Customer service quotes, sayings, and slogans

It has been estimated that poor customer service is costing businesses more than $75 billion a year. In order to stay successful and profitable in today’s highly competitive and oversaturated marketplace, businesses need to take customer service seriously and make it a top priority. Below is the ultimate collection of customer service quotes and sayings from famous business leaders, industry experts, and authors providing some valuable insights and inspiration for businesses reshaping their approach to serving customers.

74 Inspirational customer service quotes from the experts

Explaining what customer service means

What is customer service in today’s world? Business leaders believe that it has gone far beyond simply offering support to customers. It’s a philosophy that must be embraced by everyone in an organization; from top management to frontline employees.

Customer service should not be a department. It should be the entire company.

Tony Hsieh – CEO of Zappos

Customer service means making it easy and fast for your customers to get the help they need- when and how they need it.

Steve Benson – Pulitzer prize-winning editorial cartoonist

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 – Former CEO of L.L.Bean

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

Doug Warner – Senior Vice President at Vonage

Customer service is a voluntary act that demonstrates a genuine desire to satisfy, if not delight, a customer.

Steve Curtin – Customer Enthusiast, an employee at Marriott International

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

Tony Alessandra – Entrepreneur, business author, and hall-of-fame keynote speaker

If you’re not serving the customer, your job is to be serving someone who is.

Jan Carlzon – CEO of SAS Group

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 – CEO of Amazon

Remembering who the customer is

The customer is the core reason why any business exists. Without customers, there is no profit. In a sense, they are truly any company’s most valuable assets. The following customer service quotes are great reminders of how businesses should view their customers.

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

Henry Ford – Founder of Ford Motor Company

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 – Founder of Walmart and Sam’s Club

Customers are assets to be cared for and nurtured.

Jeanne Bliss – Founder and President of CustomerBliss, and the Co-Founder of The Customer Experience Professionals Association

Every company’s greatest assets are its customers because without customers there is no company.

Michael LeBoeuf – Business author and former management professor at the University of New Orleans

Treating customers right

Satisfied and well-taken-care-of customers can be the best brand ambassadors. On the other hand, neglected customers can easily damage a brand’s reputation and cause financial losses. The customer service quotes listed below clearly demonstrate why it’s essential to care about customers and treat them right.

13. “Rule 1: The customer is always right. Rule 2: If the customer is ever wrong, re-read Rule 1.” Stew Leonard – CEO of Stew Leonard’s

14. “Look after the customers and the business will take care of itself.” Ray Kroc – Known for purchasing, popularizing, and “founding” McDonald’s

15. “The customer tells us how to stay in business, best that we listen.” Pamela Nelson – Artist

16. “Don’t try to tell the customer what he wants. If you want to be smart, be smart in the shower. Then get out, go to work, and serve the customer!” Gene Buckley – Senior Director of Customer Success at Microsoft

17. “Your best customers leave quite an impression. Do the same and they won’t leave.” SAP Ad

18. “Any customer that walks away, disrespected and defeated, represents tens of thousands of dollars out the door, in addition to the failure of a promise the brand made in the first place. You can’t see it but it’s happening, daily.” Seth Godin – Author and former dot com business executive

 19. “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.” Jeff Bezos – CEO of Amazon

20. “If your customers are made to feel as if they are outsiders, they will eventually find a competitor who makes them feel better about doing business with them.” Shep Hyken – CSP, CPAE is the CAO (Chief Amazement Officer) of Shepard Presentations

21. “Customers are like teeth. If you don’t take care of them they go away one by one until there are none.” Jerry Flanagan – Army veteran, entrepreneur, founder and CEO of JDog brands

More quotes about service treating customers right:

22. “Customers don’t care how much you know unless they know how much you care.” Damon Richards – Expert on customer care

23. “Treat the customer as if you are that customer.” Gena Lorainne – Horticulturist and garden expert at a well-established gardening company 

