99+ Timeless Customer Service Quotes: Insights from Industry Titans

Customer service might be hard, but getting the right dose of inspiration shouldn’t be.

Reading about popular customer service quotes lets you take a dive into the perspective of experts and realize what you need to do to meet customer expectations.

Whether you wish to share these quotes with your team during meetings or get them printed on posters, this blog reveals some timeless customer service quotations shared by industry visionaries, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders.

Ready to inspire your team? Let’s go! 

99+ Inspiring Customer Service Quotes 

To make it easier for you to scan through so many quotes, we have divided them into four categories: inspirational customer service quotes, customer loyalty & retention quotes, customer satisfaction quotes, and customer service improvement quotes. 

We have handpicked these quotes about customer service from hundreds of interviews, news articles, public events, press releases, videos, and many other sources. 

1. Inspirational Customer Service Quotes 

1. “Make the customer the hero of your story.” – Ann Handley

2. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates

3. “The customer’s perception is your reality.” – Kate Zabriskie

4. “Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.” – Donald Porter

5. “The purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates customers.” – Shiv Singh

6. “Your customers are responsible for your company’s reason for existing.” – Marilyn Suttle

7. “The customer experience is the next competitive battleground.” – Jerry Gregoire

8. “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

9. “Satisfaction is a rating. Loyalty is a brand.” – Shep Hyken

10. “Customers today want the very most and the very best for the very least amount of money and on the best terms. Only the individuals and companies that provide absolutely excellent products and services at absolutely excellent prices will survive.” – Brian Tracy

11. “Customer service shouldn’t just be a department, it should be the entire company.” – Tony Hsieh

12. “Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the customer gets out of it.” – Peter Drucker

13. “The key is to set realistic customer expectations, and then not to just meet them, but to exceed them — preferably in unexpected and helpful ways.” – Richard Branson

14. “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

15. “If you’re not serving the customer, your job is to be serving someone who is.” – Jan Carlzon

16. “Loyal customers, they don’t just come back, they don’t simply recommend you, they insist that their friends do business with you.” – Chip Bell

17. “Customers who are merely satisfied remain your customers only as long as everything goes their way.” – Chip Bell

18. “Customers are like teeth. Ignore them and they’ll go away.” – Jerry Flanagan

19. “The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.” – Tom Peters

20. “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

21. “Customer service is just a day-in, day-out, ongoing, never-ending, unremitting, persevering, compassionate type of activity.” – Leon Gorman

22. “The best form of customer service is self-service. Constantly empower customers to get their own answers themselves.” – Dan Pena

23. “It’s not the customer’s job to know what they want.” – Steve Jobs

24. ​​”There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.” – Roger Staubach

25. “The customer is not always right, but they are always the customer!” – Shep Hyken

26. “People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.” – Anton Chekhov

27. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” — Dr. Maya Angelou

28. “It comes down to how your customer experiences the brand – and how that brand makes a person feel.” — Alex Allwood

29. “Building a good customer experience does not happen by accident. It happens by design.” — Clare Muscutt

30. “At the heart of a successful business strategy is a customer experience that is elegantly simple and positive, where consumers are likely to come away satisfied – and return.” — Andres Angelani

31. “Today’s consumers are no longer just comparing experiences across competitors, but against the best experience they have ever had.” — Jeff Epstein

32. “The sole reason we are in business is to make life less difficult for our clients.” – Matthew Odgers

33. “Unless you love everybody, you can’t sell anybody.” – Dicky Fox

34. “If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.” – Napoleon Hill

35. “You are allowed to do this, don’t worry about the rules, don’t worry about getting into trouble, your job is to take care of the customer, your job is to make that person leave happy. And you have all kinds of leeway to do that.” – John Pepper

36. Good customer service costs less than bad customer service.” – Sally Gronow

37. “Customer service represents the heart of a brand in the hearts of its customers.” – Kate Nasser

38. “In a world where products and services are becoming more and more commoditized, customer experience is the only true differentiator.” – Annette Franz

39. “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” – Stephen R. Covey

40. “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion.” – Dale Carnegie

2. Customer Loyalty & Retention Quotes 

41. “It costs seven times more to attract a new customer than to retain an existing one.” — Neil Patel

42. “There is a big difference between a satisfied customer and a loyal customer” — Shep Hyken

43. “It is not your customer’s job to remember you; it is your obligation and responsibility to make sure they don’t have the chance to forget you.” — Patricia Fripp

44. “Repeat business or behavior can be bribed. Loyalty has to be earned.” — Janet L. Robinson.

