90 inspirational customer service quotes to motivate teams

Customer service is not for the faint of heart. Doing it well requires dedication, empathy, and an open mind. If you’re dealing with a disgruntled customer or need a reminder of why excellent customer experience (CX) is important, we’ve got uplifting and relatable customer service quotes for you.

Use these customer service tips and quotes to encourage your support team to maintain a positive attitude, proactively solve problems, build strong relationships, and more.

More in this guide:

• 90 inspirational customer service quotes
• Inspire your teams to deliver exceptional CX

90 inspirational customer service quotes

From employee empowerment to customer communication and everything in between, use these 90 quotes to inspire your team to meet (and exceed) customer service objectives.

• Employee empowerment customer service quotes
• Service excellence customer service quotes
• Relational customer service quotes
• Continuous improvement customer service quotes
• Communication and listening customer service quotes

Employee empowerment customer service quotes

• “Remind yourself the nature of the work is helping frustrated people in situations that are confusing at best or impossible at worst. Never take it personally, and know you are able to help simply by listening with an empathetic ear.”—Jillana Peterson, principal operations manager at Zendesk

• “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, senior manager of scaled customer success at Zendesk

• “If you are not taking care of your customer, your competitor will.”—Bob Hooey, international speaker and author
• “A customer is the most important visitor in our premises. [They are] not dependent on us, we are dependent on [them]. [They are] not an interruption to our work, [they are] the purpose of it.”—Mahatma Gandhi, lawyer, activist, writer, and politician
• “Customer service represents the heart of a brand in the hearts of its customers.”—Kate Nassar, The People Skills Coach™
• “Make the customer the hero of your story.”—Ann Handley, keynote speaker, writer, and digital marketing pioneer
• “Know what your customers want most and what your company does best. Focus on where those two meet.”— Kevin Stirtz, author
• “The customer experience is the next competitive battleground.”—Jerry Gregoire, former SVP and CIO of Dell Computers

• “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
• “The purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates customers.”—Shiv Singh, business leader and author
• “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
• “We don’t want to push our ideas onto customers, we simply want to make what they want.”—Laura Ashley, fashion designer and entrepreneur
• “Customers long to interact with—even relate to—employees who act like there is still a light inside.”—Chip Bell, founder of Chip Bell Group
• “Although your customers won’t love you if you give bad service, your competitors will.”—Kate Zabriskie, president of Business Training Works

• “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
• “Customers are never actually personally angry at customer service professionals. They’re angry at the company, the product, or the situation in which they find themselves. Even when they say hurtful things, it’s not because of who you are as a person at the end of the day.”—Maria Britton, CEO of Trade Show Labs
• “How you think about your customer influences how you respond to them.”—Marilyn Suttle, customer service expert and CEO of Suttle Enterprises
• “Once they’ve exhausted all possibilities and the customer still isn’t satisfied with the outcome, the customer service team needs to know they can end the conversation without fear of repercussions from management. You’ll save your team a tremendous amount of stress if they know there is a cutoff point when dealing with unhappy customers.”—James Green, owner of Cardboard Cutouts

Service excellence customer service quotes

You can inspire your support teams to go beyond the basics and deliver consistent, outstanding results with the right service and sales advice.

• “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 former CEO of Zendesk
• “Customer service is the hardest job. But good customer service defines your business and creates customer loyalty.”—Heather Rommel, senior systems operations manager at Confluent

• “We have the opportunity to make or break customer trust every day through each interaction.”—Jillana Peterson, principal operations manager at Zendesk

• ​​“Self-service options…can reduce costs while providing immediate solutions to users. Customers have answers at their fingertips, and agents can respond faster, so everyone is happier and more productive.”—David Schroeder, senior manager of services support at Unity
• “Our goal is to deliver world-class service levels to all of our customers. That separates us from competitors and allows us to provide mission-critical support to our customers.”—Thomas Powers, VP of product support at Catapult Sports
• “Service first, sell after.”—Teresa Anania, chief customer officer at Sophos
• “[We] are rich only as [we] give. [One] who gives great service gets great rewards.”—Elbert Hubbard, writer and philosopher
• “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
• “Being on par in terms of price and quality only gets you into the game. Service wins the game.”—Dr. Tony Alessandra, author and keynote speaker
• “To give real service, you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.”—Douglas Adams, author

• “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

• “Shift the focus of your customer from what went wrong to what you will do to make it right.”—Sakshi Jain, senior consultant at TripleDart
• “A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.”—Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Co.

