Customers love organizations that care about them. How your team is trained to handle customer complaints says a lot about your organization. Your client success quotes should be some of your proudest achievements, not just your bottom line. This article looks at some of the best customer success quotes from business legends and seasoned entrepreneurs.
30 customer success quotes for inspiration:
1. Warren Buffet, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
“Your customer is going to get to vote and talk. You want them out there as salesmen for you. In fact, customer delight is the main ingredient of success. You will succeed if you have delighted customers. Don’t settle for satisfied.”
When Buffet speaks, you listen. What Warren says should be framed on every startup founder’s wall. The only way to build a successful business is by ensuring that your customers are delighted every step of the way.
2. Ken Lownie, Founder of Ken Lownie Consulting Partners
“Make sure every single employee in your company knows precisely what value your customers seek and how he or she can impact it.”
When the goal is to keep your customers happy, ensure you pass the message to your employees. Train them in such a way that they know that all decisions will be customer-focused.
3. Joe Mansueto, Founder and CEO at Morningstar Inc
“Most of your competition spends their days looking forward to those rare moments when everything goes right. Imagine how much leverage you have if you spend your time maximizing those common moments when it doesn’t.”
This is a brilliant quote on how organizations can keep creating moments of success for their customers. Find ordinary interaction touchpoints and make them memorable with the help of technology.
4. Tomasz Tunguz, a Venture Capitalist at Redpoint and Author of Winning with Data:
“At the outset of a startup, engineering throughput can be a limiting factor; the team simply can’t code fast enough. At some point, the product launches, but no one knows about it. Marketing is the bottleneck. When customers come rushing through the door, money in hand, sales, and customer support might stunt the growth of the company. Other times its culture or product market fit or money or competition. But there is a limiting factor for each startup at every stage.”
Companies must identify every stage in the buying journey where their customers will face hiccups. Work on improving that situation to keep your customers delighted.
5. Marc Benioff, Salesforce Co-Founder, Chairman, and Co-CEO.
“Once you know what you want and what is important for you to achieve, also define the values associated with it. What is important? That is something a lot of entrepreneurs pass by too quickly. For us, the things that were important were No. 1, customer success. Nothing is more important to us than making sure every customer is successful in our service.”
Salesforce is one of the most-loved enterprise applications in the world, and rightly so. It is known for standing by its customers, and its policies are written in such a way that the customer feels valued. You might want to take a leaf out of this sentence- ”Nothing is more important to us than making sure every customer is successful in our service.” This should be every founder’s mantra.
6. Bill Gates:
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
What can you possibly learn from customers who keep praising you to no end? Mostly nothing. You want customers who have encountered problems, are unsatisfied with the product, or have issues with the sloppy onboarding process because that is when you have something to learn. Find out what irks your customer, and you are on the way to building an organization that will last decades, maybe even generations.
7. Jack Welch
“Again, your challenge is not just to improve. It is to break the service paradigm in your industry or market so that customers aren’t just satisfied, they’re so shocked that they tell strangers on the street how good you are.”
This is a great piece of advice. Your customers should be shocked by the level of service that you offer. They will surely share their experience with everyone they know because you didn’t just decide to keep them satisfied but shocked them with your brilliant customer service.
8. Charles R Schwab, Founder and Chairman of the Charles Schwab Corporation.
“At the end of every day, having a clientele that speaks well of you, that’s the largest source of business. I don’t care what kind of business you’re in. Clients referring us to their friends or relatives is so much more powerful than any advertising we could ever do.”
Customer referrals and word-of-mouth is always the best form of marketing since there is immediate trust as the recommendation comes from someone similar to them. Businesses must find ways to get referrals. It is only possible if you keep ‘wowing’ your existing customers.
9. Tony Hsieh:
“Let’s take most of the money we would’ve spent on paid advertising and paid marketing, and instead of spending it on that, invest it in customer experience/customer service and then let our customers do the marketing for us through word of mouth.”
