Customer

You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new. -- - Steve Jobs, 1989.

A customer (sometimes known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a good, service, product, or idea, obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier for a monetary or other valuable consideration.

CONTENT : A - F , G - L , M - R , S - Z , See also , External links

Quotes

Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

G - L

• Somewhere in the past. organizations were quite simple, and 'doing business' consisted of buying raw material from suppliers, converting into products, and selling it to customers... For the most part owner-entrepreneurs founded such simple business and worked along with members of their families. The family-dominated business still accounts for a large portion of the business start today.
  • R. Edward Freeman (2007) Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach p. 5

• You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.
  • Steve Jobs, Interview with Inc. Magazine for its "The Entrepreneur of the Decade Award" (1 April 1989)

• Our DNA is as a consumer company - for that individual customer who's voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That's who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it's not up to par, it's our fault, plain and simply.
  • Steve Jobs in: Christine Lejre, Jesper Bove-Nielsen Steve Jobs - Insanely Great Quotes, Libris Media A/S, 31 October 2011, p. 38

• Delighted customers are the only advertisement everyone believes.
  • Ron Kaufman, Lift Me UP! Service With A Smile, (2005)

• Your product is a starting point. A loyal customer is the goal.
  • Ron Kaufman, Lift Me UP! Service With A Smile, (2005)

• If customers leave without a purchase, you have not failed. But if customers leave without a smile, you have.
  • Ron Kaufman, Lift Me UP! Service With A Smile, (2005)

• The right measure is not how many customers you've got, but how closely you hold them.
  • Ron Kaufman, Lift Me UP! Service With A Smile, (2005)

• Customers can be asked about a product's evolution, but not its revolution.
  • Guy Kawasaki, 12 Lessons Steve Jobs Taught Guy Kawasaki, Speech at Silicon Valley Bank (2011)

• A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.
  • Michael LeBoeuf in: Dr. Narendra Kumar, e al., Basics of retail Management, V K Publications, p. 22

• When you stop talking, you've lost your customer. When you turn your back, you've lost her.
  • Estee Lauder in:Run your own business: Make your company a success with help from classic thinkers, Infinite Ideas, 04 May 2012, p. 69

• Industrial design keeps the customer happy, his client in the black and the designer busy.
  • Raymond Loewy (ca. 1949); Cited in: Paul Greenhalgh (1993) Quotations and Sources on Design and the Decorative Arts. p. 117

M - R

• The golden rule for every business man is this: 'Put yourself in your customer's place.'
  • Orison Swett Marden in: Mark Thompson, Brian TRACY Now, Build a Great Business!: 7 Ways to Maximize Your Profits in Any Market, AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn, 17 November 2010, p. 178

• Think about it: if you were running a multi-million dollar company, and your database of customer information was stolen, would you want to tell your clients? No. Most [US] companies did not until the laws required them to. It's in the best interest of organisations - when they're attacked and information is stolen - to tell nobody.
  • Kevin Mitnick in: Mark Gregory, David Glance Security and the Networked Society, Springer Science & Business Media, 2013, p. 46

• There is one thing we are quite passionate about — and that is serving the customers who have trusted us.
  • Charlie Munger: (February 24, 2021)"Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, speaks at the Daily Journal Annual Meeting". Yahoo Finance, YouTube. (quote at 1:57:14 of 1:59:05)

• Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement.
  • James Cash Penney in: Alan L. Alford $Ell Your Little Heart Out!, Xlibris Corporation, 1 October 2012, p. 71

• As far as the customer is concerned, the interface is the product.
  • Jef Raskin, The Humane Interface (2001)

S - Z

• Organizations are defined from the inside out: they are described by who reports to whom, by departments and processes and matrices and perks. A business, on the other hand, is defined from the outside in by markets, suppliers, customers, and competitors.
  • Thomas A. Stewart, American business writer, management consultant. 'Introduction to the Paperback Edition', Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations (1998).

• Pan Am takes good care of you. Marks & Spencer loves you. Securicor cares. I.B.M. says the customer is king. At Amstrad, we only want your money!
  • Alan Sugar Quoted in the New York Times, September 28, 1987, from an earlier public speech.

• The toughest thing about the power of trust is that it's very difficult to build and very easy to destroy. The essence of trust building is to emphasize the similarities between you and the customer.
  • Thomas J. Watson in:Quotes by Watson Thomas J, Quotations Book, p. 4

• Users can work with analysts and object designers to formulate and tune system requirements. People from business, analytical and object design disciplines can come together, learn from each other and generate meaningful descriptions of systems that are to be built. Each participant and each project has slightly different concerns and needs. Practical application of use cases can go a long way to improve our ability to deliver just what the customer ordered.
  • Rebecca Wirfs-Brock, Designing scenarios: Making the case for a use case framework (1993); About Conclusion

• 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, in Layna Fischer 2010 BPM and Workflow Handbook, Future Strategies Inc., 2010, p. 178

• 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 in: Smarter Branding Without Breaking the Bank: Five Proven Marketing Strategies You Can Use Right Now to Build Your Business at Little Or No Cost, eBookIt.com, 7 November 2011, p. 91

• I'm constantly amazed that owners and managers of all businesses don't train their people to call the person who pays by credit card by name. It definitely makes the customer feel good and will be a factor in bringing them back to your place of business.
  • Zig Ziglar in:Zig On…Don't Miss This Opportunity, Ziglar.com, 25 May 2010

See also

• Market