In Delhi, where I grew up, commerce is brusque. You don't ask each other how your day has been. You might not even smile. I'm not saying this is ideal - it's how it is. You're tied together by a transaction. The customer doesn't tremble before complaining about how cold his food is.

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

Ever since the Industrial Revolution, investments in science and technology have proved to be reliable engines of economic growth. If homegrown interest in those fields is not regenerated soon, the comfortable lifestyle to which Americans have become accustomed will draw to a rapid close.

It's sad that we have become so accustomed to bad service that we're shocked when we get good service.

We want, as the Saudi people, to enjoy the coming days and concentrate on developing our society and developing ourselves as individuals and families while retaining our religion and customs.

Too often, customary practices and discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity, race, religion, social status, or class are the root sources of pervasive inequality in many countries.

Anyone working for a big company might be skeptical that a large business, or even a strictly online business, can form the same kind of friendly, loyal relationship with customers as a local retailer. I'm saying it's already been done because I lived it.

Great companies that build an enduring brand have an emotional relationship with customers that has no barrier. And that emotional relationship is on the most important characteristic, which is trust.

We have a relationship with our customer, and that relationship translates into sales.

It is so much easier to be nice, to be respectful, to put yourself in your customers' shoes and try to understand how you might help them before they ask for help, than it is to try to mend a broken customer relationship.

Take information technology. We have winners implementing CRM (customer relationship management systems) and losers implementing CRM. What mattered in technology is that the technology actually drives either cost reduction or superior strategy execution.

Everyone talks about building a relationship with your customer. I think you build one with your employees first.

Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have, and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands.

The toughest thing about the power of trust is that it's very difficult to build and very easy to destroy. The essence of trust building is to emphasize the similarities between you and the customer.

Leaders must exemplify integrity and earn the trust of their teams through their everyday actions. When you do this, you set high standards for everyone at your company. And when you do so with positive energy and enthusiasm for shared goals and purpose, you can deeply connect with your team and customers.

My pet hate, with customers, is those that think it's all about wallets.

People imagine that Netflix sprang fully formed into a global streaming giant, but Netflix might have been personalised sporting goods - or customised shampoo - or even pet food, since these were all ideas that I pitched Reed Hastings in those first months.

We Anglophones have reasons for adopting strange diets. Increasingly, we live alone. We have an unprecedented choice of foods, and we're not sure what's in them or whether they're good for us. And we expect to customize practically everything: parenting, news, medicines, even our own faces.

America's parenting customs can shock foreigners.

Custom is second nature.

Consistency is found in that work whose whole and detail are suitable to the occasion. It arises from circumstance, custom, and nature.

In the beginning I just wanted to survive. For the first three years, we made zero revenue. I remember many times when I was trying to pay up, the restaurant owner would say, 'Your bill was paid.' And there would be a note saying, 'Mr. Ma, I'm your customer on the Alibaba platform. I made a lot of money, and I know you don't, so I paid the bill.'

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.

Because of my medical and ideological training, I am accustomed to saying that life is adaptation and symbiosis.