More than ever social media demands transparency on the part of companies, but even more so it demands that people who work at companies show more awareness of the consequences of their actions. All three examples mentioned above are passive aggressive swipes at people. This doesn’t excuse what has happened. If anything, it highlights the reality that companies need to simultaneously empower employees and at the same time inform them of the consequences of their actions.

Customers will use social media to raise awareness and accountability on the part of companies. Customers know that if nothing else, companies will rush to save face, because they all know that if the customer stops shopping, the business loses more than its face.

Employees need to consider whether its really worth it to lash out at customers. Why are they really taking those actions out on customers? Is the customer the reason they are acting out that way? What is it the employee really wants?

The employer needs to listen to those questions and not dismiss them casually. Such incidents never occur in a vacuum, and while the employer can fire employees who have taken such actions, it’s only addressing the symptoms of the issue, instead of the underlying problems.

One of the suggestions I make to businesses is that they should make a point to connect with other businesses that they already interact with, and they should also follow or connect with existing clients on social media and make a point to comment on their news. You can build a virtual community fairly quickly and in the process show your clients that you are interested in them and their needs.

Businesses also need to make a point to comment on any replies left on their pages. It also helps if the business displays a social side. Pictures of the office or of a business event can help people get to know the business. Pictures with clients can also help people understand how the business interacts with those clients.

A community is created when people feel like they will be heard by the business and some action will be taken as a result of what is heard. When people know they have a relationship where they are valued, they will share that with people they know and this is how a business will get more fans. When that occurs, the business will be able to start to get in front of people who haven’t been clients and build a relationship which eventually creates business growth and ideally client satisfaction. This is what businesses forget about social media. It’s a social medium and people want relationships. If a business remembers that they should have no problem growing their business as a result.

I remember the first time I realized I had to fire a client. I was terrified, because I realized I was giving away business I’d worked hard to acquire. In fact, I worked too hard to acquire it, and had given her several free sessions as well as a reduction on price. I was stressed out when I worked with her because she wanted instant results and didn’t seem interested in hearing out my explanations on how to make social media work for her business. Her constant complaints told me that we weren’t a good fit. So I fired her. I did it nicely, but I did it and afterwards, I felt so much better. I felt such a profound release of stress that I knew I’d done the right thing.

Still firing a client is never easy. You want to have a good working relationship with your clients and you hope that’ll they refer you to other people and businesses they know that could use your services. In most cases, this will occur, but every so often you get the client who needs your services, but is a bad fit personality wise, or has high expectations, but is a micro-manager (I’ve dealt with both types). And typically both types of clients will haggle over price as well, because they want to get as much out of you as possible, while paying as little as they can.

I identify bad clients by the price haggling, the unrealistic expectations, and micro-management. If I see that behavior in a client when it comes to the work I do for the person, I will fire that client. While the short term loss of money is never fun, the long term gain of no stress or hassles is worth the monetary loss.

When firing a client, always have someone you can refer him/her to. That person might be a better fit. Be honest, but not so brutally honest that you burn bridges with the client, if you can help it. However, if you do burn a bridge, I recommend not letting it bother you too much. You can’t please everyone, and its more important to maintain your boundaries than give into a toxic client.

In order to give your best to your client you do need to work with a person or business that can appreciate what you offer. They have a right to hold you to deadlines and to express expectations of what they want achieved, but they also need to respect you and be willing to actually listen to what you have to offer. If they can’t do that, then its definitely better to part ways so you can focus on working with clients who are ideal for your business and can benefit from your services.

The reason I think companies treat social media as a low priority, is that even now they still don’t “get” social media and how it applies to their business. They don’t recognize that social media is more than just having a Facebook page that you rarely visit. It’s part of how you market your business, part of how you network, and part of how you provide customer service. In short social media is a social interaction with people.

More than ever people have expectations that companies will be on social media. Yet companies that refuse to engage people are confirming that they don’t care about their customers, or rather they are allowing that perception of not caring to proliferate because of their lack of engagement.

