Quotes About Customer

What the customer demands is last year's model, cheaper. To find out what the customer needs you have to understand what the customer is doing as well as he understands it. Then you build what he needs and you educate him to the fact that he needs it.

We grow by letting the customer tell us. So when the customer tells us that they're frustrated, that they just got their catalogue and we're already out of a product they wanted, then it tells me that we're not making enough. We let the customer tell us instead of creating an artificial demand for our products. Any time you're making products that people don't need, you're at the mercy of the economy, you're at the mercy of whatever is going on. So we tried to avoid that situation.

The decision-makers should communicate the customer pictures and the logic of the strategies and actions. That communication allows employees throughout the organization to implement the strategies and actions, tweaking them appropriately in response to variations in the marketplace. It also allows employees to recognize information in the marketplace that contradicts the customer pictures, either because the pictures were not entirely correct or because customers have changed.

To achieve consistently terrific customer service, you must hire wonderful people who believe in your company's goals, habitually do better than the norm and who will love their jobs; make sure that their ideas and opinions are heard and respected; then give them the freedom to help and solve problems for your customers. Rather than providing rules or scripts, you should ask them to treat the customer as they themselves would like to be treated - which is surely the highest standard.

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

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.

I think Amazon is the preeminent pioneer in building a new way of doing commerce: personalized, database-driven commerce, where the big value is not in the purchase fulfillment, but in knowing as much about a customer base of ten or twenty million people as a corner store used to know about a customer base of a few hundred. In today's mass-merchandising world, that's largely gone; Amazon is trying to use computer technology to re-establish it.

Fact is, the work place to a great extent is "where we live." We need star accountants. Boffo saleswomen. Over-the-top creatives in marketing and new product development. And so on. But, since we're effectively talking about "where we live," good sense and good business and "good" engagement throughout the "supply chain," from vendor's vendor to customer's customer, we would benefit mightily-including on the P & L-if we insisted (!) on: "Pleasant." "Caring." "Engaged."

The customer is always right...even when they're wrong.

The best investor is your customer.

A friend who used to be my customer told me one day: "I promise I am going to help you to be relocated." He's a realtor and after he bought two buildings in the business district in Boston, he said: "Are you ready for your next place?" I could not believe it.

I think the way design was practiced for most of the 20th century was very declarative. A designer came up with a solution for a project and put it in place and shipped the solution and it landed in a reader or a customer's hands as a brochure. They would see it as a poster, or as a piece of signage. And that was sort of it. That was the end of it. I think Internet technology has really upended that whole equation because in some ways a designer's work is never really done online.

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.

Their attitude is, 'okay, I am the customer. You are supposed to entertain me.' It's kind of a passive attitude they're taking, and to me it's kind of a pathetic thing. They do not know how interesting it is if you move one step further and try to challenge yourself with more advanced games.

You can't delegate growth or customer satisfaction.

When leaders of a professional team perform a scan, they examine the trends dominating their customer demographics, education, government policy, and especially their competition.

Remember,' she'd tell her staff, 'every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.

The conception of perfect service is constantly expanding and must be handled by broad and liberal minded men who put equity and fairness above gain-who put a proper valuation upon a satisfied customer as an asset running into the thousands of dollars, and who love a job thoroughly well done and get a kick out of doing it.

The best customer of American industry is the well paid worker.

Wal-Mart, with its legendary focus on customer value in terms of price, is innovating in sustainability. Now, we're beginning to see the mirror image, a convergence, as the not-for-profit sector is beginning to serve more effectively by applying private sector accountability and efficiencies to social needs. This reflects a rising recognition that to serve others best requires more than good intentions; it mandates a focus on real-world results. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are among the most conspicuous advocates and representatives of this transformation.

Don Keough's (CEO Coca-Cola) 11 Rules on "HOW TO LOSE": 1. Stop taking risks 2. Be content 3. Never deviate from what the founder did 4. Be inflexible 5. Rely totally on research and experts 6. Concentrate on competitors instead of your customers 7. Put yourself - not the customer - first 8. Solve administrative concerns first 9. Let others do your thinking for example, headquarters 10. Rely on T-G-E: "That's Good Enough" and T-N-M-J: "That's Not My Job!" 11. Rationalize slow growth

Best way to succeed is to do things for the customer, not to the competition. Very few people buy a product in order to help you hurt the competition. To think otherwise is lunacy.

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

In an organization of any significant size, the executives cannot create the future single-handedly. They must develop the enterprise in a constellation of teams within the overall team if they hope to bring the special talents and resources to bear on the challenge of creating superior customer value and sustaining a competitive advantage in the eyes of its customers.

Exceed your customer's expectations. If you do, they'll come back over and over. Give them what they want - and a little more.

The customer is the most important part of the production line.

Any customer that walks away, disrespected and defeated, represents tens of thousands of dollars out the door, in addition to the failure of a promise the brand made in the first place. You can't see it but it's happening, daily.

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.

Keep the customer actively involved throughout your presentation, and watch your results improve.

People need to understand: Businesses are going to make mistakes. They shouldn't be shot and hung every time. We should apologize for it. We should make up for it. My shareholders paid for it. No customer was hurt, which is critical to me. But I hurt my shareholders, and I wish I hadn't.

Really good customer service will deliver sales. You are training salesmen to give the best possible advice and then to achieve the sale. People actually like you to ask for a sale because it shows you value their business.

No one hangs up the phone until the customer buys or dies.

Treat customer support as a product.

Only a few businesses will succeed by having the lowest price, so most will need a strategy that includes customer services.

The biggest cost of poor quality is when your customer buys it from someone else because they didn't like yours.

I believe that all brands will become storytellers, editors and publishers, all stores will become magazines, and all media companies will become stores. There will be too many of all of them. The strongest ones, the ones who offer the best customer experience, will survive.

I don't want to be on the other side of the table from the customer. I was never selling anything that I didn't believe in myself or use myself.

The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its walls. The result of a business is a satisfied customer.

Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.

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

Too many people think only of their own profit. But business opportunity seldom knocks on the door of self-centered people. No customer ever goes to a store merely to please the storekeeper.

Employees are given the chance to help shape their company by participating in a company-wide communications program making suggestions on waste reduction, environmental improvement, customer satisfaction, quality improvement, and safety issues.

It is to the real advantage of every producer, every manufacturer and every merchant to cooperate in the improvement of working conditions, because the best customer of American industry is the well-paid worker.

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which highlights customer satisfaction, workforce empowerment, and increased productivity, has come to symbolize America's commitment to excellence.

If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper. When people have learned this lesson, everyone will seek his individual welfare in the general welfare. Then jealousies between man and man, city and city, province and province, nation and nation, will no longer trouble the world.

Most ads are ignored because every customer has a mental filter that evaluates and dismisses both of these languages of Ad-Speak with a single question: What are they not telling me?

If your customer base is aging with you, then eventually you are going to become obsolete or irrelevant. You need to be constantly figuring out who are your new customers and what are you doing to stay forever young.