Eric Ries Quotes

Customers can't always tell you what they want, but they can always tell you what's wrong.

Products are sold because they solve a problem or fill a need. Understanding problems and needs involves understanding customers and what makes them tick.

Always listen to your customers.

To succeed in business you need to be original, but you also need to understand what your customers want.

Foremost is the principle that the purpose of consumer research is to understand the customer's needs and wishes, and thus design product and service that will provide better living for him in the future. A second principle is that no one can guess the future loss of business from a dissatisfied customer.

The point is... you'd better figure out what your Customers - the Customers you want - value. Because that's what they'll buy. Anything else is a waste of their money, and they'll figure that out in a hurry.

It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.

We need to listen to consumers' needs.

Put your consumers in focus, and listen to what they're actually saying, not what they tell you.

It's so important to experience what your customers are experiencing and listen to their suggestions.

Most of all, I discovered that in order to succeed with a product you must truly get to know your customers and build something for them.

Forget 'branding' and 'positioning.' Once you understand customer behavior, everything else falls into place.

What the customer demands is last year's model, cheaper. To find out what the customer needs you have to understand what the customer is doing as well as he understands it. Then you build what he needs and you educate him to the fact that he needs it.

Using science to tell us what customers are looking for is second nature for us here.

The fact that used cars is our largest category is a good example. We would not have sat in a conference room and said, "Hey, how about used cars?" So what can be learned that is extensible to other companies is to ask what are your customers doing with your products that maybe you didn't anticipate that they would do? How do you think of your customers as your research and development lab, as opposed to having an R&D lab at headquarters?

I'm not shy about asking the customer, because I want to talk about who she is and what she wants from me.

What people in business think they know about the customer and market is likely to be more wrong than right...the customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him.

I think if you are writing something that you are trying to design for someone else to like that is not necessarily you're demographic, it is a much harder road.

I'm obsessed with the customer. I am the customer. I really don't think you can go wrong if you don't take your eye off of that. Serving the customer. How does she feel? I feel like the fashion industry has cared a lot about how we look but not about how we feel.

I feel I'm able to serve my customer by knowing what she or he wants. One of the ways I'm able to do this is through my website, and email: people give me great ideas, tell me what they want, what they don't want. It's really instrumental, and helps me stay in touch with people.

It had always made sense to me to build a business based on what people really wanted, rather than guess what we thought they might want.

We've found that customers are very open. They'll tell you what's going on, what's working and what's not. They're looking for help.

You'll learn more in a day talking to customers than a week of brainstorming, a month of watching competitors, or a year of market research.

The closer you get to your ultimate customer, the more you learn about your business.

You can't make anything authentic by asking people what they want because they don't know what they want. That's what they're looking at you for.