As a business owner, and as a discerning consumer myself

As a business owner, and as a discerning consumer myself, I've seen my fair share of do's and don'ts in the realm of customer service, and I know what makes for a bad, average, above average, and finally stellar customer experience. It's amazing what you start to notice after you have been a small business owner yourself for a few years, when you are on the receiving end of a customer service experience.

You start to really notice the little nuances that you may not have noticed or even cared about before you went into business for yourself. It's not like I didn't know what bad and good customer service was before, it's just that I've become more intuned to it now since it is the cornerstone of my bread butter as well.

When I have a really good or a really bad experience as a client, I tend to mull it over and figure out why it bothered me, and what the business owner or representative of the serving business could have done better, or how they could have handled it differently to make my experience better.

This line of thinking has led to what I call, in my world as a customer and a business owner, the foundation of good customer service. If you can grasp these as a business owner, and pass them on to anyone who works for you or ingrain them in your corporate culture, well, you only have one way to go, and that's up.

The first rule is to always maintain professionalism. This may seem like common sense to you or the next reader, but what seems like common sense doesn't always translate into the right thing being done out there when clients are involved.