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Here are some of the top customer experience quotes from people who live and breathe customer service. Why? Because customer experience is not fading in importance. CX pros are in demand in this growing focus. Companies now pay more attention to improving and creating the best customer experience possible to gain and retain their consumers.

38 Customer Experience Quotes for CX Pros

Reading customer experience quotes is a great way to get advice from peers and those in the know without having to read a full article or do a lot of research. They’re a quick shot of inspiration and knowledge to expand your CX experience that focuses on the importance of customer experience.

Customer Loyalty Quotes

Creating a great customer experience means listening to your customers and creating a relationship in which they feel heard and valued. They will be loyal to your brand if they feel connected.

  1. “If people believe they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to the brand.” – (Howard Schultz, Starbucks)
  2. Spend a lot of time talking to customers face to face. You’d be amazed how many companies don’t listen to their customers.” – (Ross Perot, Business magnate)
  3. “The customer’s perception is your reality.” – (Kate Zabriskie, Business Training Works)
  4. “Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.” – (Steve Jobs, Founder of Apple Inc.)

Everyone within a company should know what it feels like to be a customer, having deep customer empathy and acting on those insights is what will enable you to win.

Fazier Jameer Ali - Digital Experience Lead @ Toyota North America
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Customer Service Quotes

These excellent customer service quotes highlight how important it is to offer customers phenomenal customer experience throughout their journey with your brand. Customer service should be considered in every interaction and at the forefront of your business team.

  1. “A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well." – (Jeff Bezos, Amazon)
  2. "Customer service shouldn't just be a department, it should be the entire company." – (Tony Hsieh, Zappos)
  3. "Instead of focusing on the competition, focus on the customer." – (Scott Cook, Intuit)
  4. "Good customer service costs less than bad customer service." – (Sally Gronow, DR Cymru Welsh Water)
  5. "The more advocates you have, the fewer ads you have to buy." – (Dharmesh Shah, HotSpot)

And some advice I got from Julia Sulonen, Sr. Customer Success Manager at LinkedIn:

“If you're having trouble getting customers engaged, churn is creeping up, or you're struggling to meet upsell goals, but only have resources to fix one thing - fix Onboarding. If a customer starts off with low engagement, every passing day makes it harder to fix. 

An unsuccessfully launched customer is the customer you lose next year. .. But a customer that starts off strong is likely to maintain their momentum, expand their partnership with you, and become an advocate. 

Julia Sulonen, Sr. Customer Success Manager at LinkedIn

Customer Expectation Quotes

Meeting customer expectations is important but going above and beyond is even better. Customer relationship management allows you to understand their expectations so you can meet them and work to go beyond them as well. It is another step in creating brand loyalty and customer relationships.

  1. “The key is to set realistic customer expectations, and then not just to meet them, but to exceed them – preferably in unexpected and helpful ways.” (Richard Branson, Virgin Group)
  2. “Here is a powerful yet simple rule. Always give people more than they expect to get.” (Nelson Boswell, Author)
  3. “If we consistently exceed the expectations of employees, they will consistently exceed the expectations of our customers.” – (Shep Hyken, CX Expert and speaker)
  4. “Customer service is an opportunity to exceed your customer’s expectations.” – (John Jantsch, marketing consultant and speaker)

If you (the business) don’t set expectations for your customers, your customers will set their own expectations, and you will never meet those expectations.

Jeff Sheehan

Customer Success Quotes

Successful customer interactions and outcomes are your highest priorities—that’s the heart of customer experience, after all! Define what customer success looks like to you, identify your customers’ most pressing needs, and plan your strategies around those goals. 

  1. “If you work 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, former CEO, McDonald's)
  2. “A company’s vision must be driven by the aspirations of its customers.” –K(onosuke Matsushita, founder of Panasonic)
  3. “You can focus on adoption, retention, expansion, or advocacy; or you can focus on the customer’s desired outcome and get all of those things.” – (Lincoln Murphy, author)

We’re not competitor-obsessed, we’re customer-obsessed. We start with what the customer needs and we work backwards.

Jeff bezos, executive chairman at AMAZON

Customer Appreciation Quotes

Where would we be without our customers? They’re the reason our companies exist in the first place. Showing appreciation for your customers is a powerful tool for retention, leaving a listing, positive impact that helps transition one-time users to returning customers.

