Inspiring Customer Service Quotes to Elevate Your Business

Discover a powerful collection of inspirational quotes that highlight the importance of exceptional customer service. These quotes from industry leaders and thinkers will motivate you to prioritize customer satisfaction and create memorable experiences. From the wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi to the insights of Jeff Bezos, this compilation serves as a reminder that great service is not just a department, but a mindset that can transform your business. Dive into these quotes to inspire your team and enhance your customer interactions, ensuring that every customer feels valued and appreciated. Whether you're in retail, hospitality, or any service-oriented industry, these words of wisdom will guide you in building lasting relationships with your customers. Embrace the art of service and let these quotes inspire you to go above and beyond for those you serve.

Wisdom from the Masters

"Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value."

- Albert Einstein

Leadership

"If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way."

- Napoleon Hill

Motivation

"In a world where products and services are becoming more and more commoditized, customer experience is the only true differentiator."

- Annette Franz

Service

"Nothing is as contagious as enthusiasm."

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Positivity

"Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it."

- Peter Drucker

Integrity

"Every day we’re saying, ‘How can we keep this customer happy? How can we get ahead in innovation by doing this?’ …because if we don’t, somebody else will."

- Bill Gates

Service

"To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own."

- Anne Morrow Lindeberg

Compassion

"Customer experience is the next competitive battleground. It’s where business is going to be won or lost."

- Tom Knighton

Service

"Virtually nothing else is as important as how one is made to feel in any business transaction. Hospitality exists when you believe the other person is on your side."

- Danny Meyer

Service

"The key is to set realistic expectations, then exceed them, preferably in unexpected and helpful ways."

- Richard Branson

Service

"If the end result is customer satisfaction, your business will thrive. If the end result is customer loyalty, your business will bloom."

- Pooja Agnihotri

Success

"A brand is what a business does; reputation is what people remember."

- Ted Rubin

Integrity

"Excellent businesses don’t believe in excellence, only in constant improvement and constant change."

- Tom Peters

Service

"The worst thing you can do is meet expectations one time, fall short another, and exceed every now and then. I guarantee you’ll drive your customers nuts and into the hands of the competition the first chance they get."

- Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles

Resilience

"When you assume negative intent, you're angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed. Your emotional quotient goes up because you are no longer almost random in your response."

- Indra Nooyi

Service

"Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy."

- Gretta Palmer

Happiness

"Always keep in mind the old retail adage: Customers remember the service a lot longer than they remember the price."

- Lauren Freedman

Awareness

"Customers who are merely satisfied remain your customers only as long as everything goes their way."

- Chip Bell

Service

"What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity."

- Dan Heath

Service

"In the world of Internet customer service, it’s important to remember your competitor is only one mouse click away."

- Doug Warner

Awareness

"Good customer service means that we leave customers better than we found them. Even if we can’t solve the problem or do what they want us to do, we can at least smile, be cheerful, and respond compassionately to each person. If our customers leave with a smile, even when they’re having a hard time, then we’ve done well."

- Nicole Thelin

Compassion

"If people believe they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to the brand."

- Howard Schultz

Service

"You’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be too easily duplicated. But a strong customer service culture cannot be copied."

- Jerry Fritz

Service

"When you serve the customer better, they always return on your investment."

- Kara Parlin

Service

"Here is the simple but powerful rule … always give people more than they expect to get."

- Nelson Boswell

Service

"When a customer complains, he is doing you a special favor; he is giving you another chance to serve him to his satisfaction. You will appreciate the importance of this opportunity when you consider that the customer’s alternative option was to desert you for a competitor."

- Seymour Fine

Service

"When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion."

- Dale Carnegie

Service

"The most important thing in communication is to hear what is not said."

- Peter Drucker

Service

"Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply."

- Stephen R. Covey

Service

"A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well."

- Jeff Bezos

Religion

"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."

- Betsy Sanders

Service

"It is not your customer’s job to remember you. It is your obligation and responsibility to make sure they don’t have a chance to forget you."

- Patricia Fripp

Service

"If you make a sale, you can make a living. If you make an investment of time and good service, you can make a fortune."

