When you understand your customer base, you have to provide them with what they want.
Usually all I care about is how elegant or over-the-top the pieces are, it’s nice to really get to understand what the customer wants and needs as opposed to just focusing on the aesthetic.
Facebook, Twitter and Google have all opened offices in Brazil, recognizing the importance of localizing their products and customer service efforts.
We don’t want our customer to be advertising our name: we believe that the customer today is aware and wants to choose. Our signature is just a guarantee.
Diving into data has never been more critical for businesses in order to make fast, accurate decisions about customer behaviors and needs and drive holistic business knowledge.
Many of the basic lessons of business, such as the critical value of customer service or measuring risk against reward when investing capital, have essential application in government, but not in a vacuum.
Amazon has done something for all of retail, which is resetting the customer expectations about how quickly and easily you can get things.
At Capital One 360, a customer forfeits the in-person experience to save money. If the app or website is down, a customer must send a deposit by mail.
Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have, and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands.
One of the things which make any company successful, in particular the Home Depot, was that we understood and catered to the customer. If it didn’t sell, it didn’t make a difference what we thought or our research told us. They told us if it was successful by buying it or not.
You’re thinking about a dish, you’re thinking about an ingredient, and in many ways, you end up becoming a naked chef in front of the customer, because what you put on the plate is you. It’s who you are and where you’ve been.
As a customer, I would see pieces that I loved and then find out they weren’t being made because no store had ordered them.
Any business, no matter what it is, lives or dies by the customer reaction it creates.
We’d love to see a world where Venmo added support on the blockchain, then a Circle customer could pay a Venmo customer using their QR code or their blockchain address – and go between those instantly and for free.
The Kitchen was a really great concept; it just wasn’t at the price point that made it accessible to people. People could visit occasionally, and some people were coming regularly. It just wasn’t a novel concept for every customer.
When you stop talking, you’ve lost your customer. When you turn your back, you’ve lost her.
To give money to a woman – and here I must speak as a man – is to deny her special quality, her irreplaceability, and reduce her unique amiability to a commodity. Money takes away her name, while transforming her lover into a nameless customer of a market of appetites.
For what we want to accomplish in the future, we have to be able to view everything from the eyes of the customer.
Number one, you can sell before you buy. I call it reverse e-commerce. You take a picture, you list it for sale, you sell it, you collect the revenue, then you go buy it and send it to the customer.
CEOs hate variance. It’s the enemy. Variance in customer service is bad. Variance in quality is bad. CEOs love processes that are standardized, routinized, predictable. Stamping out variance makes a complex job a bit less complex.
Market type determines the startup’s customer feedback and acquisition activities and spending. It changes customer needs, adoption rates, product features, and positioning as well as its launch strategies, channels and activities.
The Starbucks customer and the Teavana customer are two very different customers, two different need states that are highly complimentary.
My father was and is a great father. My father always wanted to do stand-up. He wanted to be an actor. But instead he did two jobs. He did customer service at a hospital and he worked as a waiter at night. He pretty much sacrificed everything for his daughters.
I think if companies start reinventing themselves and focus on the customer experience more, they will win out in the end.
I know what time a customer checked in, what he ordered, did it get delivered on time, did he order for sling bags, and so on. And when the customer checks out, he can walk out like how you get out of cabs because if you have a wallet it’s completely hassle-free.
We have a relationship with our customer, and that relationship translates into sales.
The PC business is not about price, it’s about value, or what you can give the customer for his or her money.
I worked at Ikea as a customer service rep for two years and loved it.
The customer who likes to be noticed is important to us.
Whereas most technologies tend to automate workers on the periphery doing menial tasks, blockchains automate away the center. Instead of putting the taxi driver out of a job, blockchain puts Uber out of a job and lets the taxi drivers work with the customer directly.
When a customer enters my store, forget me. He is king.
The kind of contact that they make with the customer is what brings them back to shop. The experience, the feeling that you have in the store is what makes the difference.
Like any small business owner, I experienced the pressures of building a company from the ground up – developing a business plan, balancing the books, meeting payroll and building a customer base.
My father taught us that to thrive, excellence in technology, quality, and customer service along with cost competitiveness is a prerequisite. His contribution to business, the economy, and society at large can never be underscored enough.
I think of my customer as a woman who wants to look beautiful and be able to walk.
I’m the worst customer for a credit card company because I always pay my balance off every month.
We looked at the customer segment that we want to go after, the Millennials, which everybody wants to go after. They are not buying linear TV.
When you build a product, you make a lot of assumptions about the state of the art of technology, the best business practices, and potential customer usage/behavior.
Some story appears in some newspaper that says that somebody said X, Y, and Z, and a customer says, I don’t understand what they’re talking about – we’re running that product, we’ve been using it for five years, what are they talking about?
We give great value for our franchisees: They can build a store for well under $200,000. And we have extremely simple operating systems. The preparation is mostly done in front of the customer. That simplicity is really what attracts our Subway franchise. You see it, and you can do it.
I was opposed to the government mandating that restaurants not allow people to smoke, believing it becomes the customer’s choice whether they go in or not. But then, I thought, ‘What about the employees? Aren’t they hostage to a smoking environment, even if they don’t smoke?’
Rural technology is moving from kind of the back office to where everything, every company – sales, marketing, customer acquisition, new product development, media – all industries are becoming technology industries. And it’s not information technology: it’s business technology.
I have no issue with raising minimum wage, but then the customer can’t say to us, ‘Why are you raising your prices?’
I am enormously proud of how we have transformed the TalkTalk customer experience.
Only institutions that go about the old-fashioned business of taking in deposits from customer A and lending them out to customer B should be called banks. The rest should call themselves what they are. ‘Parlors’ would be appropriate, or ‘dens’ – words more suitable to venerable betting pursuits.
Purchasing items made in the U.S. for our stores here or Canadian goods for our stores in Canada makes good business sense because it allows us to ensure greater customer relevance and reduce delivery times.
It’s really simple: If you’re not meeting the wants and needs of the customer, you’re done. There’s not a lot of loyalty here.
I’m Icelandic, from this small country where there was very limited access to fashion when I was growing up, and so, for me, it’s really important to have a product that’s relevant for this global customer.
A diverse customer base helps insulate you; a few large accounts can leave you vulnerable to their whims.
During the early stages of an industry, when the functionality and reliability of a product isn’t yet adequate to meet customer’s needs, a proprietary solution is almost always the right solution – because it allows you to knit all the pieces together in an optimized way.
When our customer leaves Urban Outfitters, the Main Line is the type of place where more of them go than don’t.
We have tacos and burritos and things that sound Mexican. But to me, it’s about great-tasting food in an atmosphere sympathetic to the food, prepared freshly and served to the customer in a way that’s customizable.
Our business is about technology, yes. But it’s also about operations and customer relationships.
You have to be savvy and sharp and also straightforward with your customer. I think that authenticity is really important.
