Great Customers Quotes & Sayings

Insurance companies bank on this. They know, with great accuracy, how many of their customers will die each year. They just don't know who the unlucky ones will be. — Anonymous

Local businesses have never had a great way to get customers in the door. — Andrew Mason

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 explain our company values and the foundation to prospective employees, they realize that they have an opportunity to do much more than change the way businesses manage and share information. When you take a workforce of smart, creative, dedicated people and say "take this company time to serve your community, and bring along your coworkers, customers, and partners" great things happen. — Marc Benioff

Half of the great comedians I've had in my shows and that I paid a lot of money to and who made my customers shriek were not only not funny to me, but I couldn't understand why they were funny to anybody. — Florenz Ziegfeld

As much as possible, connect your offer to the direct benefits customers will receive. Like the Alaska coupon books, a compelling offer pays for itself by making a clear value proposition. What people want and what they say they want are not always the same thing; your job is to figure out the difference. When developing an offer, think carefully about the objections and then respond to them in advance. Provide a nudge to customers by getting them to make a decision. The difference between a good offer and a great offer is urgency (also known as timeliness): Why should people act now? Offer reassurance and acknowledgment immediately after someone buys something or hires you. Then find a small but meaningful way to go above and beyond their expectations. — Anonymous

In brief, the teaching process, as commonly observed, has nothing to do with the investigation and establishment of facts, assuming that actual facts may ever be determined. Its sole purpose is to cram the pupils, as rapidly and as painlessly as possible, with the largest conceivable outfit of current axioms, in all departments of human thought - to make the pupil a good citizen, which is to say, a citizen differing as little as possible, in positive knowledge and habits of mind, from all other citizens. In other words, it is the mission of the pedagogue, not to make his pupils think, but to make them think right, and the more nearly his own mind pulsates with the great ebbs and flows of popular delusion and emotion, the more admirably he performs his function. He may be an ass, but this is surely no demerit in a man paid to make asses of his customers. — H.L. Mencken

We have 11 great potato flavors, and customers have been clamoring for tortilla. For over a year, we worked to develop the four flavors of tortilla popchips: chili limon, nacho cheese, ranch and salsa. They're made with traditional stoneground masa, are gluten-free, and have less than half the fat of other chips. — Keith Belling

Customers don't expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong. — Don Porter

By the mid 1970s, the great downtown bookstores had begun to disappear as their customers migrated from city to suburb where population density was too thin to support major backlist retailers. — Jason Epstein

Shareholder value is the result of you doing a great job, watching your share price go up, your shareholders win, and dividends increasing. What happens when you have increasing shareholder value? You're delivering better employees to their communities and they can give back. Communities are winning because employees are involved in mentoring and all these other things. Customers are winning because you're providing them new products. — Jack Welch

What matters is: Are you profitable? Are you building something great? Are you taking care of your people? Are you treating your customers well? — Jason Fried

The reason is that good management itself was the root cause. Managers played the game the way it was supposed to be played. The very decision-making and resource-allocation processes that are key to the success of established companies are the very processes that reject disruptive technologies: listening carefully to customers; tracking competitors' actions carefully; and investing resources to design and build higher-performance, higher-quality products that will yield greater profit. These are the reasons why great firms stumbled or failed when confronted with disruptive technological change. — Clayton M Christensen

Great salespeople are relationship builders who provide value and help their customers win. — Jeffrey Gitomer

thought a glass of lassi would be refreshing. In the shop I noticed that the fan was on, but turned away from both customers and the owner. I was curious and asked why it was so. The owner glared at me and said: 'Can't you see?' I looked. The fan was pointed in the direction of a poster of our great leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. I shouted, 'Pakistan Zindabad!' and left without the lassi. In front of a shop, a man — Saadat Hasan Manto

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

a great publicity is a high way to remote customers and a universal key to the gate of ignorance — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Nordstrom believes that great service begins with showing courtesy to everyone-customers, employees, and vendors. — Robert Spector

The exposure from 'Iron Chef' has been helpful, but at the end of the day your product and your service determine whether you get customers or not. If people decide to eat out less during a recession, the first restaurants that they will cut out are the ones that don't do a great job. — Michael Symon

One of our first customers asked me how big we want to be. I said I want to be really big. Later, it bothered me that I answered that way. Now I say I just want to be a great company. — Kevin Plank

The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build-the thing customers want and will pay for-as quickly as possible. In other words, the Lean Startup is a new way of looking at the development of innovative new products that emphasizes fast iteration and customer insight, a huge vision, and great ambition, all at the same time. — Eric Ries

Everything starts with the customer. — Lou Gerstner

I am wired like a CEO and care a great deal about the bottom line, but I care about my customers even more than that. That's always been my competitive advantage. — Gary Vaynerchuk

I take so much pleasure at seeing customers who are happy: happy with what they eat, but happy with their friends and sharing a great moment together, and I think that is more important in life than the endless pursuit of perfection. — Daniel Boulud

Why are you always so mad?"

