Quotes & Sayings About Customers

The bank wanted me to sell those customers that debt, because the system needs you to buy that new car, that holiday to Barbados, that latest iPhone or that new extension you've always been dreaming off. The banks are happy to let you do it with their high interest credit products, and they want me to be the guy that sells the idea to you. I was serving the machine that was enslaving me. — K.A. Hill

It's the usual utopian vision. This time they were saying it'll reduce waste. If stores know what their customers want, then they don't overproduce, don't overship, don't have to throw stuff away when it's not bought. I mean, like everything else you guys are pushing, it sounds perfect, sounds progressive, but it carries with it more control, more central tracking of everything we do. — Dave Eggers

As an artist who lives here and wants a more sophisticated engagement between local social dynamics and global discourse, it's great to see that reflected via the relationships we've developed with our customers. For some people it's a political act to eat from us three days a week because they recognize they are financially supporting the premise of the project each time they come. 95% of our annual revenue is purely from the public via food sales. — Jon Rubin

When I set up my first restaurant, I was so inspired by Wolfgang Puck, who is also based in L.A. and is now a good friend of mine, and the way he would engage with his customers and greet them personally. — Nobu Matsuhisa

Every time Wal-Mart spends one dollar foolishly, it comes right out of our customers' pockets. Every time we save them a dollar, that puts us one more step ahead of the competition - which is where we always plan to be. — Sam Walton

Yeah, I'm a drug addict. And a prostitute. The whole world knows. Not because I robbed my own family. Not because I ended up behind bars. Not because I've been hassled by the cops when soliciting customers from a local street corner. Not because I'm shooting up in the public bathrooms at your city park. Everyone knows because I told them all. I never tried to hide any of it. I never felt the need to. — Ashly Lorenzana

We saw that our customers required help beyond the data sets they had and that they could benefit from a wider opinion. So we built SurveyMonkey Audience, and we've now got 4 million users who signed up to take surveys. Our clients can choose the demographic they want to hear from, and we can provide that sample. — Dave Goldberg

Our mission statement about treating people with respect and dignity is not just words but a creed we live by every day. You can't expect your employees to exceed the expectations of your customers if you don't exceed the employees' expectations of management. — Howard Schultz

Absolute freedom doesn't exist and never did. Just as we don't spit on the floor at work, swear at customers, or send out letters full of misspellings, so too we might have to 'watch our language.' It is odd that the request for unbiased language in schools and workplaces is considered intolerable when other limits on our freedom to do whatever we want are not. — Rosalie Maggio

Literature is a vast bazaar where customers come to purchase everything except mirrors. — James Branch Cabell

The oil industry is a stunning example of how science, technology, and mass production can divert an entire group of companies from their main task ... No oil company gets as excited about the customers in its own backyard as about the oil in the Sahara Desert ... But the truth is, it seems to me, that the industry begins with the needs of the customer for its products. From that primal position its definition moves steadily back stream to areas of progressively lesser importance until it finally comes to rest at the search for oil. — Theodore Levitt

Research on the Internet, research what people say about the vintage stores, look online to see if customer service is good because that's really important. Also to see online what other customers say. — Karen Elson

The more a congregation considers its people customers, the more likely it is to develop a broader range of ministries to relate to varying needs, interests and priorities. — Stan Toler

Companies cannot really see beyond their current customer base. They explicitly or implicitly do things to protect their current customers. And the last person to want real change is your customer. This is why most new ideas come from small companies that have nothing to lose. — Nicholas Negroponte

I love working with customers. Sales has really influenced everything I do. It has instilled in me the important traits of operating with a sense of urgency and listening to people. — Jeffrey R. Immelt

Never close your circle. We all have room for growth. Every person you meet is not out to destroy you. Blessings can come from connecting with the right people. That's why wireless service providers are always accepting new customers. When you set limits on your relationships, you block the possibility of gaining new opportunities. So instead of closing your circle, screen those you let in it. — Bianca McCormick-Johnson

