10 motivating customer experience quotes (and the stories behind them)
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Every successful business knows that they can’t survive without their customers. Your customers inspire your ideas; their purchases help you to become profitable; and they spread the word about your business to their friends and family.
But customers will only help you succeed if you look after them well, too. The best way to do this is by providing them with a world-class customer experience. Even though you undoubtedly aspire to provide your customers with an excellent service, there will be days when you, or your whole customer experience team, could benefit from a little boost.
To inspire you to provide exceptional care to your customers even on those slow days, here are 10 customer experience quotes to help you deliver a great customer experience.
What is customer experience?
Customer experience (CX) is the sum of every interaction that a customer has with your business throughout their customer journey. As the provider of this experience, you directly influence its quality. You could improve it by answering product questions whilst they’re considering a purchase, by helping customers to navigate the checkout process whilst they’re making a purchase or by resolving a service issue.
The overall customer experience ensures that your customer feels seen, heard and valued across every single touchpoint and interaction with your business. By empowering your customers with easy access to support, world-class products and services, as well as a friendly CX team, this will ensure that they keep coming back for more.
Top customer experience quotes
No. 1: “Thank your customer for complaining and mean it. Most will never bother to complain. They’ll just walk away.” - Marilyn Suttle, Success Coach
Knowing how your customers feel is invaluable, even when their sentiments skew towards the negative. Feedback, whether positive or negative, provides you with the necessary starting point for improvement. It’s important to recognise that most customers are not inherently invested in your business’s success; instead, they are inclined to disengage if their experiences fail to live up to their expectations.
Therefore, actively listening to feedback and expressing genuine appreciation to those who take the time to provide it are vital practices. This not only fosters a culture of openness but also confirms your commitment to addressing concerns and enhancing the overall customer experience.
No. 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.” - Dr. Maya Angelou
The consequences of a bad customer experience can drag down even a successful business. Customers will tell their friends and colleagues about their negative service experiences with your company and might take to social media to spread their complaints.
To rise above your competition, you must provide an exceptional customer experience. But what exactly is a good customer experience? It requires treating your customers with care, empathy and respect as well as making business decisions with their needs in mind.
No. 3: “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” - Bill Gates
Hearing negative feedback is always challenging. But it’s also an important source of growth for your business. You won’t know what’s working well and what’s failing unless you hear it from your customers. Never assume that you know what your customers are thinking. Understanding the Voice of the Customer and putting in place structures to improve the CX will go a long way.
No. 4: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” - Dale Carnegie
This wisdom applies just as much to operating a successful business. Understanding your customers wants, needs and challenges is key to success.
Business is a two-way street. Don’t expect customers to flock to you if you don’t first prioritise understanding their preferences and taking action to improve their experiences with your brand.
No. 5: “The world is constantly changing. All we know is that tomorrow’s not going to be the same as today, so if you’re not continuously adapting, continuously improving, it’s hard to stay competitive.” - Charles Gao, Senior Manager of Business Strategy and Analytics, Golden State Warriors
To constantly evolve, you need to first pinpoint what needs changing. To do that, you need to have a comprehensive understanding of your customers. The US’s Golden State Warriors basketball team employed customer experience feedback to understand their customers and adapt to their needs.
No. 6: “Leadership must spend time on the frontline to better understand what customers experience. Once they do, they may recognise a gap between their perception of the company’s CX and what’s happening on the frontline. You’ll also need to showcase the right metrics – churn, satisfaction and more – to make a compelling case for leadership to invest in CX and close the gap, thereby improving the customer’s experience.” - Shep Hyken, Chief Amazement Officer
Only 25% of CX programmes have a designated customer experience leader who oversees and manages the customer journey. However, companies with a holistic CX leader are more likely to meet their goals and improve their customer experience programmes.
Understanding your customers is vital when addressing the customer journey. And, with a CX leader, you’ll be able to create objectives, trace KPIs and stay on track with your efforts to build a winning customer journey.
No. 7: “I believe the biggest opportunities for early adoption and innovation of AI technology are likely found in industries heavily reliant on customer services, such as retail, telecommunications and travel. As younger generations (Gen Z and millennials) become more comfortable with AI, companies that target those consumers might benefit significantly from adding AI-driven enhancements to their customer experiences.” - Myra Golden, Customer Service and De-Escalation Expert
As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, it will reshape how businesses interact with their customers. To position themselves alongside these changes, CX professionals must monitor emerging technologies and understand how customers perceive and use them.
Adding new capabilities that customers search for will streamline user experiences and facilitate positive touchpoints with your business. AI and other emerging technologies are a matter of when not if. It’s better to stay ahead of the CX curve and adapt quickly.
No. 8: “Customer understanding is the cornerstone of customer-centricity. To design a better experience at critical touchpoints across the customer lifecycle, you’ll need to listen to customers, understand their needs and how well you’re performing against them, and incorporate their feedback into delivering the experience they deserve.” - Annette Franz, CCXP Founder + CEO CX JOURNEY Inc.
Fostering a customer-centric culture won’t happen overnight. However, if your business can continually use customer feedback to improve, you’ll build enduring loyalty. There is a strong connection between customer satisfaction and low churn, with your CX efforts directly improving your bottom line.
CX professionals are already in the loop, with 52% of CX teams wanting more investment into feedback programmes. By adapting to feedback, you can promote a culture of customer-first improvements.
No. 9: “Until you understand your customers – deeply and genuinely – you cannot truly serve them.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru, Motivational speaker and author
Organisations should leverage a range of customer experience feedback surveys – Net Promoter Score® (NPS®), customer satisfaction (CSAT) score and more – that enable them to gain a deeper understanding of customers’ wants, needs and challenges.
By drawing on various leading customer experience, loyalty and journey metrics, you can create a comprehensive overview of how your customers feel. As you start to pinpoint areas of customer feedback that you can improve upon, you’ll have a more direct pathway towards making a world-class customer experience.
No. 10: “Provide an experience that is both useful, usable, desirable and differentiated, and you will create demand for your brand and delight your customers.” - David Armano, Strategy Director, Edelman
Your very best customers are the ones who you already have; the ones who keep coming back for more, time and time again. Measuring and then improving your customer satisfaction based on these results will help to ensure that your customers always have the good experience that they expect. Monitoring your CSAT score, NPS and CES will give you the data you need to make effective decisions.
Stop quoting and start doing
Serving your customers with friendliness, attention and care isn’t simply good for its own sake. It has real, tangible benefits for your business as well. But too many businesses fail to deliver good customer experience, whether it’s because they don’t know how to or they don’t make it a priority.
These great CX quotes should provide the inspiration and knowledge that you need to improve and enhance your customer experience. And if you’re not sure where to start, begin by asking your customers what they think. With SurveyMonkey, you can listen to your customers and gain an in-depth understanding of their needs, allowing you to create the optimal customer experience.
Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score and NPS are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc. and Fred Reichheld.
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