Loyalty is by no means dead. In fact the principles of loyalty . . . are alive and well at the heart of every company with an enduring record of high productivity, solid profits, and steady expansion.From The Loyalty Effect

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.

Fred Reichheld is a Director Emeritus of Bain & Company and a Bain Fellow. He is also the author of Loyalty Rules!.

Reichheld lays out a new "economics of loyalty" that provides a framework where the "soft" elements of business--loyalty and learning--can be effectively linked to the hard science of cash flows and cost/benefit analysis. Because of this connection, Reichheld argues, there is enormous potential for improving a company's performance by increasing customer, investor, and employee loyalty. Reichheld's research demonstrates that loyalty drives profits in direct and quantifiable ways through its impact on growth, learning, and productivity. In addition, loyalty generates a spiritual energy that powers the value creation process that is at the heart of sustained business success. In many industries, loyalty explains the differences in profitability among competitors more effectively than scale, market share, unit costs, or most other factors usually associated with competitive advantage.