← Every exhibit
The chain, and what is actually found at each link
Each carrier of the attribution, against what a search of the record finds. The retrieval worked; the provenance did not.
| Step | What it says | What is actually there |
|---|---|---|
| The assistant | Bain & Company research by Frederick Reichheld established the 5–25x range | No such publication has been found |
| The page it cited | The same attribution, near-identical wording | A statistics page selling virtual-assistant staffing |
| Reichheld & Sasser, HBR 1990 | Named as the origin by one of the four systems, echoed as an attribution by a second | No cost ratio of any kind appears in it |
| The held publication trail | : | Hart, Heskett & Sasser (HBR 1990), where the figure appears as "five times more, most industry experts agree" and cites nobody. No Bain or Reichheld in the cited works |
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Reference & Evidence
Source: The pair's own audit (Q1 cell) and the published record: Keiningham, Vavra, Aksoy & Wallard (2005), Reichheld & Sasser (1990) and the cited page, each checked at source 2026-07-28. The table is the essay's own adjudication; every row's verdict is in the claim ledger.
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