- Jim Rohn

Success

"Being on par in terms of price and quality only gets you into the game. Service wins the game."

- Tony Allesandra

Success

"Treat the customer like you would want to be treated. Period."

- Brad Schweig

Service

"We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we’re the hosts. It’s our job to make the customer experience a little bit better."

- Jeff Bezos

Service

"You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want."

- Zig Ziglar

Service

"Make the customer the hero of your story."

- Ann Handley

Creativity

"I believe customer service doesn’t cost — it pays. Just like advertising earns money by bringing people in, customer service pays by bringing people back."

- Shep Hyken

Empowerment

"Every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to make them feel valued, heard, and understood. The more you can do this, the more likely they’re to come back or recommend your business to others."

- Sarah Walters

Relationships

"You are allowed to do this, don’t worry about the rules, don’t worry about getting into trouble, your job is to take care of the customer, your job is to make that person leave happy. And you have all kinds of leeway to do that."

- John Pepper

Service

"The only certain means of success is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be."

- Og Mandino

Service

"Our greatest asset is the customer! Treat each customer as if they’re the only one!"

- Laurice Leitao

Empowerment

"After-sales service is more important than assistance before sales. It is through such service that one gets permanent customers."

- Kōnosuke Matsushita

Service

"Customers often know more about your products than you do. Use them as a source of inspiration and ideas for product development."

- David J. Greer

Learning from Mistakes

"Customer service is everything and anything that touches a customer — directly or indirectly. Customer service means servicing customers, and it’s so much more than just solving problems or addressing complaints."

- Joseph Jafee

Service

"If you’re not taking care of your customer, your competitor will."

- Bob Hooey

Courage

"Customer experience is so much more than improving what’s not working. It can be about creating more meaningful experiences that transform an organization. Innovating around the customer journey can lead to impressive results and help customers in ways that provide not just fewer ruined days but incredibly positive experiences that better their lives."

- Jeannie Walters

Transformation

"Strive to provide the best possible experience for customers, even if it means making a few sacrifices along the way."

- Peter Monkhouse

Determination

"Know what your customers want most and what your company does best. Focus on where those two meet."

- Kevin Stirtz

Awareness

"When I think about great service, it’s about how you’re every interaction you have with the customer and use that as a way to improve their perception of your organization."

- Jon Herstein

Reflection

"Rule 1: The customer is always right. Rule 2: If the customer is ever wrong, re-read Rule 1."

- Stew Leonard

Belief

"Biggest question: Isn’t it really ‘customer helping’ rather than customer service? And wouldn’t you deliver better service if you thought of it that way?"

- Jeffrey Gitomer

Service

"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?"

- George Eliot

Compassion

"The best performers set goals that are not about the outcome but about the process of reaching the outcome."

- Geoff Colvin

Service

"[We] are rich only as [we] give. [One] who gives great service gets great rewards."

- Elbert Hubbard

Generosity

"It’s not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It’s the customer who pays the wages."

- Henry Ford

Success

"Here is a simple but powerful rule: Always give people more than what they expect to get."

- Nelson Boswell

Service

"The two most powerful things in existence: a kind word and a thoughtful gesture."

- Kenneth Langone

Compassion

"When a business does something good for somebody, that somebody feels good about them!"

- Ben Cohen

Compassion

"A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large."

- Henry Ford

Service

"You don’t earn loyalty in a day. You earn loyalty day-by-day."

- Jeffery Gitomer

Liberation

"Customer service shouldn’t just be a department, it should be the entire company."

- Tony Hsieh

Service

"Service, in short, is not what you do, but who you are. It’s a way of living that you need to bring to everything you do if you’re to bring it to your customer interactions."

- Betsy Sanders

Service

"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."

- Sam Walton

Responsibility

"The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works."

- Jeff Bezos

Efficiency

"Customer service shouldn’t be a department, it should be the entire company."

- Tony Hsieh

Teamwork

"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."

- Colleen Barrett

Respect

"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value."

- Albert Einstein

Success

"There is a spiritual aspect to our lives — when we give, we receive — when a business does something good for somebody, that somebody feels good about them!"

