60 customer service quotes to motivate your team

Customer-facing jobs are challenging. While some days feel like total wins, others can be hard on support teams.

Providing the best customer service possible requires time, patience, and attentiveness. But not every customer walks away with a smile on their face. Even if a support agent does everything in their power to help a customer, that person may not be completely satisfied with the outcome. In those difficult moments, it’s easy for agents to feel drained and forget the importance of their work.

So, when you and your teammates are feeling defeated, change your mindset with one (or several) of these empowering customer service quotes—from famous names and CX professionals—to get you back on track.

Customer service inspirational quotes

In need of CX inspiration? You’ve come to the right place. Here are a few inspirational customer service quotes to lift your spirits and help you remember the bigger picture.

1. “Customer service shouldn’t just be a department, it should be the entire company.”

   — Tony Hsieh, former CEO of Zappos

2. “There are no traffic jams on the extra mile.”

   — Roger Staubach, NFL Hall of Famer

3. “Create multiple scenarios or use cases with the functionality your product offers. You will run into all sorts of issues and will know how to resolve them by the time you are asked by a client. This will make you more relaxed when on calls or presentations, as you will already know the answer.”

   — Noel Proudfoot, customer success analyst at CashAnalytics

4. “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, former CEO of McDonald’s

5. “Always keep in mind the old retail adage: Customers remember the service a lot longer than they remember the price.”

   — Lauren Freedman, author and retail veteran>

6. “We have a mantra, ‘don’t be evil,’ which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone.”

   — Larry Page, CEO of Alphabet (parent company of Google)

7. “Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They expect you to fix things when they go wrong.”

   — Donald Porter, former VP of British Airways

8. “Customer service is the hardest job. But good customer service defines your business and creates customer loyalty.”

   — Heather Rommel, support systems analyst at Zendesk

9. “Customer service represents the heart of a brand in the hearts of its customers.”

   — Kate Nassar, The People-Skills Coach

10. “Make the customer the hero of your story.”

    — Ann Handley, keynote speaker, writer, and marketer

11. “If you make a sale, you can make a living. If you make an investment of time and good service, you can make a fortune.”

    — Jim Rohn, entrepreneur and author

12. “There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, there are no limits.”

    — Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time

13. “Life is for service. Anything that we can do to help foster the intellect and spirit and emotional growth of our fellow human beings, that is our job.”

    — Fred Rogers, creator and TV host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

14. “You are serving a customer, not a life sentence. Learn how to enjoy your work.”

    — Laurie McIntosh, facilitator, writer, and editor at Business Training Works, Inc.

Quotes about customer service feedback



Successfully managing customer feedback is an art—it’s not always easy. But with a little help from some of the biggest names in business and culture, it can get less challenging.

15. “Success is not defined by the ability to have no complaints, it is defined by the ability to deal with them.”

    — Mikkel Svane, founder and CEO of Zendesk

16. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”

    — Bill Gates, founders and CEO of Microsoft

17. “Collecting feedback is necessary to continue to have your product or company be the brand differentiator. Implementing feedback or keeping your end-users in the loop on the status of their feedback is just as important—letting them know it is not going into a black hole. Transparency creates a healthy relationship and builds trust with your customers. Letting them know they are heard and [you] are aware of their concerns and feedback validates their thoughts and makes them feel valued.”

    — Zeenah Abouchelleih, senior customer success manager at UserVoice

18. “Don’t find fault. Find a remedy.”

    — Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Co.

19. “Always try to understand the client’s end goal for the feedback. Quite often, a client brings feedback regarding a specific solution to answer a very narrow need. However, having a deeper understanding of their actual need will often reveal a larger gap that might impact multiple clients. Understanding the challenge and actual goal almost always outweighs specific parameters outlined by an individual customer.”

    — Shae Phelps Peden, client success partner at 360Learning

20. “The customer’s perception is your reality.”

    — Kate Zabriskie, President of Business Training Works, Inc.

21. “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 it better.”

    — Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and founder of SpaceX

22. “You can’t transform something you don’t understand. If you don’t know what’s going well and what’s not in the current experience, how will you know what to redesign and what to continue doing in the future?”

    — Annette Franz, founder and CEO of CX Journey

23. “People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.”

    — Harry Gordon Selfridge, retail magnate and founder of Selfridges

24. “Customer feedback is incredibly important to any organization, and customer service teams play a crucial role in being the voice of the customer.”

    — Nicole Potalivo, customer success director at The Neat Company

25. “Log every piece of feedback from a client in a system that is actively used. Then review this weekly or monthly with your team to see what can be done to improve.”

    — Noel Proudfoot, customer success analyst at CashAnalytics

26. “I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.”

    — Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist

27. “Seek first to understand. Then to be understood.”

    — Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

28. “When you assume negative intent, you’re angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed.”

    — Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo

29. “We don’t want to push our ideas onto customers, we simply want to make what they want.”

