10 Quotes to Inspire Better CX
Sometimes customer experience can fall by the wayside, so it can benefit us all to be reminded of why it matters in the first place. Below, we’ve broken down some of the most inspiring and insightful CX quotes from visionaries who really understand the value of the customer.
1. “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.” – Jeff Bezos
The reality is that in the internet age, people won’t necessarily complain only to their closest friends, they may also complain to all of their internet friends, on forums to strangers, in comments sections, or anywhere else on the internet! Your online reputation is of major importance, so monitor it along with your customer feedback.
2. If we consistently exceed the expectations of employees, they will consistently exceed the expectations of our customers.” – Shep Hyken
Focusing on your employees can have a significant ripple effect onto your CX. Research has shown that employee experience is inextricably linked to customer experience, so make sure your employees are satisfied so that they can do their best work to make your customers happy.
3. “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around.” – Steve Jobs
Sometimes business leaders can get too excited about an idea without thinking about the people who will be purchasing and using whatever product or service being sold. It’s best to think about the customer’s experience from the outset and see how you can improve upon that rather than throwing a new initiative out there and then learning that the customer isn’t on board too late.
4. “Whatever you do, do it well. Do it so well that when people see you do it, they will want to come back and see you do it again, and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do.” – Walt Disney
This quote is one of our favourites, as Walt Disney is often regarded as the founding father of customer experience, and even during his lifetime, he was able to recognise the power and value of CX and understood that the ideal customer is one who enjoys your business so much that he returns and promotes it to their friends.
5. “People don’t always remember what you say or even what you do, but they always remember how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou
This quote from Angelou goes to the heart of what customer experience is all about. It’s about a customer’s emotional connection with a brand. A person will remember if an experience was easy and pleasant even if they don’t remember why. They’ll also remember if an experience left them frustrated or annoyed and probably won’t return to experience that feeling again.
6. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates
While it is of course important to listen to your happy customers to learn where you are thriving, Gates here reinforces how even more can be learned from the complaints of unhappy customers. You can only improve your business if you pay close attention to your shortcomings which is why a robust VoC programme can be invaluable to learning about your performance.
7. “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 favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us an opportunity to do so.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi is a rather unexpected CX evangelist, but the point he makes here is paramount. Every business must revolve around the customer and be grateful to the customer because without customers there wouldn’t be a business at all!
8. “Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you.” – Mark Cuban
If a customer puts in less effort when engaging with your competitor, your competitor will win their business. It’s important to keep innovating to improve the ease of CX as it is highly correlated with loyalty.
9. “When a customer complains, he is doing you a special favour; 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
Obviously, we would hope that every customer will be satisfied with their initial experience and there would be no need for complaints, but realistically that is never the case. On the occasion that a customer does complain, they’re giving you a chance to remediate the situation and change their opinion. It is really important to have robust closed-loop mechanisms in place to handle situations where customers are unhappy, it’s a great opportunity to turn a negative experience into a positive one, and really necessary to protect your brand reputation.
10. “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
The customer-first mantra needs to come from the top down or else it will not be ingrained in the culture of an organisation. This goes to the heart of having customer-centricity as a core part of your business’s strategy, leaders that recognise that a customer-first approach, such as the ones from Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Disney and Walmart, who all feature in this set of quotes, have a much better chance of success than those that don’t.