- Ben Cohen

Compassion

"Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, 'What's in it for me?'"

- Brian Tracy

Service

"When you help others feel important, you help yourself feel important too."

- David J. Schwartz

Compassion

"Don't dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer."

- Denis Waitley

Resilience

"To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity."

- Douglas Adams

Integrity

"Men are rich only as they give. He who gives great service gets great rewards."

- Elbert Hubbard

Contribution

"To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation."

- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Connection to Earth

"What do we live for if not to make life less difficult for each other?"

- George Eliot

Compassion

"Sometimes one can become lost in a big company and lose sight of how what one does truly helps or impacts the end customer. If you are one of those, think of a fire brigade, a line of people passing buckets of water from one to the other from a source of water to the site of the fire. An individual in the brigade may not be able to see the end result, i.e., the water being thrown on the fire to put it out, but the contribution of the individual is indispensable to the final outcome."

- Grant Bright

Service

"Two important things are to have a genuine interest in people and to be kind to them. Kindness, I've discovered, is everything."

- Isaac Bashevis Singer

Compassion

"Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement."

- J. C. Penny

Compassion

"We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job to make the customer experience a little bit better."

- Jeff Bezos

Service

"Biggest question: Isn't it really 'customer helping' rather than customer service? And wouldn't you deliver better service if you thought of it that way?"

- Jeffrey Gitomer

Service

"If you make a sale, you can make a living. If you make an investment of time and good service in a customer, you can make a fortune."

- Jim Rohn

Service

"The most important adage and the only adage is, the customer comes first, whatever the business, the customer comes first."

- Kerry Stokes

Service

"Our greatest asset is the customer! Treat each customer as if they are the only one!"

- Laurice Leitao

Service

"Your ability to communicate is an important tool in your pursuit of your goals, whether it is with your family, your co-workers or your clients and customers."

- Les Brown

Empowerment

"One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth doing is what we do for others."

- Lewis Carol

Compassion

"A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so."

- Mahatma Gandhi

Service

"Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time."

- Marian Wright Edelman

Service

"If you don't care, your customer never will."

- Marlene Blaszczyk

Service

"I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

- Maya Angelou

Empathy

"Every company's greatest assets are its customers, because without customers there is no company."

- Michael LeBoeuf

Service

"A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all."

- Michael LeBoeuf

Success

"Be kind and merciful. Let no one ever come to you without coming away better and happier."

- Mother Teresa

Compassion

"The only certain means is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be."

- Og Mandino

Service

"It is not your customer's job to remember you, it is your obligation and responsibility to make sure they don't have the chance to forget you."

- Patricia Fripp

Service

"Until you understand your customers — deeply and genuinely — you cannot truly serve them."

- Rasheed Ogunlaru

Service

"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

Success

"When the customer comes first, the customer will last."

- Robert Half

Success

"Good customer service costs less than bad customer service."

- Sally Gronow

Efficiency

"The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but legendary."

- Sam Walton

Success

"When a customer complains, he is doing you a special favor; he is giving you another chance to serve him to his satisfaction. You will appreciate the importance of this opportunity when you consider that the customer's alternative option was to desert you for a competitor."

- Seymour Fine

Service

"Seek first to understand. Then to be understood."

- Stephen Covey

Empathy

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work."

- Steve Jobs

Success

"Rule 1: The customer is always right. Rule 2: If the customer is ever wrong, read Rule 1."

- Stew Leonard's Grocery Store Customer Policy

Service

"The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people."

- Tom Peters

Service

"We asked ourselves what we wanted this company to stand for. We didn't want to just sell shoes. I wasn't even into shoes — but I was passionate about customer service."

- Tony Hsieh

Service

"You can have what you want if you help other people get what they want."

- Zig Ziglar

Success

"Be dramatically willing to focus on the customer at all costs, even at the cost of obsoleting your own stuff."

- Scott D. Cook

Service

"There are many who subscribe to the convention that service is a business cost, but our data demonstrates that superior service is an investment that can help drive business growth. Investing in quality talent, and ensuring they have the skills, training and tools that enable them to empathize and actively listen to customers are central to providing consistently excellent service experiences."

