Customer Quotes

It is better to apologise later than to ask for permission now. It is called self leadership ~ Janna Cachola

Most companies are not those things. They are focused on the competitor, rather than the customer. ~ Brad Stone

Like Hansel and Gretel whose trail of breadcrumbs got eaten~ your customer may lose their way once they have left your website and they may never come back.
An email marketing list helps you remind your customers of who you and your business are. ~ Nina Montgomery

I have always believed that the way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers, and that people flourish when they are praised. Sir ~ Richard Branson

There is one other business where the customer is always wrong and that's the media. ~ Rush Limbaugh

After all, your company doesn't define customer experience. Customers do. Customer experience is based on how your customers perceive your organization and how well you meet their needs when they interact with, hear about, and do business with your company. ~ Michael Hinshaw

When it first emerged, Twitter was widely derided as a frivolous distraction that was mostly good for telling your friends what you had for breakfast. Now it is being used to organize and share news about the Iranian political protests, to provide customer support for large corporations, to share interesting news items, and a thousand other applications that did not occur to the founders when they dreamed up the service in 2006. This is not just a case of cultural exaptation: people finding a new use for a tool designed to do something else. In Twitter's case, the users have been redesigning the tool itself. The convention of replying to another user with the @ symbol was spontaneously invented by the Twitter user base. Early Twitter users ported over a convention from the IRC messaging platform and began grouping a topic or event by the "hash-tag" as in "#30Rock" or "inauguration." The ability to search a live stream of tweets - which is likely to prove crucial to Twitter's ultimate business model, thanks to its advertising potential - was developed by another start-up altogether. Thanks to these innovations, following a live feed of tweets about an event - political debates or Lost episodes - has become a central part of the Twitter experience. But for the first year of Twitter's existence, that mode of interaction would have been technically impossible using Twitter. It's like inventing a toaster oven and then looking around a year later and discovering that all your custo ~ Steven Johnson

you have to be willing to give your customer-service staff the freedom to work without a script or specific instructions. If you don't dare do this, you have to ask yourself why they were hired in the first place if you don't trust their judgement. And if you don't show them that level of confidence, you shouldn't expect much commitment from them in return. ~ Lars Kolind

Because Microsoft seems to sometimes not trust customer choice, they salt XP with all these little gizmos and trap doors to get people to try Microsoft stuff. But the reality is that we're downloading more players than we ever have on a worldwide basis. ~ Rob Glaser

Besides offering desirable products, the Free People brand continue to produce some of the most compelling imagery and customer engagement in the industry. ~ Richard Hayne

The successful producer of an article sells it for more than it cost him to make, and that's his profit. But the customer buys it only because it is worth more to him than he pays for it, and that's his profit. No one can long make a profit producing anything unless the customer makes a profit using it. ~ Samuel B. Pettengill

When the Starbursts cost a cent apiece, the average number of candies per customer was 3.5, but when the price went down to zero, the average went down to 1.1 per customer. The students limited themselves to a large degree when the candy was free. In fact, almost all the students applied a very simple social-norm rule in this situation - they politely took one and only one Starburst ... What these results mean is that when price is not a part of the exchange, we become less selfish maximizers and start caring more about the welfare of others. We saw this demonstrated by the fact that when the price decreased to zero, customers restrained themselves and took far fewer units. ~ Dan Ariely

Ninety minutes of pure naughty (limit 30 minutes per customer). *No clones or triplets allowed! ~ Jarod Kintz

How do you set the right price for the right customer at the right time in the right channel? ~ Bill Cross

I am committed to doing customer service for Craigslist for the rest of my life. The exit strategy is death. ~ Craig Newmark

It is so much easier to be nice, to be respectful, to put yourself in your customers' shoes and try to understand how you might help them before they ask for help, than it is to try to mend a broken customer relationship. ~ Mark Cuban

There are certain people I am allergic to. I even intervene when I don't like a customer; I rush in and check all the names. If I don't like them, I don't take them. ~ Azzedine Alaia

When the alarm bell rings, you'd better wake up and realize that the customer expects more from you today than he did the day before. You'd better find ways to be better. ~ Gary L. Tooker

