Customer First Quotes & Sayings

Learning to design is, first of all, learning to see. Designers see more, and more precisely. This is a blessing and a curse - once we have learned to see design, both good and bad, we cannot un-see. The downside is that the more you learn to see, the more you lose your 'common' eye, the eye you design for. This can be frustrating for us designers when we work for a customer with a bad eye and strong opinions. But this is no justification for designer arrogance or eye-rolling. Part of our job is to make the invisible visible, to clearly express what we see, feel and do. You can't expect to sell what you can't explain. — Oliver Reichenstein

How could anyone be so stupid as to trust a trader? The best thing I could do was pretend to others at Salomon that I had meant to screw the customer. People would respect that. That was called jamming. I had just jammed bonds, albeit unknowingly, for the first time. I had lost my innocence. — Michael Lewis

I remember back in the early days of Microsoft that from the day that you decided that you were just going to put out an ad to a customer - and all you were usually able to tell them was that a new product was available - it was about nine months before you could actually reach the first customer. — Gabe Newell

The first thing he noticed was that Las Vegas seemed to have invented a new school of functional architecture, 'The Gilded Mousetrap School' he thought it might be called, whose main purpose was to channel the customer-mouse into the central gambling trap whether he wanted the cheese or not. — Ian Fleming

The federal government said today they've begun training sessions for airport security workers to provide what they call more customer satisfaction to the travels, they want to make it easier for us. They're instructing security guards to glance at your luggage tags so that they can call you by your first name. Isn't that creepy? The guy touching your wife, calling her by her first name. — Jay Leno

The customer always comes first. — Rajen Jani

product excellence is now paramount to business success - not control of information, not a stranglehold on distribution, not overwhelming marketing power (although these are still important). There are a couple of reasons for this. First, consumers have never been better informed or had more choice.13 It used to be that companies could turn poor products into winners by dint of overwhelming marketing or distribution strength. Create an adequate product, control the conversation with a big marketing budget, limit customer choice, and you could guarantee yourself a good return. — Eric Schmidt

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. — Seth Godin

After he left the planet with his brothers, he'd imagined he'd live out his life alone.
That was until he met Annabelle.
His memory lingered back to the day he stepped into her bakery. His brothers were still unpacking when he decided to take a walk into town. The first time he saw her, she was placing muffins into a customer's bag. Even with her messy hair bun and stained pink apron, she was pure perfection. His entire body warmed when he got a backside peek at her pink tank top and itty bitty jean shorts. Before he knew what was happening, he'd gone inside and sat down in the same booth he sat in now. And when she came to the table to take his order, she'd bit down on her bottom lip. He'd known then those lips would complicate his life, but he had no idea just how much. — Stacey O'Neale

Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later - no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget - we will return. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The best way to apologize is to let the customer vent first. Don't interrupt, just take notes and make empathetic noises. You can even tell the customer that it makes you mad too. Second, ask the customer what their speed of need is. Tell them what they ant to hear. That you apologize, that you understand how they feel, that you are meeting with the appropriate people to get a resolve, and that it will be done in 24-hours. — Jeffrey Gitomer

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

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 — Donald Keough

First and foremost, there is a difference between being perceived as an expert and being one. In the context of business, the former is what sells product and the latter, relative to your "minimal customer base," is what creates good products and prevents returns. — Timothy Ferriss

our first customer, a gray-haired woman in bifocals and — Gillian Flynn

We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years, and they're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient. — Jeff Bezos

The first step in exceeding your customer's expectations is to know those expectations. — Roy H. Williams

Everyone talks about building a relationship with your customer. I think you build one with your employees first. — Angela Ahrendts

What's important to remember is that every customer interaction should be treated like a first impression. Until your on-demand customer becomes a loyal follower, he's probably already forgotten what his last touch was, so you'd better wow him or her this time. Don't skimp and don't cut corners when it comes to the external touches your brand makes. From experience I can tell you that you'll pay a much bigger price in customer retention if you go cheap when it comes to customer outreach and service. — Gabriel Aluisy

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

Ever since 1945 the federal government has held and indeed increased its importance as the first customer of the American economy. Government spending had been the primary economic stimulant and to increase it had been the goal of hundreds of interest groups; hopes of balanced budgets and cheap, business-like administration always ran aground upon this fact. What was more, the United States was a democracy; whatever the doctrinaire objections to it, and however much rhetoric might be devoted to attacking it, a welfare state slowly advanced because voters wanted it that way. These facts gradually made the old ideal of totally free enterprise, unchecked and uninvaded by the influence of government, unreal. — J.M. Roberts

The first person a customer speaks with has the greatest impact on that customer's impression of Safeway. — Steven Burd

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

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. — Ed Robertson

The business models in enterprise have changed pretty dramatically. A huge problem with enterprise software traditionally has been usually you sell to the customer and then they adopt the technology. The great thing about 'freemium' and the new way enterprise software is being sold is you get to try it first and then buy it. — Aaron Levie

