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.

Foremost is the principle that the purpose of consumer research is to understand the customer's needs and wishes, and thus design product and service that will provide better living for him in the future. A second principle is that no one can guess the future loss of business from a dissatisfied customer.

The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth's most customer-centric company.

We have the best customer satisfaction record, based on Transportation Dept. statistics, of any airline in America, the fewest complaints filed per 100,000 passengers carried. So you're not just getting low fares, you're also getting wonderful customer service.

The pendulum of cookery techniques became more significant than the actual experience. And when that happens, the customer's satisfaction becomes secondary to the chef's satisfaction. And in that case, you have an upside-down equation. Because the customer is the basis of our restaurant, first of all, and if the chef becomes the most important person at the table - even more so than the guests - then suddenly you're left with something that doesn't really work.

If your users have many questions, it's a failure of your primary site design. It becomes not so much customer support, as much as customer complaints.

Listen to the customer's complaint and act fast.

We want to have a diverse workforce that mirrors our customer base. Diversity of thought, we believe, is crucial to business success. We also are a tech company. And when we look at the skills that we need going forward, software engineers, electrical engineers, strong technology backgrounds, that's key for success as well.

Are we going to say sorry for our lack of customer service? Absolutely not.

Analytical software enables you to shift human resources from rote data collection to value-added customer service and support where the human touch makes a profound difference.

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.

I think the opposite version of me is the one we don't see, which is there are tens of thousands of outrageously successful businesses of very quiet, very calculated, calm executors who are confident. You can't be successful without being confident. They believe in themselves. They have their own version of assertiveness ... I think confidence matters and I think other things matter, like I would tell you empathy is probably why I'm more successful than confidence. I'm empathic to the customer, to my business partners, to my employees.

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.

Even in the face of massive competition, don't think about the competition. Just think about the customer.

Having your own store is one of the most immediate ways to connect with the customer, to really get to know her and develop a more intimate relationship.

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.

I like keeping music in front of people. I try to sell at shows as much as I can - setting up a distro table and bringing out crates of vinyl and some CDs. That's my favorite way to sell because you're actually face-to-face with the customer.

The customer is not always right.

I don't like to dictate the style to the customer, I believe people give something their own trend.

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.

You always get that one customer that decides that your name is boy. Or something. It certainly reinforces a respect I already had for people that are in the hospitality industry.

I'm starting to believe that part of the solution regarding the devices is that they have a role to play in engaging the customer and keeping our product in front of them during the pre-show. They certainly have a role to play in ticket sales. Inside the movie auditorium, though, during the feature presenation there's no place for them. Every single weekend two out of the top three reasons people contact us are: somebody's being disruptive, with a device most of the time, or a dirty bathroom.

Remember that, in the end, the customer doesn't know, or care, if you are small or large as an organization - she or he only focuses on the garment hanging on the rail in the store.

I’m a Verizon customer. I don’t mind Verizon turning over records to the government if the government is going to make sure that they try to match up a known terrorist phone with somebody in the United States. I don’t think you’re talking to the terrorists. I know you’re not. I know I’m not. So we don’t have anything to worry about.

I have to be really careful, because I have nothing but love for this entity known as "the customer" in entertainment. I would never, ever, ever put myself above them and say, "They don't get it, but it's funny, believe me." If they're not laughing, I'm doing my job wrong.

Treat customer support as a product.

Some of the best ideas throughout the company's evolution have been from places all throughout the company whether it's an engineer or someone on the customer support team. Just different areas around the company.

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.

The web is the ultimate customer-empowering environment. He or she who clicks the mouse gets to decide everything. It is so easy to go elsewhere; all the competitors in the world are but a mouseclick away.

In the world of Internet Customer Service, it's important to remember your competitor is only one mouse click away.

Customer service shouldn't just be A department, it should be the entire company.

The purpose of a business is to get and keep a customer. Without customers, no amount of engineering wizardry, clever financing, or operations expertise can keep a company going.

The game of business used to be like football: size mattered. Then it changed to basketball: speed and agility. Today, business is more like chess. Customer priorities change continually, and the signals given by these changes are vital clues to the next cycle of growth.

I'm usually the sparkle in a closet full of conservative clothes. Either that or my customer has a closet full of my clothes and a few conservative suits from Calvin Klein. I think you've got to give a girl what's missing from her closet. If something jazzy, tacky or sexy is what's missing, I provide it.

Reengineering posits a radical new principle: that the design of work must be based not on hierarchical management and the specialization of labor but on end-to-end processes and the creation of value for the customer.

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.

At the start of any program, asking questions is the most important part of the process. If you get [the customer's] requirements wrong, then you don't have a successful product.

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.

Of course if you are launching a new business you can thinking about revenues, profits, and so on, but metrics such as customer satisfaction or employee retention might be meaningful if you are focusing more internally.

I'm constantly amazed that owners and managers of all businesses don't train their people to call the person who pays by credit card by name. It definitely makes the customer feel good and will be a factor in bringing them back to your place of business.

Integrated marketing communications is a way of looking at the whole marketing process from the view point of the customer.

Code-sharing, alliances, and connections are all about "how do we screw the poor customer for more money?"

How do we professionally manage content? We don’t. We shouldn’t manage content in the same way that we shouldn’t manage technology. Content and technology are merely a means to an end. What is the end? The end is the task the customer wishes to complete. That is what we should manage.

The city is not changing anything, ... increases in the cost of natural gas will be passed through to the customer.

You're headed in the right direction when you realize the customer viewpoint is more important than the company viewpoint. It's more productive to learn from your customers instead of about them.

I've given my email address to all 3,000 T-Mobile stores. Serious customer escalations come directly to me. Customers get a kick out of me responding to them, and the employees do, too.

One customer well taken care of could be more valuable than $10,000 worth of advertising.