50 quotes from leaders on customer centricity

Customer Centric Culture Quotes

Quotes from Leaders driving Customer Centricity

© Copyright MarketCulture Strategies 2016

THE 8 CUSTOMER CENTRIC CULTURE DIMENSIONS


CUSTOMER CENTRICITY

“A customer culture is as fundamental to your business as breathing is to living. It is the life force of your business.”

Dr Linden R. Brown,Cofounder and Chairman, MarketCulture Strategies


CUSTOMER CENTRICITY

“What’s best for the customer is best for the business.”

Chris Brown,Cofounder and CEO, MarketCulture Strategies

John Stanhope,Former CFO of Telstra. Chairman of Australia Post

“When the customer makes you or your business the centre of what they do in your solution area, you have achieved customer centricity."

CUSTOMER CENTRIC LEADERSHIP


CUSTOMER CENTRICITY

"I would define Amazon by our big ideas, which are customer centricity, putting the customer at the center of everything we do.”

Jeff Bezos,Founder and CEO, Amazon


CUSTOMER CENTRICITY

“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,Founder and Former CEO, Walmart


CUSTOMER CENTRICITY

“There is never a good sale for Neiman Marcus unless it’s a good buy for the customer.”

Stanley Marcus,CEO, Neiman Marcus


WHY CULTURE MATTERS

Dr. Peter F. Drucker,The World’s Most Prolific Management Writer

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”


WHY CULTURE MATTERS

Louis V. Gerstner Jr.Former Chairman and CEO, IBM

“I came to see in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect ofthe game - it is the game.”


CUSTOMER INSIGHT

“Our version of a perfect customer experience is one in which our customer doesn't want to talk to us. Every time a customer contacts us, we see it as a defect. I've been saying for many, many years, people should talk to their friends, not their merchants.”



CUSTOMER INSIGHT

“Consumer feedback continues to be our MOST important business driver”

Howard Shultz,Chairman and CEO, Starbucks


CUSTOMER INSIGHT

“You’ve gotta start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.”

Steve Jobs,Founder and Former CEO, Apple


CUSTOMER INSIGHT

“Consumer data will be the biggest differentiator in the next 2 to 3 years.Whoever unlocks the reams of data and uses it strategically will win.”

Angela Ahrendts,Former CEO, Burberry


CUSTOMER INSIGHT

“It’s very important to have a FEEDBACK LOOP, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing better.”

Elon Musk,Founder PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla Motors

A.G. Lafley,Former CEO, Procter & Gamble

“I am a brokenrecord when

it comes to saying, ‘We have

to focus on theconsumer.’...

I don’t think theanswers are justin the numbers.You have to get

out and look.”

CUSTOMER INSIGHT


CUSTOMER INSIGHT

“We really listened to what our users wanted, both qualitatively listening to the words they say, and quantitatively looking at behavior that they take.”

Mark Zuckerberg,Founder and CEO, Facebook


CUSTOMER INSIGHT

“You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible thing you can. Find everything that’s wrong with it and fix it. Seek negative feedback.”


“Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach.

Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do.”

CUSTOMER FORESIGHT


CUSTOMER FORESIGHT

Henry Ford,Founder, Ford Motor Company

”If I had asked my customers what the wanted, they would have said a faster horse”


CUSTOMER FORESIGHT

"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 and Former CEO, Apple


CUSTOMER FORESIGHT

“Any company that wants to put customers first….has to be willing to think long term.”

Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, Amazon And the 10,000 Year Clock Project


CUSTOMER FORESIGHT

Mark Benioff,Founder and CEO, Salesforce.com

“You need to get to the future, ahead of your customers, and be ready to greet them when they arrive.”


CUSTOMER FORESIGHT

Philip Kotler,Professor Kellogg School of Management

“Good companies will meet needs;Great companies will create markets”


CUSTOMER INSIGHT ANDFORESIGHT

“The most important single thing is to obsessively focus on the customer. It’s our job everyday to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little better.”


COMPETITOR INSIGHT

“If you don’t have a competitive advantage don’t compete.”

Jack WelchFormer CEO – GE


COMPETITOR INSIGHT

“We watch our competitors, learn from them, see the things that they were doing for customers and copy those things as much as we can.”