• “To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own.”—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, author and aviator
• “The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.”—Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon
• “If you’re not serving the customer, your job is to be serving someone who is.”—Jan Carlzon, Swedish businessman and former CEO of Scandinavian Airlines
• “Customer service shouldn’t just be a department—it should be the entire company.”—Tony Hsieh, former CEO of Zappos
• “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
• “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
• “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”—Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist
• “Good customer service is about understanding your client’s needs and then exceeding them.”—Cory Cabral, CEO and founder of Proactive Access
• “Strive to provide the best possible experience for customers, even if it means making a few sacrifices along the way.”—Peter Monkhouse, founder and managing director of ICL SA

• “A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.”—Michael LeBoeuf, business author and former management professor
• “Approach each customer with the idea of helping [them] to solve a problem or achieve a goal, not [just] selling a product or service.”—Brian Tracy, author and public speaker
• “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
• “More business is lost due to poor service and poor treatment than [a] poor product. The single greatest way a company can distinguish itself from its competition is by the level of service it offers, and the higher level of service you offer, the more successful you will be. Companies spend [sic] thousands of marketing dollars trying to convince us to buy their products, but if customer contact is not handled just right in a store, at a cell center, or on the web by [a] customer service representative, all that money is wasted.”—Nancy Friedman, customer service keynote speaker
• “Good customer service means that we leave customers better than we found them. Even if we can’t solve the problem or do what they want us to do, we can at least smile, be cheerful, and respond compassionately to each person. If our customers leave with a smile, even when they’re having a hard time, then we’ve done well.”—Nicole Thelin, founder of Low Income Relief

Relational customer service quotes

Remind your team of the importance of building genuine, lasting customer relations that drive loyalty and trust beyond a single transaction.

• “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, senior director of customer experience marketing at Coupa Software
• “I want to be able to use historical customer persona information to customize their experience while doing it at scale across every channel.”—Chris Karp, chief customer officer at Auctane
• “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
• “Happy customers are your biggest advocates and can become your most successful sales team.”—Lisa Masiello, author, advocate, and entrepreneur
• “Memorable customer service can only take place in a human-to-human situation.”—Jeffrey Gitomer, sales trainer, author, and speaker

• “The customer’s perception is your reality.”—Kate Zabriskie, President of Business Training Works, Inc.

• “Make every interaction count, even the small ones. They are all relevant.”—Shep Hyken, author and keynote speaker
• “Right or wrong, the customer is always right.”—Marshall Field, founder of Marshall Field and Company

• “Understanding that every person has their own life, their own hardships, and their own problems really puts things into perspective. We don’t have to solve all their problems. We don’t even have to solve a single problem, honestly. Just listening, being compassionate, and responding kindly is enough to diffuse almost every difficult situation we’ve faced.”—Nicole Thelin, founder of Low Income Relief

• “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

• “Take care of your customers, and your customers will take care of your brand.”—Amit Sarda, business and CRM consultant
• “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
• “Make a customer, not a sale.”—Katherine Barchetti, author and former owner of K. Barchetti Shops
• “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
• “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
• “Your customer does not care how much you know until they know how much you care.”—Damon Richards (paraphrasing Theodore Roosevelt), customer care expert.
• “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
• “All lasting business is built on friendship.”—Alfred A. Montapert, author

Continuous improvement customer service quotes

Use these employee development customer service quotes to highlight how exceptional service is driven by a commitment to learning, adapting, and always seeking ways to meet customer needs.

• “To be great at something, you have to come at it with passion, or not at all.”—Maria Teresa Carmela “Peachy” Corpuz, team lead of FSS revenue operations at Zendesk
• “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
• “Insights on the kind of requests coming from customers can help you develop product features that truly meet customer needs and proactively identify issues before they worsen. That creates a positive impact on retention and customer satisfaction.”—Kevin Barry, VP of global technical services & support at Degreed
• “We’re not afraid of making changes because we know how [our customer service solution] is built and what needs to be done.”—Nir Ben Ari, director of systems and technology for customer support at Vimeo
• “What gets measured gets improved.”—Peter Drucker, management consultant and author
• “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, consultant, and motivational speaker
• “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”—Bill Gates, founder and former CEO of Microsoft
• “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, author and CEO of CX Journey

• “I believe that the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master of that line.”—Andrew Carnegie, businessman and philanthropist
• “Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.”—Mark Twain, author, writer, and essayist

Communication and listening customer service quotes

Whether you’re dealing with angry customers or finding alternatives to the phrase “happy to help,” customer communication and active listening are vital to delivering exceptional CX.

• “To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.”—Francois VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld, author
• “Words of comfort, skillfully administered, are the oldest therapy known to man.”—Louis Nizer, lawyer and author
• “Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong—and that starts with listening.”—Don Peppers, author and CX speaker
• “I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.”—Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist

• “Seek first to understand. Then to be understood.”—Stephen R. Covey, author and former CEO of Covey Leadership Center
• “The ability to identify the customer’s intent is probably one of the best things we’ve seen. I can go into the platform and see, at a glance, exactly what people are contacting us about at this very moment and whether they are happy or sad.”—Lucy Hussey, customer service manager at Motel Rocks

• “The greatest technology in the world hasn’t replaced the ultimate relationship-building tool between a customer and a business: the human touch.”-Shep Hyken, author and keynote speaker

• “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”—George Bernard Shaw, author and political activist
• “The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.”—Tony Robbins, author and coach
• “A lack of communication breeds assumptions of what the other is thinking, which then leads to mistakes.”—Dr. Jim Leininger, physician and businessman

Inspire your teams to deliver exceptional CX

Customer service is an ever-changing industry—from retail’s shifting focus to the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) tools like AI agents, it can be easy to get bogged down by the changes. However, with these quotes about customer service, you can inspire and remind your teams how important customer support is to your company’s success.

But don’t stop with motivation—help your team deliver exceptional service with an AI-powered customer service solution today.