What is good for our customers is also in the long run good for us. — Ingvar Kamprad

The overarching goal of Tesla is to help reduce carbon emissions and that means low cost and high volume. We will also serve as an example to the auto industry, proving that the technology really works and customers want to buy electric vehicles. — Elon Musk

Have you hugged your customers lately? Have you told 'em you care? Have you reached out boldly and said 'We know you're there? — Tom Reilly

To the designer, great design is beautiful design. A significant amount of effort must be placed into making the product attractive. To the client, great design is effective. It must bring in customers and meet the goals put forth to the designer in the original brief. To the user, great design is functional. It's easy to read, easy to use and easy to get out of it what was promised Truly great design, then, is when these three perspectives are considered and implemented equally to create a final product that is beautiful, effective and functional. — Joshua Johnson

Not being in tune with your customers is like living in an alternate reality; the way you think your customers feel about your product is not always the same as what your customers really think about your product. — Bo Bennett

He said when he went to sell a man a flue, he asked first about that man's wife's health and how his children were. He said he had a book that he kept the names of his customers' families and what was wrong with them. A man's wife had cancer, he put her name down in the book and wrote 'cancer' after it and inquired about her every time he went to that man's hardware store until she died; then he scratched out the word 'cancer' and wrote 'dead' there. "And I say thank God when they're dead," the salesman said; "that's one less to remember. — Flannery O'Connor

Our tenants now are companies like Uber, the taxi service, Meituan, China's version of Groupon - and a large number of startups. These companies operate in a modern way, just like their customers: They go on the Internet, look for an offer and take it. — Zhang Xin

What we are seeing now is customers shifting their attention from security products like firewalls and intrusion sensors, to the policies that need to be in place, and the technologies that help them enforce policy compliance. — John W. Thompson

The issue is not to ask your customers what they want today, but to try to imagine what the customer is going to want in a world where, for instance, their cellphone is in their glasses. — Jay S. Walker

In customers' minds, the Amazon brand meant books only. — Brad Stone

I don't have the time to devote to circles or covens. I have to fit things in when and where I can, in stolen moments and cups of coffee.
Stirring clockwise to conjure.
Widdershins to banish.
There's never enough time, and rarely enough caffeine, but I make do with what I have. Besides, cauldrons and pointy hats are overrated.
Sometimes I see other customers practicing. Pouring their cream and sugar with studied intent. Stirring with purpose.
I add an extra spoonful of sugar to my own coffee for them, to make all of our enchantments sweeter. — Erin Morgenstern

Sustainability is no longer optional. Companies that fail to adopt such practices will perish. They will not only lose cost basis: they will also suffer in recruiting employees as well as attracting customers. — John Replogle

Retail is selling things that don't come back to customers who do. — Tony Farmer

Focus is scary - until you realize that it only means turning your back on markets you could never have anyway. Sharp focus on jobs that customers are trying to get done holds the promise of greatly improving the odds of success in new-product development. — Clayton Christensen

The central challenge for any company, regardless of its size, is to keep doing a better job for its customers. — Ralph Nader

Ask yourself: would you be comfortable printing everything your employees, customers & partners have to say about your culture? — Tony Hsieh

Go after the customers that are working in the future, but haven't totally lost their minds. — Aaron Levie

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. — Bill Davidow

It was then that stories of the dreaming disease began to circulate more widely. We heard from our customers of a girl who smelled of cooking oil, who remembered all the wars ever fought. She could recall and recount every death, every rape, every wound, every moment of suffering that had ever been inflicted by a member of her ancestral lineage. The only place she could find relief from this barrage of collective memory was in water. — Larissa Lai

And also, more and more businesses really want to do the right thing. They feel better about themselves, their workers feel better, and so do their customers. I think this is equally true in the transnational corporations, but it is harder to express in those situations. — Paul Hawken