She laughs under her breath. "That's easy," she says. "Assholes, stupid customers, a shitty job, worthless parents, crappy friends, bad weather, annoying roommates who don't know how to kiss."

I laugh at the last comment, which I'm sure was supposed to be a dig, but it felt more like an underhanded flirt.

"How are you so happy all the time?" she asks. "You think everything is funny."

"That's easy," I say. "Great parents, being lucky enough to have a job, loyal friends, sunny days, and roommates who starred in porn films. — Colleen Hoover

It had been in 1985, through the headsets of a helicopter being flown by a veteran Night Stalker named Steel. Being called a customer put me off. It felt too much like business, too transactional - not how warriors should think of their comrades. I soon came to see that the Night Stalkers' constant use of the term was a skillful way of reminding themselves that they existed to support and enable the forces - the customers - whom they flew. The culture that formed around this word was one of the Night Stalkers' great strengths. — Stanley McChrystal

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

Our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff, like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand or empowering passionate employees and customers, will happen on its own. — Tony Hsieh

Nobody has really grasped yet the great wealth that can be made selling data over the Web. There are 100 million potential customers out there. — Michael J. Saylor

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

New West End Company ensures that there is a body that can put significant investment into the West End, targeted directly to the needs of the area and particularly the customers. Great progress is being made to improve Oxford Street and make it a great destination. — Philip Green

80 percent of products, or customers or employees, are only contributing 20 percent of profits; that there is great waste; that the most powerful resources of the company are being held back by a majority of much less effective resources; that profits could be multiplied if more of the best sort of products could be sold, employees hired, or customers attracted (or convinced to buy more from the firm). — Richard Koch

Jobs and Clow agreed that Apple was one of the great brands of the world, probably in the top five based on emotional appeal, but they needed to remind folks what was distinctive about it. So they wanted a brand image campaign, not a set of advertisements featuring products. It was designed to celebrate not what the computers could do, but what creative people could do with the computers. " This wasn't about processor speed or memory," Jobs recalled. " It was about creativity." It was directed not only at potential customers, but also at Apple's own employees: " We at Apple had forgotten who we were. One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are. That was the genesis of that campaign. — Walter Isaacson

No one can make you serve customers well. That's because great service is a choice. — Ken Blanchard

At Microsoft, we're aspiring to have a living, learning culture with a growth mindset that allows us to learn from ourselves and our customers. These are the key attributes of the new culture at Microsoft, and I feel great about how it seems to be resonating and how it's seen as empowering. — Satya Nadella

In terms of new press orders the differences currently are not so great as you might imagine. On the whole, Asian customers in the last couple of years have been looking for speed and capacity increases with less emphasis on automation, but this too is now changing as rising prices also affect Asia and the benefits of waste reduction become clear. — Eric Bell

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

Being frugal, conscious of making money, is not a negative thing. That sensibility of creating value and finding value and reinvesting in those customers is what separates great restaurants from the average ones. — Joe Bastianich

Great fit and synergism for both companies and excellent outcome for employees, customers and shareholders. — Philippe Kahn

Plain and simple, marketing is about nothing more than getting your product or service in front of likely buyers in a positively memorable way. Although there have been thousands of books written about marketing, that really is all that it's about. When starting a business or growing your existing business, you must come to grips with the fact that marketing is SUPER IMPORTANT. In fact without effective marketing and a steady stream of customers, nothing else about your business really matters. The fancy LLC you just setup doesn't matter. The super-detailed "Operating Agreement" doesn't matter. The S-Corp you formed doesn't matter and the new office space you just built out doesn't matter either. Poor marketing makes people poor. Great marketing makes people rich. — Clay Clark

Pretty quickly, I stopped seeing the company as an engine of community. Instead, I saw it as a mythmaker offering only an illusion of belonging and meeting its customers' desire for connections in form, maybe, but surely not in substance. Once I came to this conclusion, I started to dig deeper into the company's other promises
great working conditions, musical discovery, fair treatment of farmer, and concern for the environment. Every time I went excavating, the stories turned out to be more complex, more heavily edited, and more ambiguous than I had first thought. Each time, it became clear that Starbucks fulfilled its many promises only in the thinnest, most transitory of ways and that people's desires went largely unfulfilled. — Bryant Simon

The objective.. is to achieve a comfort level between the cook/artist/performer and the customer/viewer/diner. And if we can achieve that, and the customers are happy and the cooks are happy, then we have a great experience. — Mario Batali

