Welcome to the Listening Post!

Jeffrey, 
 
While I do value the work you re are doing, you are one of the smartest people I know in the industry by far and you write very well and short, I think it is time. 
 
It is time to retire the notion that there is ANY way we can measure satisfaction and loyalty with any degree of certainty. I have said this before, and I will continue to say it forever, there is no way we can measure either one properly - they are sentiments that are either ethereal in nature (satisfaction), or long-time buildup (loyalty). As sentiments, they cannot be measured properly - no matter how you structure the questions or what you ask. 
 
You can indeed measure correlation between specific actions and results (cause-effect if you may), but even that changes rapidly as circumstances change. 
 
How about if we stop pretending we can do something we cannot do and focus instead of doing the best job we can for all customers (creating awesome experiences), and for each individual (managed experiences)? I promise that if we do that, then we will have the cause (focus on effectively delivering awesome managed experiences), and the effect (continued support and purchase from us). Need an example? Look at Zappos, Apple,  
 
I hope this does not sounds like preaching, but I am getting tired of having this discussion of how you cannot measure what someone did once, ten years ago, in a lab and repeat it for all your customers successfully simply by asking one questions, or two, or three. 
 
It is time for Managers to realize somethings cannot be done to their liking, and roll-up their sleeves and get to the hard work for delivering. 
 
There is no magic pill that will make the lose 30 pounds, an there is no magic question that will get me to understand my customers simply. 
 
It is all about hard work. Sorry guys, it is time to stop dreaming and get to work!

I take this as another way of saying that any metric can be deceiving and that numbers alone are insufficient for wise decisions. But you don't have to toss the concept of measurement being helpful to realize its limitations.

Back to your original point, that satisfaction and likelihood to recommend and to continue purchasing are not widely different concepts, but instead are highly correlated: Good, and thank you, this begins to get us past a lot of hype about proprietary measures and silver bullets.

Thanks, Ian. In that vein, I do encourage you to look at Bob's new book, Beyond the Ultimate Question>. He will also be presenting at the Vovici 2010 user conference.

That book does look interesting, Jeffrey. I'll buy it. It may be good to keep handy, since aging management fads seem to pop up in this industry too.