45. “Loyalty cannot be blueprinted. It cannot be produced on an assembly line. In fact, it cannot be manufactured at all. It is a force which leaps into being only when conditions are exactly right for it – and it is a force very sensitive to betrayal.” — Maurice Franks

46. “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

47. “Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create raving fans.” —  Ken Blanchard

48. “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

49. “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

50. “It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.” — Henry Ford

51. “You don’t earn loyalty in a day. You earn loyalty day-by-day.” — Jeffrey Gitomer

52. “Revolve your world around the customer and more customers will revolve around you.” — Heather Williams

53. “Listening offers data. Hearing offers empathy and intelligence. Activity, action, and engagement steer perspective and encourage a sense of community and advocacy.” — Brian Solis

54. “Don’t find customers for your products; find products for your customers.”— Seth Godin

55. “Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your product and service and that bring friends with them.” — W. Edwards Deming

56. “Getting service right is more than just a nice to do; it’s a must do. American consumers are willing to spend more with companies that provide outstanding service – ultimately, great service can drive sales and customer loyalty.” — Jim Bush

57. “Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement.” – James Cash Penney

58. Make your products easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you. – Mark Cuban

59. “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffett

60. “Value-added promotes customer retention (they come back) but value-unique nurtures customer advocacy (they bring their friends).” – Chip Bell

3. Customer Satisfaction Quotes 

61. Unless you have 100% customer satisfaction, you must improve. – Horst Schulze

62. “Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. But they do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.” – Donald Porter

63. “The single most important thing is to make people happy. If you are making people happy, as a side effect, they will be happy to open up their wallets and pay you.” – Derek Sivers

64. “Rule 1: The customer is always right. Rule 2: If the customer is ever wrong, read Rule 1.”  – Stew Leonard’s Grocery Store Customer Policy

65. “A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.” – Michael LeBoeuf 

66. 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

67. Customer satisfaction is worthless. Customer loyalty is priceless.” — Jeffrey Gitomer

68. “The key is to set realistic customer expectations and then not to just meet them, but to exceed them — preferably in unexpected and helpful ways.” — Richard Branson

69. “The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.” — John Russell

70. “Don’t find fault. Find a remedy.” – Henry Ford

71. “Every great business is built on friendship.” — J.C. Penney

72. “Loyal customers, they don’t just come back, they don’t simply recommend you, they insist that their friends do business with you.” — Chip Bell

73. “Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.” — Simon Sinek

74. “Your customers are responsible for your company’s reason for existing.” — Marilyn Suttle

75. “It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.” — Henry Ford

76. “Satisfaction is a rating. Loyalty is a brand.” — Shep Hyken

77. “The customer experience is the next competitive battleground.” — Jerry Gregoire

78. “Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.” — Walt Disney

79. “The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth’s most customer-centric company.” — Jeff Bezos

80. “A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.” —  Michael LeBoeuf

4. Customer Service Improvement Quotes 

81. “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

82. “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job to make the customer experience a little bit better.” — Jeff Bezos

83. “Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement.” — James Cash Penney

84. “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

85. “Always deliver more than expected.” – Larry Page

86. “Customer service shouldn’t just be a department, it should be the entire company.” — Tony Hsieh

87. “Great customer service doesn’t mean that the customer is always right, it means that the customer is always honored.” — Chris LoCurto

88. “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

89. “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

90. “Being on par in terms of price and quality only gets you into the game. Service wins the game.” — Tony Alessandra

91. “In the world of Internet customer service, it’s important to remember your competitor is only one mouse click away.” – Doug Warner

92.  “Thank your customer for complaining and mean it. Most will never bother to complain. They’ll just walk away.” – Marilyn Suttle

93. “Here is a simple but powerful rule: Always give people more than what they expect to get.” – Nelson Boswell

94. “Body language and tone of voice – not words – are our most powerful assessment tools.” – Christopher Voss

95. “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

96. “The two most powerful things in existence: a kind word and a thoughtful gesture.” – Kenneth Langone

97. “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.” – Peter Drucker

98. “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.” – Steve Jobs

99. “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

100. “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

Ready to Inspire Your Customer Service Team? 

Customer service inspirational quotes serve as powerful catalysts for change, inspiring us to reach new heights of excellence. 

Yet, their true impact lies not merely in their words but in the actions they inspire. Simply reading quotes is not enough; they must be woven into the fabric of your business culture. Share these quotes with your team via newsletters, printed posters, or during meetings to help agents adopt a customer-centric approach. 

When inspiration and motivation are taken care of, you will need the right customer service tool. This is where ProProfs Help Desk can help your team centralize all customer communications, share faster responses with canned responses, and measure customer satisfaction via automated surveys. 

Learn More About Customer Service Quotes 

Why are customer service quotes important?

Customer service quotes serve as reminders of the significance of customer satisfaction, reinforcing its central role in business success. They encapsulate valuable insights and perspectives from industry leaders, guiding businesses in understanding and prioritizing the needs of their customers.

How can customer service quotes inspire our team?

Customer service quotes can inspire our team by instilling a customer-centric mindset and fostering a deeper understanding of the importance of their roles in serving customers. They provide motivation, encouragement, and a sense of purpose, encouraging team members to strive for excellence in their interactions.

How can we use these quotes effectively within our team?

To use these quotes effectively within your team, integrate them into training sessions, meetings, and communication channels. Display them prominently in the workplace to serve as constant reminders. Encourage team members to reflect on the quotes and discuss how they can apply the principles in their daily interactions with customers.

What should we do if our team is struggling with customer service?

If your team is struggling with customer service, identify areas for improvement through feedback and performance evaluations. Leverage help desk software to automate multiple customer service processes. Foster a supportive environment where team members can openly discuss concerns and share best practices to enhance customer satisfaction.