  1. “If you don’t appreciate your customers, someone else will.” – (Jason Langella, marketing entrepreneur)
  2. “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, author and activist)
  3. “Always remember that everyone with whom you have a relationship has an invisible sign on their forehead that says ‘Make Me Feel Important.’ Treat them accordingly.” – (Eric Phillip Cowell, executive at EMI)

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, PRESIDENT OF Southwest Airlines

Quotes About Customer Loyalty

A loyal customer offers so much more than just a guarantee for future transactions. They’ll also become vocal brand advocates, sharing their positive experiences with their own personal network, helping to draw in more new customers. The cycle will continue, and your positive reputation will ripple outward.  

  1. “When you serve the customer better, they always return on your investment.” – (Kara Parlin, content strategist)
  2. “Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement.” – (J.C. Penney, founder of JCPenney)
  3. “The purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates customers.” – (Shiv Singh, author and CMO/CXO at LendingTree)
  4. “The more advocates you have, the fewer ads you have to buy.” – (Dharmesh Shah, founder/CTO of HubSpot)

The way to a customer’s heart is much more than a loyalty program. Making customer evangelists is about creating experiences worth talking about.

Valeria Maltoni, founder of conversation agent

Customer Feedback Quotes

Getting feedback from your customers is important when you want to make sure your brand is taking customer experience seriously. Listen to them as they can have helpful insights into your product, how it is or should be positioned, and why they did or didn’t purchase your product.

  1. “The hardest thing is being able to put your ego aside so that you can learn. We all want to create what’s in our head, but you need to be able to put your own ideas to the side and really listen to your customers to solve their problems.” - (David Cancel, Drift)
  2. “Repetitive feedback is an indicator you haven’t got the basics right, and that’s something you have to address as a priority rather than ignore.” – (Sian Townsend, Instagram)
  3. “Increasing positive customer feedback and meeting conventional financial objectives are becoming one and the same goal.” – (Rob Markey, Fred Reichheld, Andreas Dullweber, Harvard Business Review)

What features your customers ask for is never as interesting as why they want them.

CINDY ALVAREZ, director of ux at powerpoint (MICROSOFT)

Customer Experience Quotes

CX quotes encompass all the points of the customer experience journey both from the customer and employee standpoint. It is important to listen to both sides.

  1. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – (Bill Gates, Microsoft)
  2. “The customer experience is the next competitive battleground.” – (Jerry Gregoire, Redbird Flight Simulations)
  3. “There is only one boss. The customer.” – (Sam Walton, Walmart)
  4. “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, Microsoft)

When I asked Augie Ray, VP of Customer Experience at Gartner, for their input on customer experience, they offered an important reminder of what “customer experience” really means: 

“A lot of what is called "customer experience" today is really just traditional cost-cutting or funnel-building activities masquerading as CX. The problem is that too many brands treat customers not like human beings but like wallets to pluck or annoyances to minimize. 

True CX means putting the customer at the center of our efforts and measuring impact not just in dollars and cents for your brand but truly in terms of how the customer is benefited. You can find so-called CX efforts everywhere, nowadays, but actual customer-centric decision-making is sadly hard to find.

Augie Ray, VP of Customer Experience at Gartner

Heard, Augie.

Final Thoughts

Whether you are reading famous customer service quotes or those from less-known industry experts, they can inspire you and your coworkers to create a positive customer experience, every time. You want them to feel good about your business, your product, and their transactions so they not only become repeat customers but also have a sense of loyalty to the brand itself. A good customer relationship means they will speak highly of the company which is good word of mouth advertising. People look at others’ experiences before they buy or spend money on a service and are reassured when they hear or read that others are pleased with their experience.

For inspiration beyond customer experience quotes, sign up for The CX Lead Newsletter for CX, UX, and design thinking discussions and articles. Using quotes to guide your thought process along with reading and actual work in the customer experience field can put your business and brand on the right track to building success through great customer experiences.

Related Read: What Is Customer Experience Design And How Can You Approach It?

By Ben Aston

Ben Aston is an online media entrepreneur and founder of Black & White Zebra, an indie media company on a mission to help people and organizations succeed.

Ben applies his expertise in design and strategy to enable businesses to deliver innovative products and services that delight customers. Ben is passionate about understanding customer needs through design research, identifying opportunities based on those insights, and empowering designers and technologists to create solutions. He is driven to develop and uncover new opportunities for clients, establishing strong connections with their customers through product solutions that create lasting value.