While social media isn’t the only medium that businesses can engage customers, it is becoming a more and more popular medium that businesses need to keep track of. If people are having conversations about the business and the business isn’t there to chime in and represent its own interests, then the business is allowing those people to shape the conversation about its brand and culture. Needless to say that isn’t an ideal situation for the business.

A business needs to recognize that while social media is a public venue, its also a space where the business can represent it. The business can share information about services and products, but also about employees, funny situations, life, etc. In other words the business can represent the human aspects of it. People find it much easier to relate to the business if they know that actual people will address their concerns.

So if your business isn’t on social media or isn’t actively engaging people on social media, ask why it isn’t and then start developing a plan of action that will allow you to leverage this medium to your benefit, while helping you develop better relationships with clients.

Talk about exploitation! At the least the 24 hour pass should apply to any hotspot within this network, but instead they require you to pay for any additional access. It’s an example where a company is more concerned with making money at the expense of its customers, than actually taking care of those customers properly. I actually would have paid the $6.95 for a 24 hour pass, but because they limited it to a specific location, it seemed like a rip off designed to make money because they are counting on people needing to connect to the internet for work or other reasons. When you exploit the pain or problem that people have to make a profit, you are not solving their problem (even if it seems like you are). Instead you are using their problem to your advantage, in order to benefit yourself.

A good business balances the need to make money with consideration of the customer. The business does need to make money, but it should also value the relationship it creates with clients, in the transactional process. In the case of Boingo, that balance doesn’t seem to be there for the customer who might only need occasional services from them, but nonetheless could be a loyal customer, if they didn’t feel they were being ripped off. I’m that occasional customer, and what their pricing shows me is that they want to make money at my expense, instead of actually taking care of me. That doesn’t provide me a lot of confidence about their services. If anything, it just makes me not want to use airport wifi that Boingo provides, because I know they are just trying to profit from me, instead of help me. I can also get around their cost restrictions, by using my mobile phone. Not as ideal as I’d like, but it’s another way to access online, and I’m already paying for it, with my phone fees.

And when I check in, I’ll share some observations with them about what I’ve noticed, and I’ll also tell them that if they have questions or concerns they can contact me. And I keep following up every so often, to check in on and make sure they know I’m there to help them, if they need it. I think of this as proactive customer service. I want to make sure they know I’m there for them, and I also want to make sure if there is a problem we can head it off before it becomes a full blown situation.

Contacting your clients before a problem occurs shows that you are thinking of them, that you are in tune with their business, their needs, their success. It shows that you want to know what is going on with them, and that you are committed to a relationship that goes outside of just solving a problem or fulfilling a need for them.

I say that last part, because when I check in with my clients, I want to know what’s happening with them in general. One reason is so I can know who they are looking for as an ideal client. Another reason is so I can help them solve problems, if they need a referral to someone else I know. But the main reason is I want to know because I care about them and their success. I want to know what’s working and isn’t working for them. I want to celebrate their successes with them. I want, in short, to have a relationship that goes beyond the immediate moment of providing a service or product to them and extends to a relationship of trust and friendship.

And that is what contacting clients proactively is about. I want them to feel empowered, and I want them to know I care and that I am a resource for them, as well as someone who is invested in their success, both personally and professionally. I think that’s what makes a business successful…when it’s more than just trying to reach an expected quota or bottom line.

Contacting your clients before they need you sets up a relationship of trust, so that when they need you, they think of you, instead of someone else…and so they become as invested in your success as you are in their success.

It’s important to reward new clients and provide them incentives so they can stay on and become regular clients. You should also make it a point to continue to find ways to say thank you to existing clients. You don’t want them to feel left out, because the reality is that your clients are people who’ve chosen to invest in what you offer. I think it’s always important to return that investment as much as possible.