COMPETITOR INSIGHT ANDFORESIGHT

Andy Grove - Former CEO, Intel

“Success breeds complacency.

Complacency breeds failure.

Only the paranoid survive”


COMPETITOR FORESIGHT

Gary Hamel,Visiting Professor London Business School

“Winning in business is not about being number one – its about who gets to the future first”


PERIPHERAL VISION

Sheryl Sandberg,COO, Facebook

“Social media has created a historical shift from the historically powerful to the historically powerless.Now everyone has a voice.”


PERIPHERAL VISION

George S. Day,Professor Wharton Business School

“Seeing what is happening and responding effectively is a key capability.

Arrive too early for the party and there are no guests, arrive too late and you are cleaning up the trash.”


PERIPHERAL VISION

Meg Whitman,CEO, HP

“We are living in an age of relentless disruption that is being driven by technology.Threats and uncertainty.Constant connectivity.Instant Gratification.New channels, markets and business models.”


PERIPHERAL VISION

Ginni Rometty,CEO, IBM

“The only way you survive is your continuously transform into something else. It’s this idea of continuous transformation that makes you an innovation company .”

Richard Branson,CEO, Virgin

“A company is people…. Empoyees want to know... Am I being listened to or am I a cog in the wheel? People really need to feel wanted."

EMPOWERMENT


EMPOWERMENT

“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”


John Mackey,Founder and CEO, Whole Foods Market

“Business is simple. Management’s job is to take care of employees. Employee’s job is to take care of the customers. Happy customers take care of the shareholders. It’s a virtuous circle"

EMPOWERMENT

Tony Collins,Former CEO, Virgin Trains UK

“Put your trust in people, not in processes."

EMPOWERMENT

J W Marriott,Chairman and CEO of Marriott International

“Take good care of your employees, and they’ll take good care of your customers, and the customers will come back"

EMPOWERMENT

Richard Branson,CEO, Virgin

“Train people well enough so they can leave….treat them well enough so that they don’t want to."

EMPOWERMENT

COLLABORATION

“Coming together is a beginning; Keeping together is progress;Working together is success.”

Henry Ford,Founder, Ford Motor Company

COLLABORATION

“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”


COLLABORATION

“The secret is to gang up on the problem, rather than each other.”

Thomas Stallkamp,Former Executive from Chrysler Corporation

COLLABORATION

“Collaboration is vital to sustain what we call profound or really deep change, because without it, organizations are just overwhelmed by the forces of the status quo.”

Dr. Peter M. Senge,Senior Lecturer MIT Sloan School of Management

COLLABORATION

“The leaders who work most effectively never say ‘I.’ And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say ‘I.’ They don’t think ‘I.’ They think ‘we’; they think ‘team.’ They understand their job to be to make the team function.

They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but ‘we’ gets the credit…. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.”

Dr. Peter F. Drucker,The World’s Most Prolific Management Writer


“Everyone says Toyota is the best company in the world, but the customer doesn’t care about the

world. They care if we are the best in town or not.

That’s what I want to be.”

- Akio Toyoda, CEO Toyota

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT

Alex Bard,Former SVP and GM at Salesforce.com

“As you grow, to get everybody on the same page you must document what you stand for by being very clear about your values.

The first one is – people matter.”

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT

John Kotter,Professor Harvard Business School

“Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there; they cause change.

They motivate and inspire other to go in the right direction and they, along with everyone else, sacrifice to get there.”

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT

Warren Buffett,CEO , Berkshire Hathaway

“Focus on your customers and lead your people as thought their lives depend on your success.”

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT

Michael Porter, Professor, Harvard Business SchoolAuthor – Competitive Strategy

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do”

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT


“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionatley own the vision and relentlessly drive it to completion”

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT

“A mere 7% of employees today fully understand their company’s strategies and what’s expected of them in order to help achieve company goals”

Robert S Kaplan – Professor, Harvard Business School. Coauthor - The Balanced Scorecard

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT

“If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, then the end is near.”


David Thodey,Former CEO, Telstra

“As a leader, I want to be an agent for the customer."


Tony Collins,Former CEO, Virgin Trains UK

“A leader needs passion, courage and an ability to listen."
