Customer service is hard work. Some days are rewarding and energizing. Others are challenging, making it difficult to feel like what you do is important.
We’ve collected this list of inspirational customer service quotes to help you reignite your motivation on those difficult days. Read through them when you need a reminder of the extraordinary impact that your hard work has on both your company and the people you help.
71 inspirational customer service quotes
1. “Life is for service.” – Fred Rogers
2. “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, Southwest Airlines President Emerita
3. “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” – Albert Einstein
4. “To keep a customer demands as much skill as to win one.” – American Proverb
5. “To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own.” – Anne Morrow Lindeberg, Author and Aviator
6. “There is a spiritual aspect to our lives — when we give, we receive — when a business does something good for somebody, that somebody feels good about them!” – Ben Cohen, Co-Founder Ben & Jerry’s
7. “Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?‘” – Brian Tracy, Author and Motivational Speaker
8. “When you help others feel important, you help yourself feel important too.” – David J. Schwartz, Author and Motivational Speaker
9. “Don’t dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer.” – Denis Waitley, Author and Motivational Speaker
10. “To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.” – Don Alden Adams, President Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania
11. “Men are rich only as they give. He who gives great service gets great rewards.” – Elbert Hubbard, Artist and Writer
12. “I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.” – Ernest Hemingway, Author and Journalist
13. “To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.” – Francois de La Rochefoucauld, Essayist
14. “What do we live for if not to make life less difficult for each other?” – George Eliot, Novelist
15. “Sometimes one can become lost in a big company and lose sight of how what one does truly helps or impacts the end customer. If you are one of those, think of a fire brigade, a line of people passing buckets of water from one to the other from a source of water to the site of the fire. An individual in the brigade may not be able to see the end result, i.e., the water being thrown on the fire to put it out, but the contribution of the individual is indispensable to the final outcome.” – Grant Bright, Former Project Lead IBM
16. “Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy.” – Gretta Palmer, Author and Editor
17. “The world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.” – Helen Keller, Author and Political Activist
18. “Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.” – Henry Ford, Founder Ford Motor Company
19. “Two important things are to have a genuine interest in people and to be kind to them. Kindness, I’ve discovered, is everything.” – Isaac Bashevis Singer, Author
20. “Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement.” – James Cash Penney, Founder J.C. Penney Stores
21. “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, Founder Amazon
22. “Biggest question: Isn’t it really ‘customer helping’ rather than customer service? And wouldn’t you deliver better service if you thought of it that way?” – Jeffrey Gitomer, Author and Professional Speaker
23. “You don’t earn loyalty in a day. You earn loyalty day-by-day.” – Jeffrey Gitomer, Author and Professional Speaker
24. “If you make a sale, you can make a living. If you make an investment of time and good service in a customer, you can make a fortune.” – Jim Rohn, Author and Motivational Speaker
25. “If you just communicate, you can get by. But if you communicate skillfully, you can work miracles.” – Jim Rohn, Author and Motivational Speaker
26. “The most important adage and the only adage is, the customer comes first, whatever the business, the customer comes first.” – Kerry Stokes, Chairman of the Seven Network
27. “Face the simple fact before it comes involved. Solve the small problem before it becomes big.” – Lao Tzu, Philosopher
28. “Our greatest asset is the customer! Treat each customer as if they are the only one!” – Laurice Leitao, Customer Service Professional SeraCare Life Sciences
29. “Your ability to communicate is an important tool in your pursuit of your goals, whether it is with your family, your co-workers or your clients and customers.” – Les Brown, Author and Motivational Speaker
30. “One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth doing is what we do for others.” – Lewis Carroll, Writer and Mathematician
31. “Words of comfort, skillfully administered, are the oldest therapy known to man.” – Lous Nizer, Lawyer
32. “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.” – Mahatma Gandhi
33. “Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.” – Marian Wright Edelman, Founder Children’s Defense Fund
34. “Thank your customer for complaining and mean it. Most will never bother to complain. They’ll just walk away.” – Marilyn Suttle, Success Coach
35. “How you think about your customers influences how you respond to them.” – Marilyn Suttle, Success Coach
36. “If you don’t care, your customer never will.” – Marlene Blaszczyk, Motivational Specialist
37. “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
38. “Every company’s greatest assets are its customers, because without customers there is no company.” – Michael LeBoeuf, Business author and former management professor
39. “A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.” – Michael LeBoeuf, Business author and former management professor
40. “Bottom-line obsession comes from turning the pursuit of money into a God and forgetting the real master your business serves: The Customer.” – Michael Shevack, Executive Coach
41. “Be kind and merciful. Let no one ever come to you without coming away better and happier.” – Mother Teresa
42. “Remember, the best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses.” – Napoleon Hill, Author “Think and Grow Rich”
43. “How you think about a problem is more important than the problem itself — so always think positively.” – Norman Vincent Peale, Author The Power of Positive Thinking
44. “The only certain means is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.” – Og Mandino, Author The Greatest Salesman in the World
45. “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, Professional Keynote Speaker
46. “When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: admit it, learn from it, and don’t repeat it.” – Bear Bryant, Former College Football Player and Coach
47. “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.” – Peter Drucker, Best-Selling Author
48. “Never underestimate the power of the human element. Whether it’s assisting a guest with a special request or a friendly greeting from staff members in the hallway, the people aspect plays a key role in guest satisfaction and loyalty.” – Ramez Faza, Sr. Account Manager at J.D. Power and Associates
49. “Until you understand your customers — deeply and genuinely — you cannot truly serve them.” – Rasheed Ogunlaru, Author of Soul Trader
50. “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, Founder McDonald’s
51. “People expect good service but few are willing to give it.” – Robert Gately, President Gately Consulting
52. “When the customer comes first, the customer will last.” – Robert Half, Founder of Robert Half International
53. “Inside of every problem lies an opportunity.” – Robert Kiyosaki, Author Rich Dad Poor Dad
54. “There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.” – Roger Staubach, Former NFL Quarterback
55. “Good customer service costs less than bad customer service.” – Sally Gronow, Customer Manager Welsh Water
56. “The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but legendary.” – Sam Walton, Founder Walmart and Sam’s Club
57. “When a customer complains, he is doing you a special favor; he is giving you another chance to serve him to his satisfaction. You will appreciate the importance of this opportunity when you consider that the customer’s alternative option was to desert you for a competitor.” – Seymour Fine, Author The Marketing of Ideas and Social Issues
58. “Seek first to understand. Then to be understood.” – Stephen Covey, Author “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”
59. “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, Co-founder Apple
60. “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
61. “Be helpful — even if there’s no immediate profit in it.” – Susan Ward, Small Business Expert and Writer
62. “The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.” – Tom Peters, Best-Selling Author
63. “We asked ourselves what we wanted this company to stand for. We didn’t want to just sell shoes. I wasn’t even into shoes — but I was passionate about customer service.” – Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos
64. “A sale is not something you pursue; it’s what happens to you while you are immersed in serving your customer.” – Unknown
65. “The purpose of business should be to make life better for people.” – Unknown
66. “Profit is the applause you get for taking care of your customers and creating a motivating environment for your employees.” – Unknown
67. “Customer service is not a department, it’s an attitude!” – Unknown
68. “You can have what you want if you help other people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar, Author and Motivational Speaker
69. “If you love your customer to death, you can’t go wrong.” – Graham Day, Lawyer and Corporate Director
70. “What helps people, helps business.” – Leo Burnett, Advertising Executive
71. “Be dramatically willing to focus on the customer at all costs, even at the cost of obsoleting your own stuff.” – Scott D. Cook, Founder Intuit
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