Zappos’ ex-CEO was known for his steadfast commitment to his customers. In fact, the core of their business was offering unheard-of incredible customer service. How would you, a founder, feel if you could trim the paid advertising budget and spend it on customer experience? Continue doing that based on the results, or you can return to your previous marketing strategy, how does that sound?
10. Derek Sivers, Founder, CD Baby:
“The single most important thing is to make people happy. If you are making people happy, as a side effect, they will be happy to open up their wallets and pay you.”
It is as simple as that, isn’t it? Keep the people you are associated with happy, and things will fall into place. An organization is responsible for the happiness of its employees and customers. If you could keep doing that consistently, you can easily make bank.
11. Sam Walton, Founder of Walmart and Sam’s Club:
“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the Chairman on down simply by spending his money somewhere else.”
When the founder of Walmart says something about customer service, you lap it up. The iconic businessman is right when he says the customer is the boss. They have the power to take their business elsewhere.
12. Connie Elder, CEO and Founder, PEAK 10 SKIN
“Excellent customer service is the number one job in any company! It is the personality of the company and the reason customers come back. Without customers, there is no company!”
When there is little interest in providing great customer service, your customers will realize that they are being taken for a ride and take their business to one of your competitors. Your customers will even forgive a sloppy product, but they will never forgive you if you treat them badly.
13. Colleen Barrett, Southwest Airlines, President Emeritus:
“To earn the respect (and eventually love) of your customers, you first have to respect those customers. That is why Golden Rule behavior is embraced by most of the winning companies.”
You will find that most successful companies have solid customer service programs. That’s why you will find enterprise plans separately have special tires for customer service. Respect your customers by giving them the treatment that they deserve.
14. Jim Bush, a Former Executive of American Express
“Getting service right is more than just a nice to do; it’s a must-do. American consumers are willing to spend more with companies that provide outstanding service, and they will also tell, on average, twice as many people about bad service than they will about good service. Ultimately, great service can drive sales and customer loyalty.”
If you don’t get your customer service right, then everything else will go kaput. People are happy to spend more on organizations that deliver value when they have issues. Businesses that get repeat sales are always good at their customer service offerings.
15. R.L. Adams, Entrepreneur, Software Engineer, Author, and Blogger
“With so many obligations and responsibilities, if you’re serious about your business, you have to focus on the core — your customers. Because, without them, you have no business at all.”
Yes, no customers mean no business. You might be able to attract a few customers even without good customer service, but you will eventually lose the patronage of your existing ones, and potential customers will be wary of getting associated with you because they heard your current customers complaining about you.
16. Stephen Cannon, the Former President and CEO of Mercedes-Benz:
“In order to reach hearts and minds, we had to leave satisfaction in the dust and strive to delight our customers by delivering the most extraordinary customer experience, bar none. And that has been the driving force behind everything we’ve done ever since. It is our No. 1 strategic priority!”
Even a company like Mercedes-Benz knows that customers won’t take every car of theirs at face value. If Mercedes-Benz provides shoddy service, it will reflect in its annual sales, reduced commissions, and the number of cars that leave their lot.
17. Betsy Sanders, Author:
“Service, in short, is not what you do, but who you are. It is a way of living that you need to bring to everything you do, if you are to bring it to your customer interactions.”
True. The kind of customer service that you offer shows who you are as a company. It is a telling statement about where you are headed in the future. If you don’t care enough about your customers now, you won’t have most of them in the future.
18. Don Peppers, Business Author and Founding Partner of Peppers & Rogers Group:
“Your job, if you’re a customer success manager, isn’t to make friends with your client. Your primary job is to challenge them, and get them to think, in order to make them more successful.”
Your customer achieving success using your product is your biggest testimonial. That should be the leverage you should aim to hold against your customers.
19. Girish Mathrubootham, CEO & Founder of Freshworks:
“To create a good product, it’s not enough if Product Managers are on support. Customer support should be on Product Management too.”
Give so much importance to customer support that even your product managers create your product with the customer’s success in mind.
20. Roger Staubach, Board Member of American Airlines and Cinemark:
“At a car dealership, the person who sells the car is the hero, and also gets the commission. But if the mechanics don’t service that car well, the customer won’t return.”
