As technology marches on, you hear about all sorts of marketing: telemarketing, internet marketing, and so on. What you don't see businesses focused on anymore is the customer. Instead of asking for a name, most companies ask for your "customer ID number". Instead of saying "good morning, and thank you", you hear, "which department can I transfer you to". The customer has truly become lost in the shuffle of electronics and new age gadgets.

Customer service is all about focusing on the customer and on their needs. In the old days, back when we still traveled around by horse and buggy, a person could go into a store and could barter with a friendly clerk who knew their name, their occupation, how many children they had and if they'd had a good winter or not. Now, though, consumers are lucky if they find a pharmacy that prescribes the right medicine to the right person.

Good customer service focuses on building long term relationships with clients by supplying an ever-evolving line of products and excellent service. Businesses that believe in customer service are not focused on the profit from one sale, but rather making sure that the customer is happy with their purchase, so that they will think good thoughts about the company the next time they need a specific product. Customers want to feel appreciated and listened to. Great service is all about listening and caring about the customers, rather than planning their next ad campaign or sales deal.

Say that a consumer purchases a bed frame from a company. During that transaction, the salesman was rude and didn't listen to the consumer. When the consumer called a few days later to discuss a problem he had, he was hung up on. Now imagine this same customer purchasing the bed frame from a company that focuses on customer service. The consumer is listened to, and is helped. When he leaves, he feels as though the salesman really did care about him. The next time this consumer needs a piece of furniture, who do you think he is going to look to?

Good customer service can take take a good company and make it great! Assure your customers that you will be there for them and not only will you win repeat business, but unsolicited referrals. Some companies that have outsourced their customer service to the lowest bidder have realized this when their repeat business started to decline. Naturally, they ended up pulling this back in-house.

You can avoid this blunder by putting "great customer service" high on your mission statement. When you make you customer number one, your payoff will outshine any marketing campaign.

Almost every business can work with customer service, if they want to. The problem is that too many times, companies look to the future instead of to the present.