You want new clients to become long term clients and I think recognizing them in some form or manner goes a long way toward ensuring that this occurs. One of my clients for example posts a welcome message on their facebook page, to a new client, as well as posting a link to the new client’s website. They’ll even sometimes post events about clients, and the reason is because they recognize that its important to show new clients that they value them and want to keep them.

Clients want to be acknowledged as people first and foremost. To do that, its important to recognize what will make them feel important to you. Something I did recently was attend a client’s 20th anniversary for opening their business. I did this because I recognized what a milestone that is and I wanted to show respect to my client and also let them know that I support them. I also enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about them and what they do. And by making that effort to show interest in them, I also confirmed why they came to me for my services. That’s very important, because your clients will always be aware of how you treat them.

How I handle potential bad clients is severalfold. If they try to bargain with me about my price or complain about it, I won’t work with them. I know they will spend the entire time watching the project like a hawk to find any mistakes to complain about, and also to justify not paying me my price. Instead of trusting me to do the job they hired me for, they’ll create mistrust between us and it will end with one if not all of us unsatisfied by the exchange.

I also will recommend potential bad clients to other people. Not because I want my competition to suffer, but because my competition may be a better fit and my potential bad client, good be a great client for them. There’s no harm in recommending that people contact your competition if you know they aren’t a good fit for you.

I’m also very clear on what they can expect from me and why they can expect it. I won’t change terms on them, but I also expect them to honor their end and of course I will use a contract to aid in that. In general, I discourage negotiation once we’ve entered into the price phase, because it brings with it haggling over price and I want the person to commit at that point to what we’ve agreed on and the amount for it.

If you do get a bad client, be courteous, but also don’t put up with a lengthy bad relationship. If there are problems, be transparent and find someone better suited for that client. You’ll both appreciate and spare yourselves a lot emotional angst and unhappiness.

Businesses that offer the same services or products aren’t necessarily the same, but what makes each business different is the capacity to stand out and get people talking. If you want people to talk, then you have to look at not just what you offer, but how you offer it. For example, social media consultants are now a dime a dozen. I see more pop up each day or see agencies that suddenly offer social media services along with everything else they do. So how do I make myself distinguishable? Do what they aren’t doing, but also do what I do with personality, because I want people to remember me.

The same is true of your business. When you go out and represent it, what are you doing to bring your personality to bear? How is what you offer different from what the competition offers.

And don’t forget…showing up is half the battle. If you aren’t showing up, someone else will, and if you want to get in front of people you need to show up in some form or manner that makes people think about you and what you can do. People who don’t show up are forgettable.

Perhaps most important however is this: Once you have new business, take of your clients. Make it a point to make them want to return to you. Show them what makes you stand out not only in your marketing, but in your ability to provide service and product. Their word of mouth will make you stand out even more than almost anything else you can do.

The local rep did point out that they probably wouldn’t have had a car for her if so many other people hadn’t also not shown up to get their reservation. But he was also very polite about the situation and didn’t shoot her down from the start. All the same , she and I agreed that the attitude of the first customer rep at the 1800 line for Avis had soured us on Avis as a car rental place. And to me it illustrated a fundamental reality of customer service: You only need to have one rotten experience to overshadow all the positive experiences you’ve had with a company, and it takes a lot more effort to undo the harm of the negative customer experience.

At the root of customer service is attitude. The attitude you convey to your clients is what tells them whether you value them or think you could do without them. The truth however is that you can’t do without them, so a bad attitude hurts you far more than it does them. Customers who have bad experiences are more likely tell people about those experiences because they want to tell their friends to avoid the businesses that don’t provide superb customer service.

Customer service isn’t just about rectifying mistakes (though its usually thought of in that capacity). Customer service begins from the moment of first contact and occurs in every situation, in every context. If you are interacting with a customer, you are performing customer service. As such customer service is a full time job and no matter what job title you have, customer service is always something you’ll provide, whenever you come into contact with someone else.

What do you think? What’s your attitude about customer service?