I'm making a case against how money managers are handling customers' money. The objective of the customer is not being met if the fund managers are diversifying their assets into hundreds of businesses. If they do this, they are typically performing close to the indexes. But that's not the way wealth is created. — Michael Lee-Chin

Customers won't care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way. And if you can't monopolize a unique solution for a small market, you'll be stuck with vicious competition. — Peter Thiel

When we come to [work] we bring an attitude. We can bring a moody attitude and have a depressing day. We can bring a grouchy attitude and irritate our coworkers and customers. Or we can bring a sunny, playful, cheerful attitude and have a great day. — Stephen C. Lundin

Jabs are the lightweight pieces of content that benefit your customers by making them laugh, snicker, ponder, play a game, feel appreciated, or escape; right hooks are calls to action that benefit your businesses. — Gary Vaynerchuk

The first stage of camping always involves a trip to an outdoor equipment store like REI. These stores are well known for their abundance of white customers and their extensive inventory of things for white people to buy and only use once. — Christian Lander

I think the environment has become more competitive. That has made Indian industry more concerned with a) its customers, b) the quality of its products, and c) its brand image in the marketplace. — Ratan Tata

The profitable part of the online business is very likely several years away. Entering the business because it's the hot topic of the day doesn't make a profitable business nor satisfied customers, ... That's why it will be a part of Nintendo's strategy, not the mainstay, as other companies are attempting to do. There still are too many barriers for any company to greatly depend on it. — Satoru Iwata

The real wages of potters are in the daily silent appreciations of each of their customers as they pour the morning tea from their teapot, or drink coffee from their mug, or eat dinner off their plate. To be this involved in the daily lives of people who appreciate and admire your work enough to buy it must bring deep reassurance. It is a kind of immortality you can enjoy while still living.
The same goes for the woodworker. You are part of the community. — Roger Deakin

But this doesn't mean that there is incompatibility between regulation and rapid innovation: it is more of a disconnect, since both sides are there to serve customers' needs and it is those customers, both corporate and consumer, who will make the choice. These — Susanne Chishti

As Members of Congress we can now engage with our constituents via online innovations like the Huffington Post, while a small business in rural Oregon can use the Internet to find customers around the world. — Ron Wyden

If you create Youtility, your customers will keep you close. — Jay Baer

How well you tell your story determines how well your customers tell your story. — Simon Mainwaring

Treat customer support as a product. — Keith Rabois

If we don't understand our tools, then there is a danger we will become the tool of our tools. We think of ourselves as Google's customers, but really we're its products. — Rebecca Goldstein

We [Virgin Group] have been successful not by wasting time scrutinising our competitors but by looking at ourselves from the point of view of our customers do and seeking feedback through listening. — Richard Branson

Rather than focus on trying to get a lot of customers to market yourself, really focus more on the actual product or service itself and existing users to, like, what would make them happier, what would make them come back more and more times or in our case buy more often. — Tony Hsieh

Everyone is not your customer. — Seth Godin

Focus too much on the near-term and you won't get tomorrow's customers, focus too much on the long-term and you won't get today's. — Aaron Levie

No business can stay in business without customers. How you treat - or mistreat - them determines how long your doors stay open. — Harvey MacKay

How many companies can say that the amount of customers who use their services second most often, and spend the second most amount of money with them, are "very negative"? — Charles Fishman

The people are so small, they look like ants (although they're Walmart customers, so they look like obese ants). — Andrew Shaffer

Brands are facing a new competitive landscape in which self-definition, core values and purpose will increasingly define their ability to reach customers that only allow what is meaningful in their lives to pass through their filter. — Simon Mainwaring

In addition to transitioning to the cloud, our customers continue to invest in premium versions of our on-prem server products like Window Server, System Center and SQL Server. — Amy Hood

There is no one thing that can turn around a rejection. But there is one answer: begin talking to your customers who have already bought from you and discover why they bought. — Jeffrey Gitomer

