I’m sitting in the Singapore Changi Airport waiting to board my flight to Melbourne I’m always surprised how friendly people are here, everyone smiles all the time, it seems that way anyway. This attitude of the local people has a profound effect on everyones stress levels.

Having ben here before and after spending the last 24 hours here I can say there are no signs here, reminding the customer not to abuse the staff. Why is that?

I think it is fair to say that the government tries to influence all people living in Singapore in many aspects of daily life, no chewing gum, no littering and so on. They also started the “always smile” trend in Singapore, with profound results. You feel safe her, it is clean and you feel welcome. People in hotels, restaurants and other places go out of their way to give you a good customer experience.

There is no talk about it, it is just being done in a friendly way. I’m sure people here are not any more happy or less troubled then elsewhere, but they have learned that being friendly helps you to get things done in a more positive way, with less stress for themselves, their customers and it will not create barriers to future business.

There is something to be learned here - it’s called good customer care - I’m convinced this is they way to deal with customers and not to put up signs. — ST.

Have you ever noticed these little or big signs in businesses and offices reading something like:

Our staff has the right to work in an abuse free environment.

Have you ever noticed that in those establishments the customer service is especially bad and rude? The way bigger business or civil servants deal with customers is to provide an often appalling customer service and when you complain, you are told you are being abusive. This has happened to me with “the worlds favorite airline”, when talking to utility companies and other organisations during the years.

While it is often the customer who gets abused, the abusers just claim to be the abused and avoid the real issues this way. Often management of these organisations hide behind layers of employees who can not solve the problems, which are often systemic in those businesses. Another sign of bad customer service are over loaded call centers, continuos broken promises and no call backs.

This is probably the biggest advantage a small business could have, provide a first class customer service and charge for it. It is true that we live in times when price is king, but I believe the tide is slowly turning towards organisations who offer a good and friendly service. Differentiating yourself with your customer service is one of the best ways to build a good business.

If you are looking for business ideas and get annoyed about customer service issues in your daily live thing about how you could do this better and you probably found a way to earn a good living. — ST.

Sometimes it is a good idea to go back to basics if you want to evaluate what you are doing or achieving in you small business. Much time in a business is spend thinking about marketing, PR, sales and customer care issues, how to make them more effective for our customers and easier to use. But have you asked yourself lately why you need to worry about that?

In short, there are three motivations why you should be doing all of this:

• Acquisition of new customers;
• Re-activation of existing but dormant customers;
• Retention of existing and active customers.

If you remind yourself of these three reasons when you thing about any activity in your company. Even a change in your payment terms should be considered with these three reasons in mind. How will it effect my customer acquisition, will it help to get some old customers to order new product or service from me, is it likely to drive some existing customers away?

Customer focus may very well be the most important aspect to your success with your home business or your freelance work. Creating barriers is something you should only do towards your competition, never towards your customers or prospects.

How is what you do today going to help you with these three goals? — ST.

Recently I ordered services and was very happy to have found a supplier. We had agreed prices, scope and timescale of the project. Later I received the contract by email and started reading it. Everything seemed to be as agreed, until I got to the payment terms. There I found an unusual insertion:

We will charge 2% extra for PayPal payments.

Te motivation is quiet understandable, Paypal will charge you 2% to process your inward payment. But should you really charge your client extra for this? I would think not, since this is a great business turn-off. More business is lost through little charges here and there, it generates the feeling in the buyers mind of hidden charges. While at the same time the buyer will wonder why he/she should pay for the suppliers bank charges.

I was given options to send a cheque or pay by bank-transfer. This makes the whole situation even worse, since you would be inclined to send a cheque, which would take weeks to clear through the banking system - this was a international transaction. You would certainly not use the bank transfer option since it would cost even more. The whole problem was no made easier by demanding stage-payments.

It seems to me the solution here is to increase your prices by 2% and don’t talk about it, or enquire before hand which payment method should be used. One needs to remember that getting payed is of the utmost importance for any small business, so PayPal seems a good way to go in this instance.

Look at your payment terms and do not create unnecessary business barriers. — ST.

A few days ago I wrote a post about listening to your customers before you sell your product or service. You may be able to make someone buy your product/service once, but for your customers to come back for more you need to do more.

No matter how good your are at selling, no matter how smooth, slick and high-pressure you are, the fact remains you can’t make someone buy. The only way is to solve peoples problems. Which problem does your product and/or service solve?

• Easy-to-run online accounting software;
• do the job in half the time;
• lose weight while you sleep;
• easy-to-prepare gourmet meals;
• cut overheads.

You get the picture - the best way to sell is to solve. This will tell you that bombarding clients with facts about megabytes, speed, number of cylinders and so on, is not what is needed. Find out what problem your customer has, then talk about the benefits and solutions your product/service offers for the problem - that will get you a sale.

If solving is selling, what are your solutions? Let me know. ST.

While we are talking about customer service and relations, differentiating yourself from your competition, here is an easy one:

TURN UP ON TIME! GUARANTEED!

The fact of the matter is, that most of us have been ad home waiting for the service man/woman to turn up, only to be disappointed in one way or another. They did not come at all, they did not call to let you know or they came far too late. The reality is often customers will sit at home, take a day holiday leave to have this work done. If then something goes wrong with the appointment customers - and so would we - get very upset, rightly so.

So why not give a written guarantee that you will be on time, no that would be an differentiator that will get you work. Believe it or not, time is not only money to you, but to your clients too.

You guarantee to be on time - I’ll guarantee you’ll get more work! ST.