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If you can improve your customer service, you’ll increase client retention and create a more positive image for your brand. Simply put, excellent customer service is necessary for growing a successful business. And it’s not just enough to say “We care about our customers”…you need to actually show it.

Here are several simple things you can do to transform your customer service from average to extraordinary.

• Train your staff to be the best—Michael Jordan didn’t become the greatest basketball player of all time just by showing up for the games. He trained constantly so that he could improve his skills and be better than everyone else. The same concept applies to your customer service team. You can’t rely on them to be great just by throwing them on the phones every day. You need to spend time training them, helping them learn specific strategies they can use to better help customers and to keep clients happy.
• Reward great employees—If your employees aren’t happy with their jobs, how can you expect them to have that bright, friendly attitude they need to help keep customers happy? Your employees are your most valuable asset, so you need to make sure they’re happy. You can do this by rewarding employees who do great jobs. This shows them you appreciate their work, and it gives them an incentive to provide excellent customer service.
• Get to know your customers on a deeper level—Don’t just treat your customers like a number. You need to build relationships with your customers. Get to know who they are, what their likes and dislikes are, what their expectations are, and other important things about them. The more information you have, the more able you’ll be to satisfy them and target them in your marketing efforts.
• Show your customers how much you appreciate their business—I don’t know about you, but I’m much likelier to do business at a company that actually shows me how much they appreciate my business. From extending a simple thank you when a customer makes a purchase to offering exclusive discounts and freebies to loyal customers, there are several things you can do to show your appreciation to customers.
• Be willing to deviate from company policy—You can never forget the emotional and personal side of customer service. Don’t treat your company policy like it’s the law of the land. Sure, it’s an important guideline, but you need to be willing to bend the rules to keep customers happy. This will help you understand the customer’s pain better, and it will allow you to create a response that keeps them satisfied.

What are some other things companies can do to improve their customer service? Share your best tips by leaving a comment.

Although sites like Hulu and YouTube are allowing visitors to vote for their favorite 2010 Super Bowl commercial, BrandBowl 2010 decided to speed up the process of determining the most popular SuperBowl 44 commercials by monitoring and analyzing the large amount of data available on Twitter.

Since the BrandBowl 2010 website ranked the Top 10 Super Bowl ad brands but didn’t embed the brand’s commercials on their site, I thought everyone would enjoy having an ordered list that made it simple to watch any of the twenty-one commercials aired by the Top 10 Super Bowl Brands of 2010:

1. Doritos -- Crash the Super Bowl Underdog, Snack Attack Samurai, Casket, House Rules

2. Google -- Parisian Love

3. Focus on Family -- Pam and Tim Tebow

4. Snickers -- Game

5. Budweiser -- Ice Bottle, Clydesdale Fence, Bridge

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Here are a few statistics I want you to consider:

• It costs 5 times as much to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one
• Almost 70% of customers stop doing business if they receive poor service
• A happy customer will tell 5 people (even more with social media)

I could go on and on with these statistics, but the point is this: Keeping your customers happy is crucial to the health of your business. Happy customers are loyal customers. Loyal customers also often generate referral business, helping you grow your customer base at a low cost.

So, what can you do to keep your customers happy? Here are 7 tips to get you started.

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Even the best companies occasionally receive complaints from customers. It’s just an inevitable part of running a business. And while your first instinct might be the roll your eyes or to argue with the customer, you have to remember the money you could be losing if you don’t solve the customer’s problem. Don’t forget, today’s angry customer can tell thousands of people about their bad experience through blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, forums, consumer review websites, and more. In short, the customer is in the driver’s seat, and it’s your job to make sure they don’t run your @$$ over.
So, what should you do when a customer complains?
• Listen to their complaint—The biggest you can make is to try to argue with the angry customer. Look, it’s not about who’s right and who’s wrong, and it’s not about winning an argument. Because even if you win the argument, you still lose the customer. That’s why you need to shut your mouth and just listen to the customer’s complaint. Try to put yourself in their shoes so you can understand where they’re coming from.

• Ask what they’d like for you to do—Rather than immediately going to the “Our company policy is to…” card, just ask the customer what they’d like for you to do to rectify the situation. Odds are, they have a solution in mind (e.g. full refund, gift certificate, etc.), and asking them puts the decision in their hands. As a result, they’re likelier to be satisfied with the final outcome because they helped to decide it.

• Don’t promise anything you can’t deliver—While you want to do everything in your power to keep the customer happy, don’t make the deadly mistake of making a promise you can’t deliver on. Before you commit to anything, you better be darn sure you can do it. Otherwise, the problem will worsen when you break your promise, and at that point, you might as well kiss the customer goodbye.

• Make sure it doesn’t happen again—Any time you deal with a customer complaint, you need to learn something form the situation. Even if it wasn’t something that was technically your fault, you have to find a way to avoid having the same situation pop up again in the future.

Dealing with customer complaints isn’t the most pleasant thing in the world, but it’s something you have to learn to master. Share your tips for dealing with angry customers in the replies.

When you create an identity as a blogger, you separate your blog from all others in your niche. You also give your readers something to connect to, creating important relationships that keep people coming back time and time again. But without a personality, well, your blog will just blend in to all the millions of other blogs, limiting how far your blogging efforts will take you.
So, how do you go about creating an identity as a blogger? Here are some tips to get you started.
1. Offer something new—The first thing you need to do is figure out what you do differently and better than all the other bloggers in your niche. Until you can identify this key difference, no one will have a reason to read your blog. Maybe you know more about a particular sub-niche than other bloggers. Or maybe you just have a different way of looking at things. Find something that clearly makes you stand apart from your competition, and build your blogging identity around that.

2. Turn it up to 11—Every blogger has their own unique traits, thoughts, and style of writing. The key is to identify your unique traits and then to turn them up as loud as possible. If you’re the sarcastic misanthrope, amplify that trait in all of your posts. Similarly, if you’re the happy-go-lucky, half-glass-full blogger, play that up in your writing. The key is to amplify your personality so that it’s immediately obvious who you are.

3. Stay consistent—I’ve noticed that some bloggers have a disconnect between how they write their posts and how they respond to their comments. This hinders your efforts to create an identity as a blogger because you’re always coming across differently. Whatever personality traits you decide to play up, use them everywhere, including your blog, the comments section, your Twitter profile, etc.

4. Be yourself—At the end of the day, creating a blog identity is all about being yourself. As cheesy as it sounds, we’re all different. Each of us looks at the same things differently, and we all have unique characteristics. So, don’t try to sound like all the other blogs in your niche. You’ll only end up coming across as a phony and generic. Instead, focus on connecting with readers by being yourself. This will help you build those important relationships that create lifelong readers.

Do you think it’s important to have an identity as a blogger? Share your thoughts in the replies.