The key word is flexibility, the ability to adapt constantly. Darwin said it clearly. People thought that he mainly talked about survival of the fittest. What he said was that the species that survive are usually not the smartest or the strongest, but the ones most responsive to change. So being attentive to customers and potential partners is my best advice
after, of course, perseverance and patience. — Philippe Kahn

You may be trying to drive in a particular direction that people don't necessarily understand at first. In our case, we knew the users we had in mind for this product. So in the early days, we looked at our customers, really just testers at that point, and we paid extra attention to the teams we knew should be using Slack successfully. — Stewart Butterfield

Your prospects or customers wants to buy, but they don't want to be sold — Timi Nadela

As I have written before, one of my favorite parts of my job as CEO of Moda Operandi is the opportunity I get to explore international fashion scenes to discover new talent, and then being able to introduce these designers to our community of fashion-savvy customers worldwide. — Aslaug Magnusdottir

After facing backlash from customers, Subway says it will remove a chemical in its bread that is also found in yoga mats. Some people were like, 'You mean I've been eating a dangerous chemical?' While most people were like, 'You mean I can eat my yoga mat?' — Jimmy Fallon

Businesses are not paid to reform customers. They are paid to satisfy customers. — Peter Drucker

The customer service agents who accepted the defaults of Internet Explorer and Safari approached their job the same way. They stayed on script in sales calls and followed standard operating procedures for handling customer complaints. They saw their job descriptions as fixed, so when they were unhappy with their work, they started missing days, and eventually just quit. The employees who took the initiative to change their browsers to Firefox or Chrome approached their jobs differently. They looked for novel ways of selling to customers and addressing their concerns. When — Adam M. Grant

What's frustrating more than anything is when chefs start to cut corners and believe that they are incognito in the way they send out appetizers, entrees, and they know it's not 100 percent, but they think the customers can't spot it. — Gordon Ramsay

That was the time calculated by the barber who based his estimate on the length of his customers' stubble. — Jeff VanderMeer

The internet has opened the door for millions of businesses to do things differently, because there are other assets now, assets that can transcend location. Your permission to talk to customers, your reputation, your unique products-you can build a business around them online. — Seth Godin

And, of course, customers really need to feel safe and are seeking reassurance when they fly. — David Neeleman

We must satisfy our customers. — W. Edwards Deming

Treat your employees like customers. — Herb Kelleher

The shareholders who own the businesses in this book have other, nonfinancial priorities in addition to their financial objectives. Not that they don't want to earn a good return on their investment, but it's not their only goal, or even necessarily their paramount goal. They're also interested in being great at what they do, creating a great place to work, providing great service to customers, having great relationships with their suppliers, making great contributions to the communities they live and work in, and finding great ways to lead their lives. They've learned, moreover, that to excel in all those things, they have to keep ownership and control inside the company and, in many cases, place significant limits on how much and how fast they grow. The wealth they've created, though substantial, has been a byproduct of success in these other areas. I call them small giants. — Bo Burlingham

Small-business customers are very conservative and very cheap. We don't have to explain ourselves for the most part. — Paul Graham

Up the stairs I found an imposing headquarters, decorated with the portraits and busts of solemn, whiskered old darlings who, no doubt, bled their customers with leeches and passed on the information to alarmed small boys that self-abuse leads to blindness. — John Mortimer

Customers don't care how much time something takes to build. They care only if it serves their needs. — Eric Ries

Meaningful relationships are two-way, and that means constantly looking for ways to improve your customers' lives. — Peter Friedman

Disputational knowing wants customers. It has no soul. — Rumi

While versioning sets different prices for different versions of one product in order to approximate the optimal revenue rates of personal pricing, bundling aims to achieve that by offering several products in one package. Therefore, the customers may choose whether to acquire products separately or in a bundle. This approach is particularly useful, when it is assumed that the customers have heterogenous willingness to pay for each product. — Christof Weinhardt