24. “Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement.” James Cash – A business academic who is a member of the board of directors of several corporations, including General Electric, Microsoft, The Chubb Corporation, Phase Forward, Inc., Wal-Mart, and Veracode

25. “If you don’t care, your customer never will.” Marlene Blaszczyk – Founder of MotivateUs.com

26. “Treat your customers like they own you because they do.” Mark Cuban – Owner of the National Basketball Association’s Dallas Mavericks, co-owner of 2929 Entertainment, and chairman of AXS TV

27. “If you don’t appreciate your customers, someone else will.” Jason Langella

28. “Approach each customer with the idea of helping him or her to solve a problem or achieve a goal, not of selling a product or service.” Brian Tracy – Motivational public speaker and self-development author

29. “If you are not taking care of your customer, your competitor will.” Brian Tracy – Motivational public speaker and self-development author

30. “No amount of advertising can repair the damage done by failing to properly address a customer’s concern.” Albert Schindler

31. “It takes months to find a customer and only seconds to lose one.” Vince Lombardi – Executive in the National Football League

Delivering excellent customer service

Outstanding customer service is more than just answering customers’ questions and solving their problems. As consumers have become more demanding than ever, they value brands that are able to provide a truly memorable service. Therefore, they are willing to share their positive experiences with others.

32. “Great customer service is a critical competitive advantage for a business.” Steve Benson – Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist

33. “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 – Founder of the Virgin group

34. “The longer you wait, the harder it is to produce outstanding customer service.” William H. Davidow – General partner with Mohr Davidow Ventures

35. “Great customer service doesn’t mean that the customer is always right, it means that the customer is always honored.” Chris LoCurto – Leadership & Business Coach

36. “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 – President of the Watch Tower Bible

37. “When you serve the customer better, they always return on your investment.” Kara Parlin – Writer, editor, and content strategist

38. “One customer well taken care of could be more valuable than $10,000 worth of advertising.” Jim Rohn – Entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker

39. “The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but legendary.” Sam Walton – Founder of Walmart and Sam’s Club

40. “Always keep in mind the old retail adage: Customers remember the service a lot longer than they remember the price.” Lauren Freedman – Real estate agent

41. “The key is when a customer walks away, thinking ‘Wow, I love doing business with them, and I want to tell others about the experience.” Shep Hyken – CSP, CPAE is the CAO (Chief Amazement Officer) of Shepard Presentations

Quotes about service meeting customer needs and exceeding expectations

To provide excellent service, businesses need to know their customer expectations and preferences in and out. So, knowing what resonates with customers allows not only meeting their needs but also exceeding expectations by going the extra mile.

42. “The first step in exceeding your customer’s expectations is to know those expectations.” Roy H. Williams – Bestselling author and marketing consultant best known for his Wizard of Ads trilogy

43. “Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.” Steve Jobs – Co-founder and CEO of Apple

44. “The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.” John Russell – Former Vice President of Harley-Davidson

45. “Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.” Donald Porter – Vice President of British Airways

46. “The key is to set realistic expectations, and then not to just meet them, but to exceed them – preferably in unexpected and helpful ways.” Richard Branson – Founder of the Virgin group

47. “Know what your customers want most and what your company does best. Focus on where those two meet.” Kevin Stirtz – Author of More Loyal Customers

48. “Going above and beyond involves making customers “feel special” and helping them out even when it may not make sense.“ Neil Patel – New York Times best selling author and top influencer on the web according to Forbes

49. “There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.” Roger Staubach – Quarterback for Dallas Cowboys

Understanding the importance of customer experience

Over recent years customer experience has become a critical differentiating factor for brands across all industries. Thus, its importance should not be underestimated. Consistently creating great customer experiences fosters customer loyalty, improves retention, and encourages positive referrals.

