Trevor Reid || MBA-Law Student Blog

The Net Promoter Score or NPS is a particular statistic that some researchers propose can predict whether overall customer loyalty will encourage your business to grow or not. The main idea of NPS is alluringly simple. Take the percentage of customers who are highly likely to recommend you (promoters), subtract those who are disinclined, indifferent, or only somewhat likely to give you good word of mouth (detractors). There you have it: %P - %D = NPS. The prediction is that a higher score allows for better top-line growth.

NPS has been adopted by some large companies including GE and American Express. Smaller firms may be drawn to its low cost and simplicity. It can be adapted to personal networking and even dating. As a way of measuring customer loyalty the NPS falls within the broad realm of marketing and more specifically into the discipline of relationship marketing. Relationship marketers take the view that continual customer satisfaction is more important than the upside or downside of any single transaction.

This makes a lot of common sense and the underlying theory may be strong too. The research behind NPS was first presented by Fred Reichheld in a 2003 ‘Harvard Business Review’ article. He later expanded on the concept in his book ‘The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth’. On the other hand, some market researchers claim that the correlation between growth and NPS does not hold up over the long run. Also certain markets, like business-to-business service buyers or senior technology executives, seem to respond more accurately when adjustments are made to the basic approach.

In any case, adherents of NPS find that it is a useful indicator and focal point for customer loyalty efforts because it is easier to grasp than the statistical intricacies of other models. An NPS survey is inexpensive and appealing because it asks one straight forward question such as “how likely are you to recommend our work to a friend or colleague?” A short survey like this is quick to tabulate and probably gets a better response rate than lengthy customer satisfaction questionnaires

As Reichheld described in the preface to his book: “The real issue is how a company knows what its customers are feeling and how it can establish accountability for the customer experience. Traditional satisfaction surveys just aren’t up to this job. They ask too many questions and generate too little usable information.” In contrast, the Net Promoter Score is about one question that generates information you can use as soon as you hear the answer.

For further reading:

Keiningham, T.L., Cooil B., Andreassen T. W., & Aksoy, L. (2007). A longitudinal examination of net promoter and firm revenue growth,” Journal of Marketing, vol. 71, no. 3 (July), 39-51.

Reichheld, F. (2003, December). The one number you need to grow. Harvard Business Review, 81(12), 46-54.

Reichheld, F. (2006). The ultimate question : Driving good profits and true growth. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

To begin, let me send a warm thank you out to my anonymous benefactor(s). The neighborhood law student(s), one year or so ahead of me in school, who generously pitch nearly new casebooks, hornbooks, and study aides into the donation bin of my local public library. The library usually offers donated books that don’t fit in  its own collection on the used book shelf. They ask for a donation of 50 cents for a paperback, $1 to $2 for a hard cover or multimedia. I always drop $2 per book in the coin box whatever the tag says.

Once or twice a semester I ask a volunteer in charge of sorting donations to check the back room for any big red or green tomes that haven’t made their way out front. The stack librarians and volunteers love my backroom raids because the volumes take up so much of their work space. Usually I walk away with at least one extra casebook this way. Although, the only yield of my last sortie was the hardcover of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince that I needed to complete my set.

So, if I say I am committed scrounger you will agree. If you’ve watched the scene in 300 where the young Spartan is sent into the wild to fend for himself—-cold, nearly naked and half starving so that he will build the courage and character to lead similarly hardened men to their bitter demise in the name of liberty and glory—-well then, you have some notion of what attending law school on financial aid does to a man.

Here are some tips for stretching any textbook budget.

Tip 1. Get your book list as soon as possible. Ideally, find out what books you need for the next term well before the end of your current classes. This gives you time to shop around, find friends-of-friends who already took the course, and get ILL (see Tip 4 below). If the official book list isn’t available as early as you need, just go ask the professor, the department chair, or a cohort.

Tip 2. ISBN’s are your friends. You do not really know what book you need until you have the ISBN from a reliable source, preferably the professor or off the back of the edition being sold in your college’s textbook cartel bookstore. Having an ISBN makes ILL easier and helps prevent the expense of obtaining the wrong book, or worse a useless edition of the right book. Once you’re certain of the ISBN chuck the title,  publisher data, and learned author’s name. They exist only to deceive you.

Tip 3. Get to know someone who is on the faculty or senior staff of a university and has a library card. It does not need to be the institution you attend. But if you are a teaching assistant, faculty member or other mid to high level employee of a college do stop by and get your own card. Professors and staff often have special library privileges, like checking out circulating materials one academic year at time unless another patron calls for the item. When I was a university staffer, even my egregious late fees were routinely waived as a professional courtesy.

Tip 4. Unlock the power of inter-library loan. This is actually one of the best book scrounging tips ever, and it’s not just for textbooks. If you belong to one college or public library, then you pretty much belong to all of them! Every regular edition book is available in some library or another. This is important because if your college library has the texts for current courses they will probably be on reserve or checked out when you need them. But, at some other college they are just another circulating reference.