You always think in terms of customer benefit. You always think, "How could I really benefit people at such a high level that they would love to buy my product or service and recommend it to others?" ~ Brian Tracy

Wal-Mart impoverished its own customer base. Google is facing exactly the same issue long-term, although not yet. ~ Jaron Lanier

A lot of people have fancy things to say about customer service, but it's just a day-in, day-out, ongoing, never-ending, persevering, compassionate kind of activity. ~ Christopher McCormick

Learning to see waste and systematically eliminate it has allowed lean companies such as Toyota to dominate entire industries. Lean thinking defines value as 'providing benefit to the customer'; anything else is waste. ~ Eric Ries

Service is a promise that cannot be seen, touched, or felt through any of our external senses. ~ Jag Randhawa

Ask any Ferrari, Porsche or Ray-Ban salesperson about their average customer and you will very likely hear that he is not, as the adverts would have us believe, a virile young footballer with shiny hair, a rippling six pack and a trouser pouch like a new punch bag. He is, in fact, a middle-aged bloke wearing more chins than he started life with and carrying the clear evidence of forty years of beer and pies slung across his midriff. ~ Richard Hammond

It is well worth remembering that the customer is the most important factor in any business. If you don't think so, try getting along without him for a while. ~ Napoleon Hill

I've always believed the best measure of a product's worth is customer acceptance in the marketplace. ~ Paul Otellini

A local butcher offered me money to put in my next book a portrayal of a customer he didn't like that would make him ashamed to show his face in the town. It was like the tradition of the Gaelic poets, who were paid money to write in derision about people. ~ John McGahern

At work, he pretended every woman customer was a floozy with a hard-luck story who only needed a good slapping. ~ Tim Dorsey

A thrilled customer is the most potent marketing asset your organization can leverage. ~ John Jantsch

The secret of successful retailing is to give your customers what they want. And really, if you think about it from the point of view of the customer, you want everything: a wide assortment of good quality merchandise; the lowest possible prices; guaranteed satisfaction with what you buy; friendly, knowledgeable service; convenient hours; free parking; a pleasant shopping experience. ~ Sam Walton

It doesn't matter much where your company sits in its industry ecosystem, nor how vertically or horizontally integrated it is - what matters is its relative 'share of customer value' in the final product or solution, and its cost of producing that value. ~ Gary Hamel

All the businesses from the beginning of history have struggled with product development (assuming there is a market, doing the market testing and so on). But now they start with customer development. Get the customer who says, "Yes. I want that. I need it. I wanna use it. I'll pay for it." And then you go back and work with your engineers. It is changing the world! ~ Brian Tracy

Sales and marketing need to be joined at the hip, and aligned around the customer. ~ Donal Daly

We innovate by starting with the customer and working backwards. That becomes the touchstone for how we invent. ~ Jeff Bezos

To create a new business that makes money, and more significantly, employs others, and more significantly, gives a product to a customer that improves their life, is our greatest challenge, our greatest opportunity, and the greatest gift, far greater than any charity that we can give our fellow person. ~ Paul Zane Pilzer

I empathize with women in their high heels so I'll be there in my kilt and T-shirt and I'll walk around all day just to prove that if I can wear the shoes for 36 hours then certainly our customer can wear them. ~ Marc Jacobs

Welcome to the Customer Revolution, where you are no longer in charge. Your customer is. ~ Michael Lazerow

When a customer is upset, remember that you're dealing with a person, not a problem. ~ Marilyn Suttle

The intellectual's hostility to the businessman presents no mystery, as the two have, by function, wholly different standards. While the businessman's motto is the customer is always right, the intellectual's task is to preserve his perceived standards against the weight of popular opinion. ~ Bertrand De Jouvenel

What pays under capitalism is satisfying the common man, the customer. The more people you satisfy, the better for you. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

If something is free, you're not the customer; you're the product. ~ Bruce Schneier

I'm in love with the customer service at Walmart. And by customer service I mean the customer is forced to self-checkout because there are two open lanes and 200 people trying to check out. ~ Jarod Kintz

