Derek Sivers Quotes

It's the human approach to customers that I want to bring back.

Memorable customer service can only take place in a human-to-human situation.

I answer every single e-mail that comes in myself.

If there's a problem, we at Wine Library never tell ourselves that once we handle this issue, we'll never have to deal with the person again. We talk to every single person as though we're going to wind up sitting next to that person at his or her mother's house that night for dinner.

If the store were your own business, you'd escort the customer to a product's location in the store and refer to the customer by name.

This was all the inspiration it took: We put 100 percent of ourselves in the lines. We personally take care of everything, from fulfillment to answering the mail.

Why go to a machine when you could go to a human being?

No business can stay in business without customers. How you treat - or mistreat - them determines how long your doors stay open.

Never shoot your customers.

You cannot leave your office until you have answered every phone call from every Congressman or Senator who called you that day….Break your backside to respond fast to every request…and if you have to say no, do it gently.

I think we need to communicate more effectively how we treat you with respect and dignity as a customer.

I like to respect my customers.

Self-checkout is negative because more and more retailers are losing the personal touch. People want to do business where people know their name and communicate with them. With a world full of email and more self-service we will begin to start seeking out the basics from retailers who create emotion. There is not emotion out of self-service and most people buy out of emotion.

The most important adage and the only adage is, the customer comes first, whatever the business, the customer comes first.

Treat your customers like they own you. Because they do.

There's a place in the world for any business that takes care of its customers-after the sale.

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?

There's no great mystery to satisfying your customers. Build them a quality product and treat them with respect. It's that simple.

With businesses, you go to the same places because you like the service, you like the people and they take care of you. They greet you with a smile. That's how people want to be treated, with respect. That's what I tell my employees - customer service is very important.

The best feature of a product should really be the customer service.

Deliver total quality to every customer every day.

Setting customer expectations at a level that is aligned with consistently deliverable levels of customer service requires that your whole staff, from product development to marketing, works in harmony with your brand image.

Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world's worst roommate, like having Janis Joplin with a bad hangover and PMS come to stay with you.

Zappos uses call center technology to track average call time per agent. But the goal isn't to reduce this average - it's more important that we make an emotional connection with the customer, rather than just quickly getting them off the phone.

Treat your employees like customers.