The customer is always right. However, a particular customer may not be right for you. There's a lot of stress and hard work in being your own boss. By eliminating as much of that stress, you make your business better. By eliminating the few troublemakers who take up most of your time dealing with customer service issues, you do everyone a favor!

This doesn't mean you have the right to be wrong or rude. You need to be polite, patient, refund their money and never accept another cent from them, ever again. It may seem like bad business to turn away more money. The fact of the matter is that aggravation is one of the most costly drains on a business. It causes chronic health problems, poor customer service to your good customers and unnecessary stress.

There's a famous ratio called the 80/20 rule, or Pareto's Principle. It states that 80% of your income will come from 20% of your customers. In the same fashion, 80% of your stress will come from 20% of your customers. In this case, that ratio may be more like 95% of the stress comes from 5% of your customers. Be willing to let them go and replace them with low-maintenance, nice customers.

In the same fashion, do your best to attract and keep the good ones. Put most of your customer service effort into retention of the ones that pay on time, are polite and respectful and handle your mistakes and errors with patience and kindness. The change in attitude and lowering of stress will improve your work environment.

You can take this improvement to the next level by thinking of ways to involve your customers in your business. By sincerely trying to find ways to make your business more useful, attentive and sensitive to the needs of the good people who buy from you, you create a connection with your customers that will be hard to break.

Keep in mind, your competition will be out there, trying to steal or seduce as much of your market share as they can. Your best defense against price cutting, bonuses, coupons, discounts and all the other inducements they may offer is customer loyalty based on something higher - love and respect.

This may sound extreme, but it's really just the Golden Rule, applied to business. If a person behaves repulsively, repel them. If they behave wonderfully, wow them! This is just good business sense and practical business practice. You will find that your business's "brand" will be measured by how well you treat people.

Wasting time and energy on negative influences is bad for business. Eliminate as many of them as possible. Pour as much energy and time into cultivating your good customers as possible. The result of this kind of working rule may seem intangible, but it will definitely create a positive influence on your future growth and stability.

In like fashion, be willing to take a small loss in favor of preserving customer retention. Quibbling over a few dollars for return postage or extra fees to solve a problem is another bad business practice. Many marketers are beginning to offer what is called a "lose/win" guarantee.

They not only give 100% refunds, they throw in a bit extra to show that they really stand behind their product or service. In reality, just getting your money back doesn't reimburse you for the time and effort you wasted buying a product you have to return. A lose/win guarantee respects that fact and acknowledges it in the best way - being willing to take a loss, just like the customer did!