Your customers are the most important component of your business. If you don’t agree, study Lady Gaga and the way she relates to her fans and customers who for her, are the most important aspects of her business. Everything she does is to enhance the enjoyment experience of her listening audience, her customers. Once you understand that you need to treat your customers in like fashion, you need to start relating to them as individuals and not as numbers.

Lady GaGa - The Monster Ball - Oracle Arena 3/22/2011
Creative Commons License photo credit: nikotransmission

Here are nineteen ways to definitely improve your relationship with your customers and fans:

1. Tell them why they are important to your business
2. Pay attention to them
3. Take them as they come
4. Be impartial
5. Tell them know how much you care
6. Listen to learn from them and not to problem solve
7. Do little things for them
8. Pay them back with a smile
9. Always thank them for what they do for you
10. Be there when they need you
11. Be truthful
12. Help them be independent
13. Show then you believe in them
14. Do for them as you would they do for you
15. Help them when they stumble
16. Allow them space to be themselves
17. Show them you respect them
18. Always encourage them
19. Prop them up when they stumble and fall

You will notice that these work also for your employees, for your vendors and for that matter for your personal friends.