Imagine what will happen if no one is to service your car, and every mechanic shop treats you poorly. If that’s the case, who cares about the car anymore? The same with your company.
21. Jerry Gregoire, Former Chief Information Officer for Dell Computer
“We have entered the era of the customer. Today, providing customers with outstanding customer service is essential to building loyal customers and a long-lasting brand.”
Today’s customers are much more demanding than the previous generation. They know they hold a lot of leverage and don’t mind quitting you to offer their business to someone else. You certainly don’t want to be seen as an organization that cannot deliver to customers’ demands.
22. Gary Vaynerchuk, Author of “The Thank You Economy”
“It’s very logical: There is proven ROI in doing whatever you can to turn your customers into advocates for your brand or business. The way to create advocates is to offer superior customer service.”
Every customer who is an ambassador of your brand will be pivotal to your business’s success. The organization must find out who are its most loyal customers. The next step would be to put them in a customer loyalty program and offer them incentives for each referral.
23. Rob Siefker, Zappos Senior Director of Customer Service, told the New York Times:
“If they want to talk, we want to listen [even if it has nothing to do with shoes]. We don’t set out with the intention of being anyone’s counselor, but one of our biggest metrics for evaluation is whether we made an emotional connection with every customer. Sometimes creating those connections means talking about personal stuff.”
Believe it or not, one of Zappos’ agents was on the phone with a customer for more than 10 hours and 43 minutes in a single phone call. The kind of service that Zappos offers is incredible and ridiculous simultaneously!
24. Jay Baer, Motivational Speaker:
“Customer service is the new marketing; it’s what differentiates one business from another.”
Your customers will gladly switch sides if they know they will have a much better service than your competitor. Do you want to be in that position? A customer success platform will put you in great stead.
25. Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines Co-Founder.
“When I started out, business school professors liked to pose a conundrum: Which do you put first, your employees, customers, or shareholders? As if that were an unanswerable question. My answer was very easy: You put your employees first. If you truly treat your employees that way, they will treat your customers well, your customers will come back, and that’s what makes your shareholders happy.”
It is an excellent way to look at customer service. Treat your employees well, and they will treat your customers well. It is the sort of virtuous cycle that can change organizations.
26. Jodie Shaw, chief marketing officer:
“Always begin with: ‘’So that I can better serve you, do you mind if I ask a few questions?’”
Your attitude towards your customers should always be about providing extra care and thought into giving them an incredible service.
27. Zig Ziglar, Author, Salesman, and Motivational Speaker
“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.”
Yes, every mistake is a learning opportunity. Businesses should treat each complaint the same. If issues need to be sorted out, work on them on a war footing.
28. Walt Disney, a Pioneer of the American Animation industry
“Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.”
What more can a business ask for than a devoted customer base which is delighted to share your offering with their friends and family? Create an organization like that. Use the services of customer success management software to get things right.
29. Larry Page
“Always deliver more than expected.”
Truer words were never spoken. Overdelivering is the simplest mantra that there is to keep your customers delighted, tell that to your customer success team.
30. Marilyn Suttle
“How you think about your customer influences how you respond to them.”
Yes. If your organization believes that customers are the most important of it, then it will treat them that way. If the belief is that customers are expendable, the care given will be terrible. The attitude towards customers makes all the difference.
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Wrapping up:
Customer success is a powerful driver of your bottom line. If your customer satisfaction score keeps reducing every quarter, you shouldn’t be surprised to see a downfall in your revenue too. The above quotes about customer success should make a significant difference to your opinion about the importance of customers.
Using Surveysparrow’s customer success software, you can optimize across every customer journey. Measure every customer success metric- Customer Effort Score (CES), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and Customer Exit Surveys.
Want to measure your customer satisfaction score? Send surveys to your existing customers and see what they think about you. Use Surveysparrow to send surveys to your audience. The variety of features and functionality it offers will help you see where you stand regarding customer perception. Get in touch with us to understand how our survey tool can be used to increase customer satisfaction.
