If you have a retail store that is a clean store, make sure the doors and windows are clean, make sure the store front looks good. Enforce that your employees stay clean and the shelves and floor are clean.

If it's a service company, make sure your service technicians are wearing clean work clothes, their trucks are clean, and salesmen should be well groomed and punctual. Everything about your business should be professional.

The public is more skeptical than they've ever been. So we have to deal with negative media about people who were ripped off by a service contractor. It's hard to blame people for being skeptical. There are a lot of sleazy companies out there who rip people off.

We have to over compensate for these consumer feelings. It's unfair, but that's the way it is. You want to project a professional image and earn peoples respect and trust.

If They Complain, Answer. Whenever you have a complaint come in from a client it means they are asking for help. It's an opportunity to cement a relationship and enhance your customer relations.

The key is to take care of complaints as quickly, efficiently and ethically as possible. Don't leave them unhappy. Remember that an unhappy customer will tell many, many people not to do business with you.

If you have a customer that continually complains and is always wanting to cut prices here, get a little extra value there, give them their money back. Remove them from your database.

In many of the companies I've seen and been involved with seen those companies build databases of people they will not do business with because they are always looking to get something for free.

If you give somebody their money back, there aren't too many bad things they can say about you. If you don't refund their money, they can say just about anything they want about it. Whether true or not If it's a complaint that's not going to be rectified at all. You definitely want to give the money back.

You should think of that money being spent on stopping them from telling others bad things about you as money well spent.

The customers who are normally good customers or never say much one way or the other and something goes wrong, You'll want to correct it quickly, efficiently and ethically as possible.