- Jim Bush

Service

"A lot of people have fancy things to say about customer service, but it's just a day-in, day-out, ongoing, never-ending, persevering, compassionate kind of activity."

- Christopher McCormick

Compassion

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

- Tony Hsieh

Leadership

"When you assume negative intent, you're angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed."

- Indra Nooyi

Positivity

"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning."

- Bill Gates

Learning from Mistakes

"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

Service

"You are allowed to do this — don't worry about the rules, don't worry about getting into trouble, your job is to take care of the customer. Your job is to make the person leave happy."

- John Pepper

Service

"Whether it's a bored demeanor, a dismissive look or just plain rude behavior, sloppy customer service spells disaster faster than just about any other business transgression."

- Lauren Simonds

Service

"If the shopper feels like it was poor service, then it was poor service. We are in the customer perception business."

- Mark Perrault

Service

"Customer service represents the heart of a brand in the hearts of its customers."

- Kate Nasser

Service

"Zappos uses call center technology to track average call time per agent. But the goal isn't to reduce this average — it's more important that we make an emotional connection with the customer, rather than just quickly getting them off the phone."

- Tony Hsieh

Service

"Sales without Customer Service is like stuffing money into a pocket full of holes."

- David Tooman

Service

"You'll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be easily duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can't be copied."

- Jerry Fritz

Service

"Even the best of what formerly passed for good customer service is no longer enough. You have to be no less than a customer concierge, doing everything you can to make every one of your customers feel acknowledged, appreciated, and heard. You have to make them feel special, just like when your great-grandmother walked into Butcher Bob's shop or bought her new hat, and you need to make people who aren't your customers wish they were."

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Service

"Goodwill is the only asset that competition cannot undersell or destroy."

- Marshall Field

Service

"We take most of the money that we could have spent on paid advertising and instead put it back into the customer experience. Then we let the customers be our marketing."

- Tony Hsieh

Service

"Good customer service is about understanding your client’s needs and then exceeding them."

- Cory Cabral

Service

"It takes months to find a customer… seconds to lose one."

- Vince Lombardi

Awareness

"It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it."

- Benjamin Franklin

Integrity

"Happy customers are your biggest advocates and can become your most successful sales team."

- Lisa Masiello

Aspirations

"The more advocates you have, the fewer ads you have to buy."

- Dharmesh Shah

Service

"Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong."

- Donald Porter

Responsibility

"It's through vulnerability that human beings create connections. The more vulnerable we can be with one another, the more that we'll trust one another and the more we'll be able to collaborate effectively."

- Neil Blumenthal

Connection to Earth

"The customer is why we are here. If we take good care of them, they’ll give us good reason to come back."

- Jenny McKenzie

Service

"You don’t earn loyalty in a day. You earn loyalty day by day."

- Jeffrey Gitomer

Learning

"Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first."

- Simon Sinek

Love

"The customer’s perception is your reality."

- Kate Zabriskie

Awareness

"Look after the customers and the business will take care of itself."

- Ray Kroc

Service

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

- Maya Angelou

Compassion

"If you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours."

- Ray Kroc

Service

"You are serving a customer, not a life sentence. Learn how to enjoy your work."

- Laurie McIntosh

Happiness

"The purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates customers."

- Shiv Singh

Contribution

"Customers may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel."

- Warren Buffett

Empathy

"It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages."

- Henry Ford

Respect

"Customer service is the experience we deliver to our customer. It’s the promise we keep to the customer. It’s how we follow through for the customer. It’s how we make them feel when they do business with us."

- Shep Hyken

Empathy

"If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends."

- Jeff Bezos

Awareness

"People will soon forget what you said. They will NEVER forget how you made them feel."

- Dr. Maya Angelou

Compassion

"Life is for service."

- Fred Rogers

Service

"Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves."

- Steve Jobs

Awareness

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view."

- Harper Lee

Empathy

"People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons."

- Zig Ziglar

Empathy

"The key is to set realistic customer expectations, and then not to just meet them, but exceed them — preferably in unexpected and helpful ways."

- Richard Branson

Goals

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give."

