Quotes About Customer

The outside-in discipline requires that you have an explicit customer-based reason for everything you do in the marketplace. Managers need to create what I call "customer pictures," verbal descriptions of customers that highlight the key customer characteristics and make those customers come alive. Although managers never know as much about customers as they want and need to know, the outside-in discipline requires that they construct customer pictures anyway, basing the pictures on whatever hard data they have plus hypotheses and intuition.

It is said if an organization listens to the complaint of a customer and the problem is fixed, the customer remains a loyal customer and tells approximately seven others about the experience. Conversely, if a person is ignored and the problem not fixed, that customer will not deal with that organization anymore and will tell approximately twenty other people about the negative experience.

We're not competitor obsessed, we're customer obsessed. We start with the customer and we work backwards.

The customer demands simplicity, that organizations organize around them. Easy to use is a customer tsunami ripping across the world. Ease of use and simplicity must now be at the heart of organizational strategy.

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.

The reader is not the customer. The retailer is the customer. So I try to have as much interaction with the retailers as possible because those are my customers.

The most important adage and the only adage is, the customer comes first, whatever the business, the customer comes first.

But most automotive dealerships are set up for customer acquisition - which is crazy when you consider the average cost of customer acquisition is $1,000 or more.

The best feature of a product should really be the customer service.

Only your customers can define quality, because it's meeting your customers' expectations the first time every time. Simply put, it's performance to the standards of the customer.

You will deal with ignorant, opinionated and innocent people. You will often have an opportunity to cheat them. If they could, they would cheat you, or force you to sell at less than cost. You must be wise, but not too wise. You must never actually cheat the customer, even if you can. You must make her happy and satisfied, so she will come back.

My biggest complaint about customer service is that I am put on hold too long.

Like any small business owner, I experienced the pressures of building a company from the ground up - developing a business plan, balancing the books, meeting payroll and building a customer base

We're improving and taking our levels of customer satisfaction higher and higher....Our customers are happier than they were before.

When you buy bananas all you want is the fruit not the skin, but you have to pay for the skin also. It is a waste. And you the customer should not have to pay for the waste.

Sometimes when I walk into one of my own stores, I look at the display and say, "This looks so good - I want to buy it." Yet other times I walk in and the displays and mannequins will be all wrong, and I don't want to buy anything. When a customer walks into a store, she's looking for inspiration. So I'm tuned in to people, and I care about what they need and who they are.

The customer is not always right.

Entrepreneursh ip is not about getting one over on the customer. It’s not about working on your own. It’s not about looking out for number one. It’s not necessarily about making a lot of money. It is absolutely not about letting work take over your life. On the contrary, it’s about turning what excites you in life into capital, so that you can do more of it and move forward with it.

If we can help an advertiser refine a message so it works for our consumers, we should be doing that, but at the same time, you never want to do it by confusing the customer about what the experience is. If we fail in that regard, we do our brand and our customers a disservice.

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

What's important at the grocery store is just as important in engines or medical systems. If the customer isn't satisfied, if the stuff is getting stale, if the shelf isn't right, or if the offerings aren't right, it's the same thing. You manage it like a small organization. You don't get hung up on zeros.

Any seeming deception in a statement is costly, not only in the expense of the advertising but in the detrimental effect produced upon the customer, who believes she has been misled.

My definition of innovative is providing value to the customer.

In Sales, you have to satisfy two people: One, your customer. Two, your Boss.

Every contact we have with a customer influences whether or not they'll come back. We have to be great every time or we'll lose them.

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.

It's important to feel what the customer is feeling when he enters the shop.

The customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him.

Approach each customer with the idea of helping him or her solve a problem or achieve a goal, not of selling a product or service.

An unsuccessful manager blames failure on his obligations; the effective manager turns them to his own advantage. A speech is a chance to lobby...a visit to an important customer a chance to extract trade information.

The impact on a customer of a bad buying decision is usually greater than the impact of a salesperson of a lost deal.

I always say this to the young chefs and mean it: The customer is excited, he says you are an artist, but we are not, just craftspeople with a little talent. If the chef is an artist, he doesn’t succeed. Why? Because he is inspired today but not tomorrow. We cannot do that.

I’m busy sorting through our new collection of rhinestone jewelry. Should anyone be in the market for sparkly accessories the size of a hubcap, this is the place to get them. Earlier today, a customer picked up one of the enormous chandelier-style offerings and asked, 'Do those be genuine rhimestones?' I couldn’t even begin to explain everything that was wrong with her sentence, so I simply replied, 'Yes. They do be genuine.

A great brand is a promise, a compact with a customer about quality, reliability, innovation, and even community. And while the concept of brand is intangible, brand equity is far from it.

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?

Service standards keep rising. As competitors render better and better service, customers become more demanding. Their expectations grow. When every company's service is shoddy, doing a few things well can earn you a reputation as the customer's savior. But when a competitor emerges from the pack as a service leader, you have to do a lot of things right. Suddenly achieving service leadership costs more and takes longer. It may even be impossible if the competition has too much of a head start. The longer you wait, the harder it is to produce outstanding service.

We need to reengineer companies to focus on figuring out who the customer is, what's the market and what kind of product you should build.

Express your admiration for the traits, possessions or accomplishments of your customer. Little things mean a lot.

I always want to know whether the customers are satisfied; customer satisfaction is, after all, my ultimate goal!

I feel constantly the tension of the quarterly cycles, the drive to produce shareowner value at the cost sometimes of customer value and employee value. [But] if you take equal care of the employees, they will take equal care of the customers and then we will get an equal or better opportunity for our shareowners.

In the South, we tell stories. We tell stories if you're in a sales position, if you're in a retail position, you lure your customer by telling a story. You just do.

As a retailer, I would ask the customer, "What is it you want in life?" Whatever answer they give, I would help them to say the correct answer, or the most effective answer, for anyone - feeling good.

If you're not trying to do something better, then you're not focused on the customer and you'll miss the possibility of making your business great.

Thank god now for social media and just e-commerce. Now designers have a direct pipeline to their customer and access to her like they never had before, like they never could before. Clothes can happen now that never would have had a chance in the traditional chain of command of the way things worked.

...the waiter has to come from a place of concentration, subjugation, and complete, limitless service. Nothing is too much trouble. The customer is always right, even when he is wrong. There is no limit to what you will do to serve while that person is in your bar and in your care.

Companies have long gathered data to break down their customer base into specific segments. Now political parties have become adept at micro-targeting, too, using data on shopping habits, leisure activities, voting histories, charity donations, and so on, in order to pinpoint likely supporters and the type of appeal most likely to win them over.

Unless you have 100% customer satisfaction, you must improve.

Inside an organization there are only cost centers. The only profit center is a customer whose check has not bounced.