Tuesday marked a phenomenal day for Salesforce as CEO, Marc Benioff and his crew announced the future of cloud computing with Salesforce1. However, as bright as the spotlight was on this incredible new product, nobody could have forgotten Marc Benioff's discussion with Yahoo! CEO, Marissa Mayer.

Prior to Yahoo! Marissa Mayer was Vice President of Local, Maps, and Location Services at Google. She burst into the industry in July of 2012 as she was named CEO of Yahoo! with the unbending determination to revamp the struggling company.

Throughout the discussion, Mayer discussed her passion of overseeing the design and experience of Yahoo!'s products and organization. Although throughout the conversation I couldn't help but notice several crucial lessons she taught the audience about what it means to truly serve the customer.

1. Believe in the Value of the Customer's Voice

"It's not all about making the product pretty and functioning. It's about finding what the customer needs and creating something where they will be successful."

Since taking over as CEO at Yahoo last year, Mayer has not kept her ears shut when listening to the customer - most notably on Twitter. In the past few months, she has been known to share news about the company and respond to customer service complaints.

However it was not her proactive efforts on Twitter that allowed me to determine that she truly believed in the voice of the customer. It was when she discussed her early works at Yahoo! when she would travel all over the world with product managers to learn about the customer and see how she could create a product that would be used by the entire world. In the words of Mayer, "creating a product that can be used by the entire world is a daunting task." I doubt she could have ever have begun to build a universal product remotely up-to-par without weighing in on the voice of the customer.

2. Serve the Customer By Going Mobile

"We don't think of ourselves as design first, we think of ourselves as mobile first."

Ever since arriving on the scene as the head of Yahoo!, Mayer has always believed that mobile was the "wave" of the future and that it was critical to the survival of the company to catch it. With over 400 million mobile users around the world, there is no doubt that her efforts have paid off in several dividends.

Although people may scrutinize that moving to mobile was purely a strategic maneuver to catch up with the masses, I truly believe this was a decision made to serve the customer. In fact, I believe anybody that builds a product or provides a service with an optimization for mobile is serving the customer. It has been  predicted that by 2014, the number of mobile devices will exceed the human population. Mobile is the next wave of the future and all forms of business should consider how they can create a personalized, mobile experience for the customer.

3. Be a User of Your Product to Truly Serve the Customer

"It's all about the user. You have to be a user of the product to really be able to serve the customer."

One can never truly understand the needs of the customer or sympathize with the problems they may have unless they are a true user of their product. One of my favorite lines from Mayer was, "It's not about making the product pretty and functioning. It's about finding what the customer needs and creating something where they will be successful." In order to understand what the customer needs and grasp how they can be successful, you need to be a user and have a true passion for your product. By doing so, you will know the customer in a whole new way - just as Mayer has in her role as CEO.

Learn more about great customer service with this free ebook below.