn to be more or less ethical. Yet many organizations limit ethics training to the onboarding process. If they do address it thereafter, it may be only by establishing codes of conduct or whistleblower hotlines. Such steps may curb specific infractions, but they don't necessarily help employees develop as ethical people. Drawing on evidence from hundreds of research studies, the authors offer a framework for helping workers build moral character. Managers can provide experiential training in ethical dilemmas. They can foster psychological safety when minor lapses occur, conduct pre- and postmortems for initiatives with ethical components, and create a culture of service by encouraging volunteer work and mentoring in ethics.
Innovators can be their own worst enemies, derailed by personal traits, such as confidence and optimism, that are essential to creativity but can be toxic when taken to an extreme, and by emotions such as fear, doubt, regret, and frustration, which are typical when trying something new but can too easily stall or destroy entrepreneurial efforts. And although practical advice abounds on how to innovate, in-depth guidance on conquering these mental challenges is harder to find. The authors draw on published interviews, videos, and speeches to describe the obstacles encountered by some high-profile entrepreneurs and illuminate the paths by which they moved forward. They explore practical tactics for overcoming the fear of getting started, the frustration of setbacks, an excess of creativity, and a tendency to go into hyperdrive. Innovators must become mindful of their habitual ways of thinking and behaving, the authors argue. Thus armed, they can reach out for feedback or mentoring--for help in becoming a more skillful version of themselves.
Ivory Tower, the world's leading online education platform, is considering whether to accept payments and invest cash reserves in Bitcoin. The gung-ho CEO thinks the move is a no-brainer, but the board and the finance team have deep reservations. What should the CFO do? This fictional case study by Charles C.Y. Wang features expert commentary by Amrita Ahuja and Roxi Wen.
Four new books examine the challenges associated with Big Tech's dominance: "The Every," by Dave Eggers; "The Exponential Age," by Azeem Azhar; "The Raging 2020s," by Alec Ross; and "System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot," by Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami, and Jeremy M. Weinstein. Meanwhile, the podcasts "Sway," featuring the tech journalist Kara Swisher, and Pivot, which she cohosts with New York University professor Scott Galloway--tackle the widening gap between digital age haves and have-nots.
The prolific and best-selling novelist on creative inspiration, recovering from tragedy, and pulling countless all-nighters in pursuit of great stories.
Ivory Tower, the world's leading online education platform, is considering whether to accept payments and invest cash reserves in Bitcoin. The gung-ho CEO thinks the move is a no-brainer, but the board and the finance team have deep reservations. What should the CFO do? This fictional case study by Charles C.Y. Wang features expert commentary by Amrita Ahuja and Roxi Wen.
Ivory Tower, the world's leading online education platform, is considering whether to accept payments and invest cash reserves in Bitcoin. The gung-ho CEO thinks the move is a no-brainer, but the board and the finance team have deep reservations. What should the CFO do? This fictional case study by Charles C.Y. Wang features expert commentary by Amrita Ahuja and Roxi Wen.
This case explores the general observations and financial implications behind the short squeeze that had happened on the GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME), an American chain of brick-and-mortar video game stores. The company had struggled in recent years due to competition from digital distribution companies and the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the share price of GME went up due to the hope of possible digital transformation since August 2020, there had been increasingly extensive short selling activities of GME stock by many institutional investors believing the firm was overpriced. Some of those short sellers were sizable hedge funds. The case seeks to highlight the definition, underlying factors, and mechanism of short selling, naked short selling and short squeeze. The reasons for market participants to do the above, the forthcoming risks, as well as the corresponding impact to the market are discussed. The case will discuss the interaction between social media and financial system nowadays. The perspectives (including interests and concerns) of the following parties will be analyzed, namely the retail investors, hedge funds and/or market makers, brokers (especially the FinTech-enabled zero-commission brokers), and regulators. Understanding the observations and implications of the case, students will be able perform a more comprehensive analysis on how social media and new technology shape the new investment world. Students will also be able to assess their own risks in conducting trades amid a short squeeze, or in anticipation of a short squeeze.
Shake Shack was a fast, casual restaurant chain with a strong focus and great efforts on sustainability and corporate responsibility. Despite its stated environmental commitments, however, its core product offering-the hamburger-was extremely taxing on the environment. Between 2009 and 2021, various new alternative protein sources had emerged that were much more sustainable and environmentally friendly. Shake Shack's chief executive officer had to make some decisions. Should the company's products shift away from beef toward alternative protein sources? If so, which of these new products should Shake Shack consider and over what timeline?
This case study follows the evolution of PBMs focusing specifically on the main substitutes that have challenged dairy milk for market share namely soymilk, almond milk, and oat milk. It provides a good snapshot of the way in which the new industry has evolved and the manner in which key industry forces have begun to shape the competitiveness and profitability of this nascent industry. Using the template of Porter's five forces model, the study sets the stage for an in-depth application of the framework to identify the key drivers of profit performance. It builds on the analysis to explore the fortunes of the rising star in the business, Oatly, the Swedish oat milk producer that has made a dramatic entry into the world of PBMs with much initial success. It concludes with several key questions about the potential future trajectory of the company in the face of new competitors and the ever-changing array of alternatives ranging from hemp milk to barley milk and everything in-between.
An egocentric approach to defining ecosystems undermines the ability of everyone involved leaders, followers, and partners alike to see alignment hurdles and craft appropriate strategies. The authors discuss successful ecosystem strategies for companies positioning themselves as leaders, as well as key considerations for those that choose followership. Real-world examples from the mobile payment, electronic health record, and e-book ecosystems provide additional context.
It was a crisp autumn day in London in 2012. Brynne Kennedy and Steve Black, the co-founders of MOVE Guides, were huddling with their lead software developer, Peter Almasi, and their lead angel investor, Kevin Eyres. Their fledgling business had come a long way since its July launch, with pilot programmes underway at Amazon, Tesco and Oliver Wyman. With limited resources in terms of cash and people, they were wrestling with a crucial decision about how best to proceed with their dream of taking the hassle out of the process of corporate moves - hassle that was acutely felt not only by those moving, but also by the HR professionals tasked with administering the moves.
It was August 2014. The MOVE Guides team had successfully converted two of their initial pilot clients into paying customers whose employees were delighted with the company's support of their moves. Brynne Kennedy and her team were successfully closing a couple of additional lump-sum clients regularly. But customers old and new were asking MOVE Guides to offer managed moves, too. Was such a strategy scalable? What sort of business model would be sustainable long term? Could MOVE Guides take on the established competitors in the managed-moves segment? Her team, including her investors and her closest and most trusted advisor, was divided. Was this the right thing to do?