Net Promoter Score™ (NPS): 3 keys to breaking the myth

Net Promoter Score or NPS has become a well-known customer loyalty metric used by both financial analysts to value companies and the companies themselves to reward their employees. It has become the Holy Grail of analysts, the Swiss Army knife of customer loyalty managers, the bible of marketing gurus... but is all that glitters gold? what are its limitations? does it really apply to all companies?

Limited-risk products in high volatile sectors

A few months ago I was reading the book Welcome to Hard Times from one of my favourite writers, the great E.L.Doctorow, which narrates the hard life of the first villages in the Wild West to be created in the midst of a gold rush. Many people came called by the possibility of finding gold, but really the chances of that case were very low and the risks were very high. At the same time, the book describes the lives of some of the "service providers" of these mining settlements: the supply depot, the saloon, the blacksmith, and so on. In a passage from the book, one of the miners complains that all the money he earns from extracting the gold is spent on supplies and “entertainment” ... These service providers manage to square the circle: to have a recurring income and limited risk (not counting those of operating in the wild west, of course) in a sector with very high risk as was the gold seekers. Is this example extrapolable to our days? Can a product or service be designed for a high-risk sector and limit at the same time the exposure to that risk? Is it possible to enter a volatile sector and achieve a stable income?