A recent Customers 2020 report predicts that by 2020, customer experience will overtake both price and product as the key brand differentiator. Many say that it already has.
Forrester Research has also been consistently driving the message that we are now living in the Age of the Customer, where the customer determines his or her experience with the brand, not the other way around.
Yet, despite the focus on customer-centricity, most customers don’t believe the hype. In the latest American Experience Global Customer Service Barometer, only 5% of those surveyed said that companies are currently exceeding their customer service expectations, the lowest figure since the survey was first conducted in 2010. In addition, 38% said that they believe companies are paying less attention to providing good customer service, a 6% increase since the last survey in 2012.
So while more and more brands begin to talk the customer-centric, customer-service-focused talk, the difficult part is standing up the culture to walk the walk. Compiled here are 21 quotes, many from well-known customer-centric CEOs and business leaders, to inspire first the talk, and then the walk toward a more customer-centric culture:
1. “Look, I think that when we started Virgin Atlantic 30 years ago, we had one 747 competing with the airlines that had an average of 300 planes each. Every single one of those have gone bankrupt because they didn’t have customer service. They had might, but they didn’t have customer service, so customer service is everything in the end.” ~ Richard Branson
2. “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
3. “For us, our most important stakeholder is not our stockholders, it is our customers. We’re in business to serve the needs and desires of our core customer base.” ~ John Mackey
4. “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
5. “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
6. “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
7. “The customer’s perception is your reality.” ~ Kate Zabriskie
8. “The longer you wait, the harder it is to produce outstanding customer service.” ~ William H. Davidow
9. “Customer service is not a department, it’s everyone’s job.” ~ Anonymous
10. “Being on par in terms of price and quality only gets you into the game. Service wins the game.” ~ Tony Alessandra
11. “To achieve consistently terrific customer service, you must hire wonderful people who believe in your company’s goals, habitually do better than the norm and who will love their jobs; make sure that their ideas and opinions are heard and respected; then give them the freedom to help and solve problems for your customers. Rather than providing rules or scripts, you should ask them to treat the customer as they themselves would like to be treated — which is surely the highest standard.” ~ Richard Branson
12. “For individuals, character is destiny. For organizations, culture is destiny.” – Tony Hsieh
13. “The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.” ~ John Russell
14. “When you’re trying to make an important decision, and you’re sort of divided on the issue, ask yourself: ‘If the customer were here, what would she say?’” ~ Dharmesh Shah
15. “As far as customers are concerned, you are the company. This is not a burden, but the core of your job. You hold in your hands the power to keep customers coming back – perhaps even to make or break the company.” ~ Unknown Author
16. “The Ritz-Carlton’s ‘wow,’ if you would, or the mystique of our organization, comes hands-down from two places: our culture and our people.” ~ Joe Quitoni
17. “Your website isn’t the center of your universe. Your Facebook page isn’t the center of your universe. Your mobile app isn’t the center of your universe. The customer is the center of your universe.” ~ Bruce Ernst
18. “Without great employees you can never have great customer service.” ~ Richard F. Gerson
19. “If there’s one reason we have done better than of our peers in the Internet space over the last six years, it is because we have focused like a laser on customer experience, and that really does matter, I think, in any business. It certainly matters online, where word of mouth is so very, very powerful.” ~ Jeff Bezos
20. “The internal customer experience determines the external customer experience.” ~ Shep Hyken
21. “In the age of the customer, executives don’t decide how customer-centric their companies are — customers do.” ~ Kate Leggett
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What’s your favorite quote related to customer service, the customer experience or a customer-centric culture? Let us know in the comments section below.