50. “The customer experience is the next competitive battleground.” Jerry Gregoire – Chief information officer at Dell

51. “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 – Founder and CEO of Amazon

52. “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around.” Steve Jobs – Co-founder and former CEO at Apple

53. “Customer experience isn’t an expense. Managing customer experience bolsters your brand.” Stan Phelps – Experience Architect at 9 INCH

54. “If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.” Jeff Bezos – Founder and CEO of Amazon

55. “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 – Author of More Loyal Customers

56. “People will forget what you said. They will forget what you did. But they will never forget how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou – Poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist

57. “The customer’s perception is your reality.” Kate Zabriskie – President at Business Training Works

Building a customer centric culture

Adopting a customer-centric approach and putting customers first at the core of all business decisions and operations helps to gain a solid advantage over competitors. What does being customer-centric mean for businesses? Here is what industry experts have to say about customer-centricity:

58. “In the age of the customer, executives don’t decide how customer-centric their companies are – Customers do.” Kate Leggett – Expert on customer relationship management and customer service strategies, maturity, benchmarking, governance, and ROI

59. “Any company that wants to put customers first….has to be willing to think long term.” Jeff Bezos – Founder and CEO of Amazon

60.  “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 – Owner at Jerry Fritz Garden Design

61. “A customer-centric model is based not on expertise in the realm of product development, but rather on a deep understanding of what customers actually want, when and how they want it, and what they’re willing to give you in exchange.” Peter Fader – Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

62. “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 – American entrepreneur, best-known for expanding McDonald’s from a local chain to the world’s most profitable restaurant franchise operation

Acknowledging customer feedback

According to the experts, customer feedback and complaints should be embraced and viewed as a source of information providing helpful insights. So, businesses can use these insights to learn where and how they can improve their products and services. Therefore, complaining customers are invaluable.

63. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Bill Gates – Co-founder of Microsoft

64. “Consumer feedback continues to be our MOST important business driver.” Howard Shultz – Former CEO of Starbucks

65. “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 – Co-owner and president of Robelle

66. “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.” Zig Ziglar – author, salesman, and motivational speaker

67. “Don’t waste customers’ time asking them questions unless you are prepared to act on what they say.” Bruce Temkin – Head of XM Institute

68. “Ask your customers to be part of the solution, and don’t view them as part of the problem.” Alan Weiss – Consultant, speaker, and author

Engaged employees provide better service

Great customer service starts with having happy employees on board. Thus, highly engaged, motivated, empowered and well-taken-care-of agents are more likely to care about customers and deliver better customer service to them. The following customer service quotes prove just that:

69. “The way your employees feel is the way your customers will feel. And if your employees don’t feel valued, neither will your customers.” Sybil F. Stershic – Author and respected thought leader on engaging employees through internal marketing

70. “Take good care of your employees and they’ll take good care of your customers, and the customers will come back.” J.W. Marriott – Founder of the Marriott Corporation

71. “Without great employees, you can never have great customer service.” Richard F. Gerson – Author, marketer

72. “If we consistently exceed the expectations of employees, they will consistently exceed the expectations of our customers.” Shep Hyken – Customer service expert, keynote speaker, CSP, CPAE is the CAO (Chief Amazement Officer) of Shepard Presentations

73. “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 – Executive with Kwik-Fit Financial Service

74. “Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.” Stephen R. Covey – Educator, author, businessman, and keynote speaker

Catchy customer service slogans and taglines

Besides quotes about service, we wanted to give you catchy slogans and tagline ideas. These are powerful marketing tools that can serve as memorable differentiators that help create emotional connections with potential customers and motivate them to support a brand. But that’s not all! Check out our insightful article highlighting must-read customer service books to enhance your skills and deliver exceptional experiences!

Moreover, below is a list of some of the most famous and compelling customer service slogans, taglines, mottos, and sayings that might be helpful to use in advertising campaigns. Thus, to catch the interest of potential customers, or to inspire support teams in customer service training.

List of customer service slogans, taglines, and mottos

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