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Whether you do your business in a traditional brick and mortar shop or on the World Wide Web, customer service is the most vital key to success. Not only can customer service excellence tips give a business an advantage, but knowing those tips can be the difference between success or failure in an online company. A small business owner needs the knowledge to take action.

The only successful business marketing plan is one that emphasizes customer satisfaction as top priority. Your business marketing plan must be based on the knowledge that without customers you have no business. Nothing matters like your customers, both established and potential.

One customer service excellence tip is to remember that customers will always interact with other customers. Studies have shown that satisfied customers are happy to share their experiences with two or more people while unhappy and dissatisfied customers have been known to share their experiences with an average of ten other people. Obviously, you want your customers to be happy with the service they have received. Word of mouth may not guarantee business success but a bad reputation can certainly lead to failure.

Happy customers are those who find that all that they needed was provided, and who felt as though they were important to you. The more you personalize the service you give to your customers, the more likely they are to feel as though they have been treated well. One of the tips among customer service excellence tips is avoiding generic responses when confronted with questions and concerns from customers.

A real human being is always perceived as good customer service. Having customer wade through "FAQ" sections or long automated telephone menus only annoys and frustrates them. You know this from personal experience from endless automated "help" lines and do not want to put off customers this way. Call your own numbers and visit your own FAQ area and look at it as a customer would, as this may be revealing.

All comprehensive lists of customer service excellence tips will include dealing with complaints by customers. While some issues may be beyond your control, like back orders from your suppliers or a mistake made by the post office or a delivery service, customers don't want excuses! They will accept apologetic explanations, but what they really want is the situation rectified and they want it done swiftly.

Of all possible customer service excellence tips, the best is simply to treat customers just like you would wish to be treated if you were the customer. This paraphrase of the "Golden Rule" remains the standard for good customer service. Listen carefully to a customer's complaint and then provide a specific solution to the problem. A refund or discount may be a good option. It is also wise to include some sort of comment about ways the company plans to prevent future similar problems.