- Winston Churchill

Generosity

"It is not your customer’s job to remember you, it is your obligation and responsibility to make sure they don’t have the chance to forget you."

- Patricia Fripp

Responsibility

"A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn a reputation by trying to do hard things well."

- Jeff Bezos

Service

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

- Mahatma Gandhi

Compassion

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently."

- Warren Buffet

Service

"If you don’t take care of your customer, your competitor will."

- Bob Hooey

Service

"Make every interaction count. Even the small ones. They are all relevant."

- Shep Hyken

Service

"Earn your success based on service to others, not at the expense of others."

- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Service

"The end of all knowledge should be service to others."

- Cesar Chavez

Service

"If you make the customer a promise… make sure you deliver it."

- Merv Griffin

Service

"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself."

- Peter Drucker

Service

"Know what your customers want most and what your company does best. … Focus on where those two meet."

- Kevin Stirtz

Service

"A brand is what a business does, reputation is what people remember."

- Ted Rubin

Service

"Your customers are the lifeblood of your business. Their needs and wants impact every aspect of your business, from product development to content marketing to sales to customer service."

- John Rampton

Service

"Customer service is just a day-in, day-out, ongoing, never-ending, unremitting, persevering, compassionate type of activity."

- Leon Gorman

Service

"The best form of customer service is self service. Constantly empower customers to get their own answers themselves."

- Dan Pena

Service

"The way management treats associates is exactly how the associates will treat the customers."

- Sam Walton

Service

"It’s a real pleasure to earn the trust of your customers slowly over time by doing what’s right."

- Charlie Munger

Service

"Treat your customers like lifetime partners."

- Michael LeBoeuf

Service

"Your company’s most valuable asset is how it is known to its customers."

- Brian Tracy

Service

"People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude."

- John C. Maxwell

Service

"Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten."

- Aldo Gucci

Service

"Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends."

- Walt Disney

Service

"We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better."

- Jeff Bezos

Service

"Consumers are statistics. Customers are people."

- Stanley Marcus

Awareness

"Exceed your customer’s expectations. If you do, they’ll come back over and over. Give them what they want – and a little more."

- Sam Walton

Service

"The first step in exceeding your customer’s expectations is to know those expectations."

- Roy H. Williams

Service

"There’s a place in the world for any business that takes care of its customers-after the sale."

- Harvey Mackay

Service

"Good customer service begins at the top. If your senior people don’t get it, even the strongest links further down the line can become compromised."

- Richard Branson

Service

"You should not build your customer service system on the premise that your organisation will never question the whims of your clients."

- Richard Branson

Service

"Repetition makes reputation and reputation makes customers."

- Elizabeth Arden

Service

"A complaint is a chance to turn a customer into a lifelong friend."

- Richard Branson

Service

"In the world of internet customer service, it’s important to remember your competitor is only one mouse click away."

- Doug Warner

Service

"It is so much easier to be nice, to be respectful, to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and try to understand how you might help them before they ask for help, than it is to try to mend a broken customer relationship."

- Mark Cuban

Service

"Even your most loyal customers always have a choice about where to take their business."

- Marilyn Suttle

Service

"We don't want to push our ideas on to customers, we simply want to make what they want."

- Laura Ashley

Service

"I believe in the power of recognition and empowerment leading to great employee engagement. And employee engagement is critical to guest engagement. Employee empowerment and recognition is the core of our culture and how we achieve outstanding customer service."

- Herve Humler

Service

"Instead of focusing on the competition, focus on the customer."

- Scott Cook

Service

"What sets us apart as a company is that we want to deal with anyone that owns our product, regardless of where you bought it. If you have an issue with a Santa Cruz Bike and come to us with your issue, we'll help you resolve your issue."

- Kyle Harder

Service

"Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care."

- Damon Richards

Empathy

"Your customer’s perception is your reality."

- Kate Zabriskie

Awareness

"Loyal customers, they don’t just come back, they don’t simply recommend you—they insist that their friends do business with you."

- Chip Bell

Liberation

"If we consistently exceed the expectations of employees, they will consistently exceed the expectations of our customers."

