The Sample Size of One: How to Listen to Individual Customers
April 7, 2013Word of mouth marketing starts with proper listening – Interview with Molly Flatt of 1000 Heads
April 16, 2013
Today, I was thinking about writing a piece about customer service and the process of performance improvement. As part of my writing process I was looking through a bunch of materials when I found a store of quotes that I had once made.
As many people that know me will attest, I am a lover and collector of quotes. So much so, that I was given a big book of them by my father for Christmas one year.
Thinking about the piece that I wanted to write and what I wanted to reflect, it struck me that it might be just as useful to share a few of the quotes with you. I may, at some point, write the piece that I was going to. In the meantime, here are the quotes and I’ll leave you to take inspiration from them as I did and see if you can figure out the point I was going to make:
- People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them. – George Bernard Shaw, Playwright
- In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm… in the real world all rests on perseverance. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Author
- Opportunities are not offered. They must be wrested and worked for. And this calls for perseverance..and courage. – Indira Gandhi, Indian prime minister
- Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work. – Stephen King, author
- The one thing that matters is the effort. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery, French pilot, author
- It’s much harder to provide a great customer service than I would have ever realised. It’s much more art than science in some of these other areas and not just about the facts but about how you are conveying them. – David Yu, Chief Operating Officer, Betfair
- You cannot improve one thing by 1000% but you can improve 1000 little things by 1%. – Jan Carlzon
- Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence – only in constant improvement and constant change. – Tom Peters
- Effort, not ability, makes the biggest difference in achievement. – Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States
- The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. – Anna Quindlen
Any ideas?
Photo Credit: idlphoto via Compfight cc
6 Comments
Hello Adrian
Thank you for sharing these quotes. Here is a quote that I came across that speaks to me. Why? Because, what I see in business is a lack of will disguised as lack of know-how, lack of insight, lack of resources….. Here is the quote:
A context is literally created by creating it. You just need to recognize that you have the power of context, and then you simply need to be willing to be responsible for creating it yourself, without reason, without the props of evidence – to simply say ‘this shall be. I have the power of my word in my own universe. I have the power to determine the context of my own life. I give meaning to my life. The meaning doesn’t come from outside.’ -Werner Erhard
All the best
maz
Hi Maz,
Thanks for sharing that quote. It is both powerful and compelling.
Adrian
Adrian – nice quotes and I like the customer service context. One of my favourites is by George Bernard Shaw: ‘the reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.’
Hi Sean,
Thanks for that. I’ve heard that one before and I like it. We should try to be a lot more unreasonable (but in a nice way) more often. Don’t you think?
Adrian
Adrian,
An eclectic yet excellent collection of quotes that speak to me in a variety of ways, the most obvious of which is effort… continuous improvement, hard work, moving forward, making a difference, etc.
Love it. Thanks.
Annette 🙂
My pleasure, Annette.
They were chosen and designed to make me think. So, I am glad that you got value out of them too.
All the best,
Adrian