You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built they'll want something new.

Vivendi will be one of the very few top communications groups of the Internet age. We will have customers all over the globe providing services through all kinds of technology.

More than 20 years on sustained competition informed customers and the rapid growth of new technology provide the necessary environment for substantial deregulation.

I'm not a tech guy. I'm looking at the technology with the eyes of my customers normal people's eyes.

There is no point in launching technology before customers are ready to use it.

Intel's still our main partner. We have not announced anything with AMD and don't have anything planned but we're constantly being aware to make sure our customers get the best technology.

In my column series 'The Main Thing ' I often talk about how Internet technology can improve the way people communicate - both within a business and between a business and its customers and partners.

Use state-of-the-heart technology online and offline to turn listeners into viral advocates and customers into raving fans.

What new technology does is create new opportunities to do a job that customers want done.

Through their own actions customers can hold companies responsible to higher standards of social responsibility. Through collective action they can leverage their dollars to combat the force of those investors who myopically pursue profits at the expense of the rest of society.

Favored Nations is a long-term commitment. Our hope is that those who are passionate about real musicianship will want to hear and own most of our albums. We will set out to attain the same direct relationship with our customers that we have with our artists.

Corporations invest in sophisticated CRM or Customer Relationship Management programs to effectively oversee their relationship with their customers at every point during the buying process.

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.

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.

When a positive exchange between a brand and customers becomes quantifiable metrics it encourages brand to provide better service customer service to do a better job and consumers to actively show their gratitude.

I guess probably in my time in politics it continued to be affirmed to me that the African-American community despite being subscription television's most valuable customers they are very underserved by cable and satellite television programming options.

We have a lot of existing customers which are also considering Linux desktop migrations and rolling out some of these programs so we're learning from them.

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

I do believe states' rights was a sound doctrine that got hijacked by some unsavory customers for a while - like 150 years or so. I'm professionally obliged to believe that knowledge is better than ignorance but some kinds of forgetting are OK with me.

A lot of companies have chosen to downsize and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers they would continue to open their wallets.

Customers don't know what they want. There's plenty of good psychology research that shows that people are not able to accurately predict how they would behave in the future. So asking them 'Would you buy my product if it had these three features?' or 'How would you react if we changed our product this way?' is a waste of time. They don't know.

In fact I believe the first companies that make an effort to develop an authentic transparent and meaningful social contract with their fans and customers will turn out to be the ones that are the most successful in the future. While brands that refuse to make the effort will lose stature and customer loyalty.

Customers want good value but they care more than ever how food and clothing products are made.

Did you ever see the customers in health - food stores? They are pale skinny people who look half - dead. In a steak house you see robust ruddy people. They're dying of course but they look terrific.