    — Laura Ashley, fashion designer and entrepreneur



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Motivational quotes on customer service



When working out a scene, many actors will ask their director, “What’s my character’s motivation?” This helps the actor tap into the mindset of their character and understand why they’re taking certain actions.

At their core, customer service agents are kind of like actors—and the support they offer is the performance playing out. If you’re looking for motivation for your role, you can find it in the quotes below.

30. “Your Support team is the hidden gem in your business. They are there with your customers throughout their entire lifecycle. They are bonded.”

    — Delores Cooper, associate manager of scaled success at Zendesk

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

    — Dr. Tony Alessandra, author and business expert

32. “To be great at something, you have to come at it with passion, or not at all.”

    — Peachy Garcia, senior customer advocate at Zendesk

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

    — Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group

34. “Customer experience is so much more than improving what’s not working. It can be about creating more meaningful experiences that transform an organization. Innovating around the customer journey can lead to impressive results and help customers in ways that provide not just fewer ruined days, but incredibly positive experiences that better their lives.”

    — Jeannie Walters, CEO of Experience Investigators and CX speaker

35. “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, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway

36. “The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best, but legendary.”

    — Sam Walton, founder of Walmart and Sam’s Club

37. “Know what your customers want most and what your company does best. Focus on where those two meet.”

    — Kevin Stirtz, author of More Loyal Customers: 21 Real World Lessons to Keep Your Customers Coming Back

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

    — Walt Disney, founder of Disneyland and Walt Disney World

39. “The customer experience is the next competitive battleground.”

    — Jerry Gregoire, former SVP and CIO of Dell Computers

40. “Remember the why. At the end of the day, it’s very easy to be disheartened when you feel like there have been multiple problems that you don’t have an immediate solution for. However, there is a ‘why’ behind your organization and product that makes it invaluable to your clients and users. You might not always have an immediate resolution, but you do have a product that is filling a gap for your clients, and understanding that will continue to motivate you.”

    — Shae Phelps Peden, client success partner at 360Learning

41. “How you think about your customer influences how you respond to them.”

    — Marilyn Suttle, customer service expert and CEO of Suttle Enterprises

42. “Shift the focus of your customer from what went wrong to what you will do to make it right.”

    — Sakshi Jain, marketing lead at OSlash

43. “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 of Think and Grow Rich

44. “The purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates customers.”

    — Shiv Singh, business leader and author

45. “Happy customers are your biggest advocates and can become your most successful sales team.”

    — Lisa Masiello, author, advocate, and entrepreneur

Customer service quotes about relationship-building



Any good business person will tell you that their job is less about the products and services they offer and more about the relationships they build with their customers. Check out the following quotes to find out how some of the “best in the biz” develop and maintain great customer relationships.

46. “When I think about great service, it’s about how you are every interaction you have with the customer and use that as a way to improve their perception of your organization.”

    — Jon Herstein, SVP of customer success at Box

47. “Sales without customer service is like stuffing money into a pocket full of holes.”

    — David Tooman, customer service professional

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, founder of Amazon

49. “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, author, poet, and civil rights activist

50. “Make a customer, not a sale.”

    — Katherine Barchetti, author and former owner of K. Barchetti Shops

51. “Approach each customer with the idea of helping him or her to solve a problem or achieve a goal, not of selling a product or service.”

    — Brian Tracy, author and public speaker

52. “Keep CRM and other customer details handy to build insights that aid you in every following conversation.”

    — Sakshi Jain, marketing lead at OSlash

53. “The reason it seems that price is all your customers care about is that you haven’t given them anything else to care about.”

    — Seth Godin, author and entrepreneur

54. “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, author of Fabled Service: Ordinary Acts, Extraordinary Outcomes

55. “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, author and keynote speaker

56. “Get closer than ever to your customers. So close, in fact, that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.”

    — Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple

57. “What’s important is that you build trust with your customers and take ownership of their issues. Let them know that you don’t have the answer but that you will personally investigate for them, and make sure you follow through.”

    — Nicole Potalivo, customer success director at The Neat Company

58. “Your customer does not care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

    — Damon Richards (paraphrasing Theodore Roosevelt), customer care expert

59. “What it comes down to is treating each and every interaction the way you would if a good friend were calling and asking for help. You’d go that extra distance to make sure they have what they need.”

    — Nicole Saunders, director of community at Zendesk

60. “Empathy and an open ear will take you a long way. Try to tune in to your customers and really understand what they need. Meet the customer where they are.”

    — Zeenah Abouchelleih, senior customer success manager at UserVoice

Good customer service quotes can be the pick-me-up you need

Unfortunately, delivering great customer service isn’t always easy. Moments of frustration and low motivation are bound to happen and can make it difficult to keep customer satisfaction at its highest. Sometimes, all it takes is a quick reminder of the importance of your work. Keep these customer service quotes bookmarked for whenever you need an inspirational boost.