Tip 5. Be nice to librarians. Befriend librarians. Seduce librarians.  The time spent searching for any tangible thing in the known universe is inversely related to the quantity of librarians the searcher can comfortably call at 2:00am.

I have met more than a few lawyers who don’t care for lawyer jokes. I hope I don’t lose my willingness to laugh at myself or our profession when I grow up.

Complaining is easy. I prefer fixing things worthy of complaint. That’s why I’ll take a line or two here to mention that Kaplan’s VP of Financial Aid gave me a ring after I wrote this minor rant on critique of her area of responsibility. She apologized and mentioned that there are known problems with the university’s phone system and voice mail when dialing in to the financial aid office. Efforts to do better are underway. We’ll see.

To her credit, the VP wanted to make sure that my experience was not a sign of a yet undiscovered problem. She also tried to do the right thing by getting me the information I had been after in the first place. As a higher ed exec she had some great insights into the financial aid process. In light of lenders fleeing Federal Student Aid markets, I think her advice may be at least as useful as the information that I really thought I wanted. On the other hand, I still haven’t seen the lender links in my inbox that I was promised . Overall, mixed results. But I admit, the personal attention stroked my ego and placated me—-for now.

On another note, thanks go out to Steve M. for checking with the dean and reminding our section that classes from 2L onward start twice a year (January and July). For my part, this means I will have a good window between First Year Law Students Exam (FYLSE) and the start of 2L classes to concentrate on an MBA course. That will be Management Information Systems. Meanwhile, I’m optimistically anxiously awaiting final exam grades and preparing for the FYLSE on October 28th. Speaking of finals, I think mine were pretty solid–not perfect, just solid. The only thing bothering me about FYSLE is that I missed the earliest registration period. I had been checking calbar.org religiously, then lost track of it when I went to Europe. Oh well, I ended up having to pay a $25 late fee. That’s not nearly as bad as the $200 fee that kicks in on Sep. 15th.

At the moment I am on hold waiting to speak with the Concord Law School financial aid office. So far, I have been on hold for 37 minutes, 43 sec. The most difficult part is that the hold advertising is about two minutes long. Although I’ve heard the same droning commitment to a positive productive learning environment over twenty times, I am not yet convinced. Maybe this profuse skepticism is why I’ve been left on hold so long?

This is a blog about pursuing your law degree and your MBA at the same time–becoming a JD/MBA. More specifically, it’s about the pro’s and con’s of studying these professions online, tactics for mastering the material, thinking strategically about your career, getting the most from classes, fitting in with your colleagues, and studying late into the night, blogging late into the night when you should be studying.

I’m Trevor Reid (lately many people call me “Ti”) in hot pursuit of the online JD/MBA. As of tonight, only final exams stand between me and successful completion of my first year (1L) at Concord Law School. For a more complete story, please check out the About Trevor page. Anyway, the inspiration for this blog struck while I was attending a 2008 trial lawyers’ convention in Philadelphia. On the first day there was an orientation session especially for law student attendees and as I mingled we almost universally introduced ourselves by name, year, and school affiliation. Although Concord is among the largest law schools, it is still an unfamiliar name for many of my bright, young colleagues who attend traditional schools. In fact, becoming a licensed attorney by earning a law degree online is still vanguard enough that it actually takes a lot of guts–more on that later. Anyway, by the end of the circuit I had explained how I studied law online so many times that my impromptu capsule sounded more like a well rehearsed presentation.

The most common reaction was curiosity. I heard “how does that work?” and, “how do your professors use the Socratic method online?” the most. There were also a few horrified, did I seriously just move across the country because I didn’t know all my options stupors and–occasionally–some skepticism. I really enjoyed engaging my fellow law students on these points and walked away with a great deal more perspective on advantages and disadvantages of the way they go to school too. All this made me realize, that there is a lot of genuine interest in the realities of online legal education. This blog will be a candid forum to share what I’ve found out so far, pro and con alike.

Online MBA’s may be less exotic than online law degrees, but since I study both it just seems natural to include both experiences in my posts. I will try to keep an open mind, but my enthusiasm is bound to show. Overall, I think there has never been a better time to go for a degree online. It’s exciting that technology is putting these vital professions and knowledge in reach for more people than ever before.

Here, I should mention that I study each degree independently at separate institutions. I am responsible for coordinating between the two programs and managing my time accordingly. This is not strictly speaking a dual degree and I will probably undertake more credit hours than if it were. This, of course, means investing extra time and money.

So, that’s me and those are the aims of this blog. I also want you to know that I welcome your comments at every turn. This goes for questions and criticism as well. Please keep comments civil. I am not easily offended, but other readers may be. I’ll be looking out for them.

Finally, if you are a student from Concord Law School or another school and would like to setup a companion blog hosted on this server please leave me a comment letting me know. I believe varied perspectives on education and on the professions are Good Things.