You should always use the same product line on your skin that is used in the spa where you work (If appropriate for your skin type) so your skin demonstrates how the product line can help your clients. You can't educate and sell products that you don't even use. You are representing how those products work. You MUST use the products, not just one piece of the product line, but you need to use many of the products so you can educate the customer on how the product line helped your skin. They need to see that you practice what you preach. ~ Grace Riley

Everyone is not your customer. ~ Seth Godin

Companies are starting to measure how effective their customer service is and trying to understand what they can do to improve the customer service process. ~ Sanjay Kumar

Perception is all there is. If the customer think he's right, he's right. ~ Tom Peters

Most customer service people are great. It's that one customer service person from hell that drives me crazy! ~ Jon Jones

Manufacturers these days have peculiar problems: a package may recommend the virtues of its product by voice only, for it is not allowed to grab the customer by the sleeve or collar. ~ Stanislaw Lem

CEO Vanessa Place, conceptual artist, writer, and attorney, cites the company's motto as its mantra: We are what we sell, we sell what we are - -It's not the point, it's the platform. With her international team of dedicated professional poets and artists, each of whom brings a singular aesthetic perspective to the collective corporate venture, Place makes it the company's number one priority to fully serve the higher-culture customer. Your desires are our needs.

To contact us, visit CONTACT. ~ Vanessa Place

The fundamental issue is: In the world of the Internet, is there a place for a packager of services? Does the customer want to go surf the Net and go to every one of 50,000 Web sites? Or will people pay a reasonable amount for somebody to go out and preselect and package what they want? My guess is they will both coexist. ~ Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.

There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. ~ Peter F. Drucker

My friends and the people I know understand that I'm going to ask them what they're doing, how they're dating, who they're dating, where they're going and what they're doing. I'm constantly asking those questions and making sure I'm in touch with the customer. ~ Sam Yagan

They were presently on hold with Comcast customer service and might not emerge for hours, if indeed they survived the ordeal at all. ~ Rick Riordan

Sales is a business of relationships, and you must cultivate customers with tenderness and love, like cabbages in winter, even if the customer is an egomaniacal asshole you want to hit with a shovel. ~ Max Barry

Unlike other product developers, Jobs did not believe the customer was always right; if they wanted to resist using a mouse, they were wrong. ~ Walter Isaacson

You are allowed to do this - don't worry about the rules, don't worry about getting into trouble, your job is to take care of the customer. Your job is to make the person leave happy. ~ John E. Pepper, Jr.

A customer talking about their experience with you is worth ten times that which you write or say about yourself. ~ David J. Greer

Instead of seeing a customer in every individual, we must see the individual in every customer. ~ Anonymous

True utility happens in the moment of need. Not the brand's moment of need, but the consumer's moment of need. If you can meet that need when the customer needs it met, you are on to something big. ~ Mitch Joel

I talked about 12 to 18 months, and that's about reaffirming our foundation for sustained growth: getting the discipline back, getting the basics right, getting the customer focus back ... so by the end of next year, I hope most of that's in place. ~ Jim Cantalupo

CUSTOMER: I'm always on night shift at work.
BOOKSELLER (jokingly): Is that why you're buying so many vampire novels?
CUSTOMER (seriously): You can never be too prepared. ~ Jen Campbell

Quality and service are important, if you want to make a sale. If you want to keep a customer for life, keep your promises. ~ Heidi

What we know about the destination resort business is clearly established. But it's all about one thing, and one thing only. All of the razzmatazz and jazz we hear about facilities and everything else doesn't amount to a hill of beans. It's customer experience that determines the longevity and endurance of these enterprises. ~ Steve Wynn

I am a fashion designer. I'm not an environmentalist. When I get up in the morning, number one I'm a mother and a wife, and number two I design clothes. So the main thing I need to do is create, hopefully, exquisitely beautiful, desirable objects for my customer. ~ Stella McCartney

The dialogue Tommy composed for the flower shop scene, which flies back and forth like some sort of postmodern 'Who's on First?' sketch, has the super-compresed density of experimental verse:

Hi
Can I help you
Yeah can I have a dozen roses please
Oh hi Johnny I didn't know it was you here you go
That's me how much is it
That'll be eighteen dollars
Here you go keep the change hi doggie
You're my favorite customer
Thanks a lot bye
Bye bye ~ Greg Sestero