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

Big box just wasn't our strength. We are a men's and boy's specialty store focused on providing high quality clothing with custom tailoring. Our customer is king. When we had seven stores, communication between the stores and with our customers became more disconnected. We started to lose that great family 'camaraderie' that is essentially the key to our success. — Paul Simon

I have come to realise that customers love companies that make them feel good about themselves - companies that reflect what they, the customers, believe about themselves. Customers fall in love with the company that says to them, "You are unique. You are great. We are the only ones who can make you feel that way. Fall in love with us and we will continue to make you feel great. — J. N. HALM

When I created Chipotle in 1993, I had a very simple idea: Offer a simple menu of great food prepared fresh each day, using many of the same cooking techniques as gourmet restaurants. Then serve the food quickly, in a cool atmosphere. It was food that I wanted, and thought others would like too. We've never strayed from that original idea. The critics raved and customers began lining up at my tiny burrito joint. Since then, we've opened a few more. — Steve Ells

Social media is a great way to get customers. Time is money. If you do this right, it costs money. But social media is great because you put stuff out there and see if it works almost immediately. You can test to see if it will be effective for your company. It's easy if you hit a nerve and talk about something people are interested in. It's easy for them to share with their friends. — JJ Ramberg

When the economy is difficult, people care a great deal about the things they spend their money on. Customers have come to understand that Apple's products aren't priced high - they're priced on the value of what we build into them. — Phil Schiller

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 look at the great frauds of all time, Enron had that phantom trading floor. What Herbalife has is it has phantom or fictitious customers. — Bill Ackman

It's always great when you get a lot of people pushing themselves to do better, be better, invent better, better serve, better lead customers in new directions. — Steve Ballmer

Great companies that build an enduring brand have an emotional relationship with customers that has no barrier. And that emotional relationship is on the most important characteristic, which is trust. — Howard Schultz

Business is not just doing deals; business is having great products, doing great engineering, and providing tremendous service to customers. Finally, business is a cobweb of human relationships. — Ross Perot

I've learned several lessons over the years. First, never take yourself too seriously, or work is boring. Next, people make the difference. You can have great technology, but if it's not complemented by great people, it won't go anywhere. Finally, customers buy from people they like. — John W. Thompson

The Economy was studying the purpose of The War, which is to purchase and not have. The customers of The War (all of us, that is) purchase life at a great cost and yet lose it. And The War was just as busily studying the purpose of The Economy, which is to cause people to purchase what they do not need or do not want, and to receive patiently what they did not expect. Having paid for life, we receive death. By now, in this nineteen hundred and eighty-sixth Year of Our Lord, we all have purchased how many shares in death? How many bombs, shells, mines, guns, grenades, poisons, anonymous murders, nameless sufferings, official secrets? But not the controlling share. Death cannot be marketed in controlling shares. — Wendell Berry

As research on willpower has become a hot topic in scientific journals and newspaper articles, it has started to trickle into corporate America. Firms such as Starbucks - and the Gap, Walmart, restaurants, or any other business that relies on entry-level workers - all face a common problem: No matter how much their employees want to do a great job, many will fail because they lack self-discipline. They show up late. They snap at rude customers. They get distracted or drawn into workplace dramas. They quit for no reason. — Charles Duhigg

Good design allows things to operate more efficiently, smoothly, and comfortably for the user. That's the real source of advantage. Businesses have started to understand this, so good design will become the price of entry ... Customers appreciate good design. While they can't necessarily point out what specifically makes it good, they know it feels better. There's a visceral connection. They are willing to pay for it, if you give them a great experience. — James P Hackett

If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful. — Jeff Bezos

Great merchants have never had the opportunity to understand their customers in a truly individualized way," he said. "E-commerce is going to make that possible."13 — Brad Stone

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. — Kevin Stirtz

There's no great mystery to satisfying your customers. Build them a quality product and treat them with respect. It's that simple. — Lee Iacocca

Most of the customers were from Kerry and Limerick. One was a lawyer, a tall, fat sandy-haired man. He lorded it over the others by buying them drinks. They clinked glasses with him and called him a 'motherfucking ambulance chaser' when he went to the bathroom. It was not a series of words they would have used at home
motherfucking ambulance chasers weren't big in the old country
but they said it as often as they could. With great hilarity they injected it into songs when the lawyer left. One of the songs had an ambulance chaser going over the Cork and Kerry mountains. — Colum McCann

Well, getting all the education and the practical experience. And then having the patience to do it day in and day out. Day in and day out. It's not easy, let me tell you that. It's like the restaurateur serving great food every meal. It's not easy. But that's how you make a great restaurant. That's how you make a great car dealership. Service every day. You can't miss the ball. You've gotta hit the ball out of the park every day. With service. And the same with technology. In our lifetime, we've seen many companies go in the tank because they weren't able to innovate. Or actually, they didn't figure out a product or service that really served the customer well. They lost their customers. Never lose a customer. Figure that one out. — Anthony Robbins