The most common way customer financing is done is you sell the customer on the product before you've built it or before you've finished it. The customer puts up the money to build the product or finish the product and becomes your first customer. Usually the customer simply wants the product and nothing more. — Fred Wilson

We have a constantly-changing portfolio of social media experiments. The first time we tried applying social technologies in a customer service department it became the most productive department in the company. — Sandy Carter

If the employees come first, then they're happy. A motivated employee treats the customer well. The customer is happy so they keep coming back, which pleases the shareholders. It's not one of the enduring green mysteries of all time, it is just the way it works. — Herb Kelleher

One springs to mind: one of our very first gigs in a small East Texas town was not well promoted. At least, that was our conclusion. After the band loaded in and the curtain opened, we realized there was exactly one paying customer in the audience. We kind of made the best of it playing through the first set, took a break and bought him a Coke and then went on to perform for the remainder of the night. It wasn't exactly a catastrophe but it certainly stands as legendary. — Billy Gibbons

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

At IBM everybody sells! Every employee has been trained to think that the customer comes first - everybody from the CEO, to the people in finance, to the receptionists, to those who work in manufacturing. — Buck Rodgers

As a young designer explained to me bluntly: "Everyone upstairs is dumb," referring to the floor above the engineering lair at the 156 University office where customer support, administrators and salespeople sat. My first impulse was to laugh at his ridiculous, blithe dismissiveness, until I realized that it wasn't very funny. — Katherine Losse

Man, that's a killer strategy, that is, an awesome way to persuade the incognoscenti that we're not crazed hokum junkies, high on hackwork, trying to pimp our addled euphoria to anyone who passes. Yeah, vehement denial that we've got anything to do with the crack-whore pump-daddy beast of a thousand cocks locked in the closet. Bitter accusations of snootcocking snipewankery when they point out that crack-whore pimp-daddy beast of a thousand cocks in the closet. Offended outrage when they assume the mindfuck we're touting is a cheap handjob, just because we're, like, standing on a street corner dressed to sell our arses. And because our first words to a prospective customer just happens to be, 'Hey, big boy. — Hal Duncan

Value-first is a perception. If your customer does not perceive it as value, then it's not very valuable. — Jeffrey Gitomer

Buyer Legends is a business process that uses storytelling techniques to map the critical paths a prospective buyer might follow on his journey to becoming a buyer.

This process aligns strategy to brand story to the buyer's actual experience on their customer journey.

These easy-to-tell stories reveal the opportunities and gaps in the customer's experience versus the current marketing & sales process.

These legends communicate the brand's story intent and critical touch point responsibilities within every level of an organization, from the boardroom to the stockroom.

Buyer Legends reconcile the creative process to data analysis; aligning metrics with previously hard-to-measure marketing, sales, and customer service processes. The first result is improved execution, communications, and testing. The second result is a big boost to the bottom line. — Bryan Eisenberg

Customer-driven innovation was at the core of Intuit's first product, 'Quicken,' and it continues to guide us as we look to solve new problems in areas like mobile payments. Products like Intuit 'GoPayment' and the IntuitPayment Network are helping small businesses get paid faster, keeping cash flow strong and their business healthy. — Brad D. Smith

In 2000, when my partner Ben Horowitz was CEO of the first cloud computing company, Loudcloud, the cost of a customer running a basic Internet application was approximately $150,000 a month. — Marc Andreessen

The Apple Marketing Philosophy" that stressed three points. The first was empathy, an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer: "We will truly understand their needs better than any other company." The second was focus: "In order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities." The third and equally important principle, awkwardly named, was impute. It emphasized that people form an opinion about a company or product based on the signals that it conveys. "People DO judge a book by its cover," he wrote. "We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities. — Walter Isaacson

Customers are a great way to finance a business for many reasons. First, customer financing is typically non dilutive. They want something from you other than equity in your business. Customers also help you fit your product to the market. And customers will help debug and improve the quality of the product. — Fred Wilson

Nasty Gal Obsessed: We keep the customer at the center of everything we do. Without customers, we have nothing. Own It: Take the ball and run with it. We make smart decisions, put the business first, and do more with less. People Are Important: Reach out, make friends, build trust. No Assholes: We leave our egos at the door. We are respectful, collaborative, curious, and open-minded. Learn On: What we're building has never been built before - the future is ours to write. We get excited about growth, take intelligent risks, and learn from our mistakes. Have Fun and Keep It Weird. — Sophia Amoruso

I was in a fast-food restaurant for the first time in my adult life, an enormous and garish place just around the corner from the music venue. It was mystifyingly, inexplicably busy. I wondered why humans would willingly queue at a counter to request processed food, then carry it to a table which was not even set, and then eat it from the paper? Afterward, despite having paid for it, the customer themselves are responsible for clearing away the detritus. Very strange. — Gail Honeyman