My first customer is myself. When I tell a story I like, I can sleep easy. I'm sorry when audiences don't like it, but I have no choice. ~ Lina Wertmuller

Over time, one of this engine's most potent impacts is in prioritizing investments for customer-driven growth by shifting the annual planning process. Instead of starting with the silos, leaders start with the customers' lives, identify priorities, and then determine collectively the investments to improve them to earn the right to growth. Without alignment among your executive team to regularly review the customer journey that this engine affords, investments are not fully optimized. Tactical actions are budgeted and implemented by silo, but complete customer experiences that drive growth are not improved. Rinse and repeat. ~ Jeanne Bliss

I want to make beautiful clothes for women and men who appreciate detail and quality. The product must be the best but this is almost secondary to the service the customer will receive. ~ Tom Ford

The relationship between nurturance and moral self-interest can be seen most clearly in nurturant forms of business practice. It involves the humane treatment of employees, the creation of a safe and humane workplace, social and ecological responsibility, fairness in hiring and promotion, the building of a work community, the development of excellent communication between employees and management and between the company and its customers, opportunities for employee self-development, a positive role in the larger community, scrupulous honesty, a regard for one's customers and for the public, and excellent customer service. Policies such as these have increased the productivity and success of many businesses. They are models of how Nurturant Parent morality can function to help businesses be successful and to allow owners, investors, and employees to seek their self-interest within this moral system. Moral ~ George Lakoff

The only thing that counts is a satisfied customer. ~ Jan Carlzon

Big companies, which spend tens of billions of dollars annually on 'call centers' to take orders and provide customer support, increasingly rely on speech recognition not just to handle requests for information but to process customer orders. ~ Alex Berenson

It's very logical: There is proven ROI in doing whatever you can to turn your customers into advocates for your brand or business. The way to create advocates is to offer superior customer service. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk

Don't try to be all things to all people. Concentrate on selling something unique that you know there is a need for, offer competitive pricing and good customer service. ~ Lillian Vernon

Follow through with basic values, and remember to provide good customer service. ~ Craig Newmark

Most managers make the innocent mistake of starting at the opposite end. They try to address individual performance and cultural issues through group announcements: generic statements about the need to own your work, care more about the customer, be a better communicator, etc. Managers hope that these messages will reach their intended audience, that they will move people to take action and change unproductive behaviors. But they mostly don't. It's not because people don't care or don't want to grow. It's because that's not how growth happens, especially the personal kind. Those group announcements, at best, point to something that needs to change. But they do nothing to show people how to make the changes themselves. Great ~ Jonathan Raymond

If your goal is to deliver a product that meets a known and unchanging specification, then try a repeatable process. However, if your goal is to deliver a valuable product to a customer within some targeted boundaries, when change and deadlines are significant factors, then reliable Agile processes work better. ~ Jim Highsmith

Waiter: "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?" First customer: "I'll have tea." Second customer: "Me too - and be sure the glass is clean!" (WAITER EXITS, RETURNS) Waiter: "Two teas. Which one asked for the clean glass? ~ Leo Rosten

But there's still so much you can do with technology to improve the customer experience. And that's the sense in which I believe it's still Day One, and that it's early in the day. If anything, the rate of change is accelerating. ~ Jeff Bezos

One of the few times I've ever wished for a penis," she said to Rae when the bartender stepped up to take the order of yet another male customer. They'd been waiting to be served for over twenty minutes. She'd even worn the red magic boob dress tonight, but unfortunately, its mojo offered no help in this particular situation.
"You haven't had sex in six months," Rae said. "If I were you, I'd be wishing for penises every night. ~ Julie James

Is the competition really some mythical beast? No, not really. Knowing how to play your group of salespeople as a team, to overcome the group objective of winning the customers support, is the objective. The opposing team in proper viewpoint is not just the similar competing business to yours. Nor is it the competing franchises of your home office.
No, in order to really be effective in the market place as a surviving business, you must go beyond that philosophy. You must be willing to expand your viewpoint to fully understand who the competition truly is.
Your true competition is simply this: Anywhere that your customer would spend his or her dollars as opposed to spending them at your company or place of business. ~ Michael Delaware