What did I expect of him? Very little, I promise you. One more dented little face. One more adolescent freak. The usual unusual. One great thing about being in the adjustment business: you're never short of customers. — Peter Shaffer

The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire; for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader purchases his good always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little interest of this kind. — Adam Smith

Good customers want good quality service. Great customers want it even more. — Ron Kaufman

I worked at Sears in the Woodfield Mall as a gift wrapper. I'm actually a great gift wrapper, and the customers were so nice to me. I was only 16, and eventually Sears put me in customer service because I was so friendly. — Sherri Shepherd

Charging everyone the same thing and treating everyone the same way, as retailers do today, is 'Six Sigma' thinking which is great for producing widgets on a production line, but it makes no sense in a world where customers are inherently different. — Peter Fader

There are all kinds of wonderful new inventions that give you nothing as owners except the opportunity to spend a lot more money in a business that's still going to be lousy. The money still won't come to you. All of the advantages from great improvements are going to flow through to the customers. — Charlie Munger

New Year, the season for changes in positions and advances in salaries, approaches. If you have in your employ some who deserve more salary, do not compel them to go through the unpleasant ordeal of asking a raise, but, rather, voluntarily increase their remuneration. A raise that comes from the boss without asking is worth a lot more than one that has to be gouged out of him. Is it not true that a great many employers who would not dream of overcharging their customers have no qualms whatever about underpaying their employees if the latter will submit without protest? — B.C. Forbes

Wal-Mart is so large, its reach so great, that it has created an ecosystem in which its suppliers and competitors, and their suppliers and competitors, and their customers, all operate. Wal-Mart sets the metabolism, it sets the rules, of that ecosystem. Wal-Mart has inexorably changed our expectations as shoppers - and the Wal-Mart effect also extends to consumers who never shop at Wal-Mart. Likewise, Wal-Mart has reshaped the companies that supply it - and it has also reset the pace and the competitive landscape even for companies that try to do business outside the Wal-Mart ecosystem. — Charles Fishman

A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets. — Steve Jobs

Great companies know that customer relationships in these times call for more than just having a great product (or service) backed by a great sales team. Customers have to be wooed until they fall so deeply in love with your offering that they will ward off advances from potential suitors. No matter how well you perform as a business, there are little things that can cause the relationship with your customers to suffer. The companies, products and/or services that we love are those that "touch" us in the right places at the right times. After all, that is what "romancing" the customer is all about - feeing your way to the customer's heart. — J. N. HALM

Every promoter who brings together a great crowd in order to sell them back their own togetherness runs the risk that some of his customers will take things too far and engage in some street sports of their own." - CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective, Expect Resistance — Anonymous

How friendly are your companies' first words? Just try this ... start all conversations with customers using one of the following words or phrases: 'great!' 'no problem', 'you're in luck', 'that's my favorite problem'. — Jeffrey Gitomer

Pitney's first management meeting of the new year typically consisted of about fifteen minutes discussing the previous year (almost always superb results) and two hours talking about the "scary squiggly things" that might impede future results.28 Pitney Bowes sales meetings were quite different from the "aren't we great" rah-rah sales conferences typical at most companies: The entire management team would lay itself open to searing questions and challenges from salespeople who dealt directly with customers.29 — James C. Collins

EBay is a great company. There are a lot of good assets and good customers, and the U.S. people love it. — Jack Ma

Another thing he told his customers was that one of the great accounting unknowns of the modern age was how to value knowledge. It was an exciting field. — Jane Smiley

To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers. — Adam Smith

Intuit's mission, values, and culture of innovation set us apart as a great place to work. Our 8,000 employees are innovators and entrepreneurs that are inspired by the important work they do that is delighting customers and improving the financial lives of millions of people. — Brad D. Smith

Every great business is built on friendship. — James Cash Penney

In our way of working, we attach a great deal of importance to humility and honesty; With respect for human values, we promise to serve our customers with integrity. — Azim Premji

Great brands solve problems for their customers in profound ways because they understand the pain points and anticipate needs based on that understanding. — Gabriel Aluisy

I worked at the original Coyote Ugly bar when I was a young, unpublished writer. Then later when I became a writer, I wrote an article about it for GQ. Disney read this article about this filthy, disgusting pit in the East Village [of New York City], where we used to set the bar on fire to get customers away from us, and said, "That's a great movie for kids!" They made the fantastic Coyote Ugly movie, now legendary. — Elizabeth Gilbert