- Shep Hyken

Teamwork

"Customer satisfaction is worthless. Customer loyalty is priceless."

- Jeffrey Gitomer

Success

"Focus on your customers and lead your people as though their lives depend on your success."

- Warren Buffett

Leadership

"Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?'"

- Brian Tracy

Service

"Take care of associates and they'll take care of your customers."

- J.W. Marriott

Teamwork

"Sell good merchandise at a reasonable profit, treat your customers like human beings and they’ll always come back for more."

- Leon Leonwood Bean

Service

"I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better."

- Elon Musk

Personal Growth

"When a customer complains, he is doing you a special favor; he is giving you another chance to serve him to his satisfaction."

- Seymour Fine

Compassion

"Make a customer, not a sale."

- Katherine Barchetti

Service

"Customer experience to me is leadership bravery. The companies that are most admired are growing with their values and are choosing how they will grow and how they will not grow."

- Jeanne Bliss

Leadership

"If you just communicate, you can get by. But if you communicate skillfully, you can work miracles."

- Jim Rohn

Success

"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

Success

"The more you engage with customers, the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing."

- John Russell

Awareness

"Ease your customers’ pain."

- Hazel Edwards

Compassion

"To give real service, you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity."

- Don Alden Adams

Integrity

"Great customer service doesn’t mean that the customer is always right, it means that the customer is always honored."

- Chris LoCurto

Respect

"Leaders must exemplify integrity and earn the trust of their teams through their everyday actions."

- Marilyn Hewson

Leadership

"The key is to set realistic customer expectations and then not to just meet them, but to exceed them—preferably in unexpected and helpful ways."

- Richard Branson

Ambition

"How you think about your customer influences how you respond to them."

- Marilyn Suttle

Empathy

"Caring has the gift of making the ordinary special."

- George R. Bach

Compassion

"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

Responsibility

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

- Jim Rohn

Success

"It’s not the customer’s job to know what they want."

- Steve Jobs

Awareness

"It takes months to find a customer … seconds to lose one."

- Vince Lombardi

Responsibility

"A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him."

- Commonly attributed to Mahatma Gandhi

Respect

"Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They expect you to fix things when they go wrong."

- Donald Porter

Responsibility

"As a leader it is important to not just see your own success. But focus on the success of others."

- Sundar Pichai

Leadership

"Get closer than ever to your customers. So close, in fact, that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves."

- Steve Jobs

Awareness

"Every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to make them feel valued, heard, and understood. The more you can do this, the more likely they are to come back or recommend your business to others."

- Sarah Walters

Empathy

"If you don’t care, your customer never will."

- Marlene Blaszczyk

Empathy

"If you are not taking care of your customer, your competitor will."

- Bob Hooey

Service

"Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the customer gets out of it."

- Peter Drucker

Efficiency

"Approach each customer with the idea of helping [them] to solve a problem or achieve a goal, not [just] selling a product or service."

- Brian Tracy

Service

"Reduce the layers of management. They put distance between the top of an organization and the customers."

- Donald Rumsfeld

Service

"Building a good customer experience does not happen by accident. It happens by design."

- Clare Muscutt

Service

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."

- Peter Drucker

Leadership

"Motivation comes from working on things we care about. It also comes from working with people we care about."

- Sheryl Sandberg

Motivation

"If you wonder what getting and keeping the right employees has to do with getting and keeping the right customers, the answer is everything."

- Frederick Reichheld

Leadership

"Whether you are big or small, you cannot give good customer service if your employees don’t feel good about coming to work."

- Martin Oliver

Well-being

"Customers who love you will market for you more powerfully than you can possibly market yourself."

- Jeanne Bliss

Service

"Say and do something positive that will help the situation; it doesn’t take any brains to complain."

- Robert A. Cook

Positivity

"In the long arc of time, you are only relevant if customers love you."

- Tim Cook

Service

"A smile is a curve that sets things straight."

- Phyllis Diller

Happiness

"Customer service is the new marketing."

- Derek Sivers

Change

"Customers are the lifeblood of any business."

- Chris Corrigan

Connection to Earth

"The customer experience is the next competitive battleground."

- Jerry Gregoire

Change

"Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers."