It's much harder to provide a great customer service than I would have ever realised. It's much more art than science in some of these other areas and not just about the facts but about how you are conveying them. ~ David Yu

America experienced its first oil shock. Within days of the cutoff, oil prices rose from $2.90 to $11.65 a barrel; gasoline prices soared from 20 cents to $1.20 a gallon, an all-time high. Across America, fuel shortages forced factories to close early and airlines to cancel flights. Filling stations posted signs: 'Sorry, No Gas Today.' If a station did have gasoline, motorists lined up before sunrise to buy a few gallons; owners limited the amount sold to each customer. Motorists grew impatient. Fistfights broke out, and occasionally, gunfire. President Nixon called for America to end its dependence on foreign oil. 'Let us set as our national goal ... that by the end of this decade we will have developed the potential to meet our own energy needs without depending on any foreign energy source,' he said. We have still not met this goal. ~ Albert Marrin

IF YOUR JOB IS CUSTOMER SATISFACTION, YOUR REAL JOB TITLE IS PROBLEM SOLVER. ~ Brian Tracy

The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best, but legendary. ~ Sam Walton

Am I an Apple bigot? No. I can critique their products and their customer service philosophy. But overall, they do better than any other player. ~ Donald Norman

Was often told what I should do. He expected honesty and integrity in all aspects of life, but I was also told to hold doors for women and children, to shake hands with a firm grip, to remember people's names, and to always give the customer a little more than expected. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Deliver total quality to every customer every day. ~ Dave Thomas

Customers have a first moment when they discover your brand. If you were to look at it today with a fresh pair of eyes, in fact only through a pair of fresh customer eyes and witness your brand for the very first time, what would you see? What impression would make? Or fail to make? Would your brand blend in? Would it stand out? Would it be memorable, or the leading cause of amnesia amongst shoppers everywhere? Facing the truth of this and fixing it as needed will determine whether your brand thrives or merely stumbles along. ~ David Brier

Focus on something the customer wants, and then deliver it. ~ Sam Walton

As we talk about devices, you should never forget that behind every one there is a person - a customer. Its not the Internet of Things, but the Internet of People - of customers. We are moving to one-to-one relationships. ~ Marc Benioff

Advertising is, of course, important because advertise is the final design. It's the last layer that speaks to the customer, that tells them what you have. ~ Tom Ford

News of bad customer service reaches more than twice as many ears as praise for a good service experience. ~ Timi Nadela

Just recently I was in Target with my mom shopping, and out of the blue, I see this father and his two daughters and he says, 'Can they get a picture with you?' And I'm thinking to myself, 'Am I the one millionth customer or something?' ~ Atticus Shaffer

Though the customer is always right, there are some customers you do not want. ~ Jeffrey Fry

Experts said public companies worry about the loss of customer confidence and the legal liability to shareholders or security vendors when they report flaws. ~ Barton Gellman

Many corporate leaders and employees have the right intentions, but it can be overwhelming when you consider how everything is affected from leadership styles, to organizational structure, to employee engagement, to customer service an marketplace. ~ Simon Mainwaring

CUSTOMER: I'd like to buy this audiobook.
BOOKSELLER: Great.
CUSTOMER: Only, I don't really like this narrator.
BOOKSELLER: Oh.
CUSTOMER: Do you have a selection of narrators to choose from? Ideally, I'd like Benedict Cumberbatch ~ Jen Campbell

I had placed my stick on the table, as I do every evening. It had been specially made to suit my height, to enable me to walk without too much difficulty. As I was standing up, a customer called to me: 'Monsieur, don't forget your pencil.' It was very unkind, but most funny. ~ Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec

There's a place in the world for any business that takes care of its customers-after the sale. ~ Harvey MacKay

The bell on the door beeped it's annoying electronic beep as a customer walked in and I straightened up, ready to plaster a fake smile on my face. Keep on truckin'. My eyes collided with a set of chocolate brown and my heart stopped. It actually stopped beating and I wondered if this was what it felt like to die. "Hey," West said, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I was hoping I'd find you here." What lengths will West go to prove his love for Blair? ~ Amity Cross