Lure him out. Send in a 'customer' with a message from me needing to meet him. I'm not the kind of person he can ignore-well, that he used to not-never mind. Once he's out, we can get him to a place we choose."
I nodded. "I can do that."
"No," said Dimitri. "You can't."
"Why not?" I asked, wondering if he thought it was too dangerous for me.
"Because they'll know you're a dhampir the instant they see you. They'll probably smell it first. No Strigoi would have a dhampir working for him-only humans."
There was an uncomfortable silence in the car.
"No!" said Sydney. "I am not doing that! — Richelle Mead

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

The Customer isn't always right. Sometimes the customer is an asshole. That's the first rule of retail. — Kelly Link

If you work just for money, you'll never make it, but if you love what you're doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours. — Ray Kroc

In every company which I have done strategic planning, the number-one value people choose is always integrity. The second values may be quality of products and services, caring about people, excellent customer service, profitability , innovation, entrepreneurship, and others. But integrity always comes first. — Brian Tracy

The first time formal customer research is done, executives frequently are surprised by the sizeable percentage of customers who defect for service-related reasons. — Leonard L. Berry

In fact, I believe the first companies that make an effort to develop an authentic, transparent, and meaningful social contract with their fans and customers will turn out to be the ones that are the most successful in the future. While brands that refuse to make the effort will lose stature and customer loyalty. — Simon Mainwaring

Don't go into business with the sole objective of making lot of money. If you put service, quality, and customer satisfaction first-the money will follow. — Paul Clitheroe

Companies spend as much as 70 percent of their marketing budget to attract new customers while 90 percent of their revenues come from current customers. Many companies lose money on their new customers during the first few years. By overfocusing on acquiring new customers and neglecting current customers, companies experience a customer attrition rate of between 10 and 30 percent a year. Then they waste further money on a neverending effort to attract new customers or win back ex-customers to replace those they just lost. — Anonymous

I learned from my first restaurant: Make customers happy, make sure the customer comes back again. And automatically, success has followed me. — Nobu Matsuhisa

I found it very helpful not to do the venture round. Instead, I started with very little money, a few thousand dollars, and I did every job myself. I was the first photographer. I was the first customer service rep. I was the first online marketing person. — Jon Oringer

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

Sell (service or product) as if you are buying it, convince yourself first that, it is worth buying..
It is very simple; u 'cannot' convince someone till the time you're not convinced — Honeya

It doesn't take much to produce a good merchant of cash-and-carry love: just courage, an infinite capacity for perpetual suspicion, stamina on a 24-hour-a-day basis, the deathless conviction that the customer is always wrong, a fair knowledge of first and second aid, do-it-yourself gynecology, judo - and a tremendous sense of humor. — Sally Stanford

Auctomatic was a compressed start-up experience, going from start to launch to acquisition in under a year. We spent a long time building the product before getting our first customer, whereas with Stripe we made sure we had paying customers from the very start. — John Collison

The successful salesperson cares first for the customer, second for the products. — Philip Kotler

My first customer was a lunatic. My second had a death wish. — Karl Benz

I remember my first job, when I was working in a retail store down there, growing up in Laurel, Mississippi. I was making, like, $2.15 an hour. And I was taught how to responsibly handle those customer interactions. — Marsha Blackburn

We named the bar The Bar. "People will think we're ironic instead of creatively bankrupt," my sister reasoned.
Yes, we thought we were being clever New Yorkers - that the name was a joke no one else would really get, like we did. Not meta-get ... But our first customer, a gray-haired woman in bifocals and a pink jogging suit, said, "I like the name. Like in Breakfast at Tiffany's and Audrey Hepburn's cat was named Cat. — Gillian Flynn

We were the first multibrand platform for the customization of designer clothing. And it's great to be a first mover if you manage to pull it off. You can have a great competitive advantage. But if you're quite early, you're learning a lot: both learning as a company, and the customer is still learning. — Aslaug Magnusdottir

The first step to a solid market analysis is a detailed profile of your customer base. — Michael Colt

Then one day Chip showed up with the back of his pickup truck just loaded with old metal letters he'd found at a flea market--big, oddly shaped letters taken from various old signs. They were mismatched and rusty and dented--and I loved them. We tacked them up on the front of the shop, spelling out the name that would come to mean so much: Magnolia. The letters were uneven and looked a little handmade and ragged, but it seemed to work. I loved this sign because Chip designed it and made it with his own two hands. It came together in such an imperfectly perfect way, and I hoped people would get it.

To this day that sign is one of my proudest accomplishments. I'm no Joanna Gaines, but I certainly see things differently and love design in my own unique way. That first sign really reflected that for me. I would glow when I would hear a customer come in the shop and say, "I saw the sign and just had to stop in. — Joanna Gaines