- Seth Godin

Adaptation

"Failure is not the opposite of success; it’s part of success."

- Arianna Huffington

Failure

"A lack of response is a response. It’s a response that says, ‘We don’t care about you very much.’"

- Jay Baer

Empathy

"Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love."

- Mother Teresa

Service

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit."

- Aristotle

Success

"There’s no technology that can be ‘The Answer’ to a better customer experience in the absence of effective strategy and planning."

- Brad Cleveland

Efficiency

"You can’t transform something you don’t understand. If you don’t know and understand what the current state of the customer experience is, how can you possibly design the desired future state?"

- Annette Franz

Learning

"The keys to brand success are self-definition, transparency, authenticity and accountability."

- Simon Mainwaring

Integrity

"Although your customers won’t love you if you give bad service, your competitors will."

- Kate Zabriskie

Service

"Thank your customer for complaining and mean it. Most will never bother to complain. They’ll just walk away."

- Marilyn Suttle

Service

"All lasting business is built on friendship."

- Alfred A. Montapert

Relationships

"Everyone in an organisation should be involved with customer service, not only are they feeling the customer but they are getting a feeling for what's not working."

- Penny Handscomb

Service

"Whether you are big or small, you cannot give good customer service if your employees don't feel good about coming to work."

- Martin Oliver

Service

"Leadership is service, not position."

- Tim Fargo

Leadership

"Stellar service should be non-negotiable and merchants shouldn't hide behind self-service tools and technology when it comes to knowing their products and taking care of their customers."

- Lauren Freedman

Service

"It's much harder to provide great customer service than I would have ever realised. It's much more art than science in some of these other areas and not just about the facts but about how you are conveying them."

- David Yu

Service

"We are superior to the competition because we hire employees who work in an environment of belonging and purpose. We foster a climate where the employee can deliver what the customer wants. You cannot deliver what the customer wants by controlling the employee."

- Horst Schulze

Service

"What helps people, helps business."

- Leo Burnett

Service

"If you love your customer to death, you can't go wrong."

- Graham Day

Service

"Satisfaction is a rating. Loyalty is a brand."

- Shep Hyken

Love

"There are no traffic jams along the extra mile."

- Roger Staubach

Perseverance

"Inside of every problem lies an opportunity."

- Robert Kiyosaki

Growth

"Never underestimate the power of the human element. Whether it's assisting a guest with a special request or a friendly greeting from staff members in the hallway, the people aspect plays a key role in guest satisfaction and loyalty."

- Ramez Faza

Service

"How you think about a problem is more important than the problem itself — so always think positively."

- Norman Vincent Peale

Positivity

"Remember, the best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses."

- Napoleon Hill

Success

"Bottom-line obsession comes from turning the pursuit of money into a God and forgetting the real master your business serves: The Customer."

- Michael Shevack

Service

"How you think about your customers influences how you respond to them."

- Marilyn Suttle

Awareness

"Thank your customer for complaining and mean it. Most will never bother to complain. They'll just walk away."

- Marilyn Suttle

Service

"You don't earn loyalty in a day. You earn loyalty day-by-day."

- Jeffrey Gitomer

Learning

"Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them."

- Henry Ford

Efficiency

"The world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker."

- Helen Keller

Contribution

"I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen."

- Ernest Hemingway

Awareness

"We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes—understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success."

- Ariana Huffington

Learning from Mistakes

"Don’t dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer."

- Denis Waitley

Growth

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out."

- Robert Collier

Success

"Face the simple fact before it comes involved. Solve the small problem before it becomes big."

- Laozi / Lao Tzu

Adaptation

"Customer service is just a day in, day out ongoing, never-ending, unremitting, persevering, compassionate, type of activity."

- Leon Gorman

Compassion

"A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is—it is what consumers tell each other it is."

- Scott Cook

Service

"Organizations must master these in order to build a sustainable foundation for success. They are: Respond, Enlighten, Activate, Realize, Lead, Disrupt."

- Aimee Lucas

Leadership

"Our attitude towards others determines their attitude towards us."