Here's a tip for all you aspiring young comics: Don't beat up the customers. It is very difficult to get laughs from an audience when you've actually drawn blood from one of their number. It kills the mood. — Craig Ferguson

There are many advantages to a customer-centric approach, but here's the big one: customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don't yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf.
Jeff Bezos
From 7 insightful quotes to shareholders via letter. 2017 — Malini Chaudhri

If you don't keep giving customers reasons to buy from you, they won't — Sergio Zyman

Drug companies are spending billions of dollars to turn normal human experiences like fear or sadness into medical diseases. They aren't developing cures; they're creating customers. — Julie Holland

Customers want high-quality food, good service, and good store experience, and most retailers fail to deliver on those. — John Mackey

Social media changes the relationship between companies and customers from master and servant, to peer to peer. — Jay Baer

Coffeehouses were centers of self-education, literary and philosophical speculation, commercial innovation, and, in some cases, political fermentation. But above all they were clearinghouses for news and gossip, linked by the circulation of customers, publications, and information from one establishment to the next. Collectively, Europe's coffeehouses functioned as the Internet of the Age of Reason. — Tom Standage

Vicky had once told her that she should not be ashamed of her pubic hair. Pubic hair was what men expected to see on women. Vicky said that there was a young prostitute at the Centre who had no pubic hair & many customers were known to shy off her because they thought that she was diseased. So Phyllis was resigned to displaying her pubic hair to all who wanted to see it.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

Always give more in service, than you receive in payment, and customers will beat a path to your door. — Denis Waitley

I've sat in sushi bars, really fine ones, and I know how hard this guy worked, how proud he is. I know you don't need sauce. I know he doesn't even want you to pour sauce. And I've seen customers come in and do that, and I've seen him, as stoic as he tries to remain, I've seen him die a little inside. — Anthony Bourdain

Technology is something we buy to sell to the customers. Ericsson, Nokia and IBM do technology for a living, so let's give it to them because they know best. It has made the business model of Bharti very, very sustainable. — Sunil Mittal

You can call me mercenary, or call me madam, but, as I always tell my customers - just call me anytime! — Xaviera Hollander

In the Internet world, both ends essentially pay for access to the Internet system, and so the providers of access get compensated by the users at each end. My big concern is that suddenly access providers want to step in the middle and create a toll road to limit customers' ability to get access to services of their choice even though they have paid for access to the network in the first place. — Vinton Cerf

We need to figure out a 'harvest system' to collect the produce that stores don't put out for customers to buy because it's not perfect looking. Frankly, the stuff left to rot in the storeroom is more beautiful to me than the perfect carrot. I'm a gnarly carrot kind of guy. — Mario Batali

Most of the Peacekeepers turn a blind eye to the few of us who hunt because they're as hungry as we are for fresh meat as anyone. In fact, they're among our best customers. — Suzanne Collins

Early in my publishing career, someone told me I'd need to have five books in print before I could quit my job as a journalist. Turns out it was closer to 10 books. It also turns out that while it's great to see my titles on bookstore shelves, my best customers are schools and libraries. — Kate Klise

There are lots of things about Amazon for which they deserve credit. They're innovative. There are lots of very, very happy Amazon customers. I'm not here to dispute that Amazon has been personally good for me or to say that they haven't been, so far, good to their customers. — Scott Turow

I shall answer all the questions you are afraid to ask me openly. Do I wish to pay my workers more than their services are worth to me? I do not. Do I wish to sell my product for less than my customers are willing to pay me? I do not. Do I wish to sell it at a loss or give it away? I do not. — Ayn Rand

There's a real moral imperative in being an organization that takes the time to sit and listen to the customers and the people they're serving. — Jacqueline Novogratz

My dad continually reminded salespeople that their main job was to help the customer win. When you speak the account's language and frame the sales story around what is most meaningful to the client, you stand out from the competition. Customers see you differently because the words you choose demonstrate a commitment to their success. — Mike Weinberg