- Earl Nightingale V

Empathy

"Loyal customers, they don’t just come back, they don’t simply recommend you, they insist that their friends do business with you."

- Chip Bell

Relationships

"Every great business is built on friendship."

- JC Penney

Relationships

"There is a spiritual aspect to our lives—when we give, we receive—when a business does something good for somebody, that somebody feels good about them!"

- Ben Cohen

Service

"An authentic and honest brand narrative is fundamental today; otherwise, you will simply be edited out."

- Marco Bizzarrik

Integrity

"Treat the customer like you would want to be treated. Period!"

- Brad Schweig

Compassion

"It’s not about having the right opportunities. It’s about handling the opportunities right."

- Mark Hunter

Adaptation

"Important achievements require clear focus, all-out effort, and a bottomless trunk full of strategies."

- Carol S. Dweck

Achievement

"Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence—only in constant improvement and constant change."

- Tom Peters

Service

"Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman, not the attitude of the prospect."

- William Clement Stone

Empathy

"Always do more than is required of you."

- George S. Patton

Hard Work

"Your culture is how your company makes decisions when you’re not there."

- Ben Horowitz

Leadership

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do."

- Dale Carnegie

Awareness

"The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of a mistake."

- Meg Whitman

Courage

"Your best customers leave quite an impression. Do the same, and they won't leave at all."

- SAP Advertising

Service

"Go beyond merely communicating to 'connecting' with people."

- Jerry Bruckner

Connection to Earth

"Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten."

- Gucci Family Slogan

Service

"Whether it’s a bored demeanor, a dismissive look or just plain rude behavior, sloppy customer service spells disaster faster than just about any other business transgression."

- Lauren Simonds

Service

"Of course, it is not the employer who pays wages. He only handles the money. It is the product that pays wages and it is the management that arranges the production so that the product may pay the wages."

- Henry Ford

Leadership

"Be helpful — even if there's no immediate profit in it."

- Susan Ward

Service

"Always begin with: 'So that I can better serve you, do you mind if I ask a few questions?'"

- Jodie Shaw

Empathy

"People expect good service but few are willing to give it."

- Robert Gately

Service

"We just don't just talk. We don't just write white papers. We are implementers at our core. We deliver programs."

- Dr. Geetha Murali

Service

"Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment."

- Will Rogers

Learning from Mistakes

"The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said."

- Peter Drucker

Insight

"When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: admit it, learn from it, and don't repeat it."

- Bear Bryant

Learning from Mistakes

"I empathize with women in their high heels so I'll be there in my kilt and T-shirt and I'll walk around all day just to prove that if I can wear the shoes for 36 hours then certainly our customer can wear them."

- Marc Jacobs

Service

"The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war."

- Norman Schwarzkopf

Wisdom

"To keep a customer demands as much skill as to win one."

- American Proverb

Hard Work

"Words of comfort, skillfully administered, are the oldest therapy known to man."

- Lous Nizer

Healing

"We all talk, but we don’t really know how."

- Elizabeth Stokoe

Awareness

"Customer service isn’t about telling people how awesome you are, it’s about creating stories that do the talking for you."

- Anonymous

Service

"Customer service is not a department, it’s everyone’s job."

- Anonymous

Teamwork

"If you have a job without aggravations, you don't have a job."

- Malcolm Forbes

Service

"The customer experience is not a department, it’s everyone’s job."

- Anon

Teamwork

"Customers don’t care about your solutions. They care about their problems."

- Anon

Awareness

Bite-sized Inspirational Quotes

"Always have an attitude of gratitude."

Gratitude

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

Leadership

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out."

Success

"A sale is not something you pursue; it's what happens to you while you are immersed in serving your customer."

Service

"The purpose of business should be to make life better for people."

Service

"Profit is the applause you get for taking care of your customers and creating a motivating environment for your employees."

Service

"Customer service is not a department, it's an attitude!"

Service

"I won’t complain. I just won’t come back."

Failure

"Customers want good service, but they also want to feel valued."

Empathy

"Why is it a ‘close’ if it’s supposed to be the start of a customer relationship?"

Connection to Earth

"Customer service is about making the customer feel like they made the right choice in choosing you."

Empathy