These days, it seems that everyone is edgy and hungry for business. That happens during lean times. Screw up — ignore a phone call, cut a corner, take a long-standing customer for granted — and you’re history. Gone. There’s another business just dying to step in and take your customer away.

That’s why quality customer service, always important, is now absolutely crucial. Fort-unately, good customer service is easy and inexpensive. Great customer service is just as easy and no more expensive.

What to do: Focus on your customers, not just your products and your bottom line. Set your customer-service bar high. Think about what customers need … before even they think about it. And be there for them. Do this, and they’ll stick with you through the tough times, and keep on singing your praises long after our stumbling economy regains its footing.

Here’s a benchmark company. If I were giving out customer service awards, I’d give one to Badger Wholesale in Green Bay. Here’s why:

I was chatting with Dean Tenor last spring, when his phone rang. Dean is the owner of Dairy Deans, a small ham ‘n egger eatery overlooking Lake Michigan in Algoma. Dairy Deans is the kind of place where the coffee is strong, the portions are big, the atmosphere is easy and the locals gather every morning to chow down and chat. It’s a small business, but as long as Dean closely watches his top and bottom line, it provides a good living for his family.

So, as I said, while we were talking, Dean’s phone rang. He glanced at the number, frowned and said, “I’d better take this,” as he stepped out of the conversation.

He returned five minutes later, snapping his phone shut and grinning. “Boy, that call just saved me a few bucks,” he announced. As it turned out, the call was from a warehouseman at Badger Wholesale, a food vendor wholesale distributor.

“This guy — I never did catch his name — said he was going over my weekly order,” Dean explained, “and he wanted to confirm that I wanted 150 pounds of tomatoes.” Dean explained that the warehouseman told him that 150 pounds of tomatoes just didn’t sound right to him, so he took the initiative and called.

It was after hours and Dean was relaxing over dinner and cocktails with some friends at a local tavern. He wasn’t near his business or his books, so he had no idea about the order. “So we went over the entire order item by item,” he told us.
“Finally, he came again to that 150 pounds of tomatoes,” Dean said, “and I realized that it was supposed to be ‘potatoes,’ not ‘tomatoes.’ Big difference. I’d have had a special on salsa for weeks! Do you believe it? This guy just noticed, based on my past orders, that 150 pounds of tomatoes didn’t sound right, so he took the initiative to call me up to double check. That’s customer service.”

I had to find out more, so I followed up with Badger Wholesale. Scott Van Den Heuvel, the store manager, almost shrugged off the incident. “With our business,” he told me, “customer service is No. 1. We’re not the biggest guys on the block, so we just have to be the best.”

No argument from me, Dairy Dean or any of Badger Wholesale’s other customers I talked with. Good job. With that kind of go-the-extra-mile-and-then-some attitude, Badger Wholesale is one of those businesses it’s downright fun to write about.
Lesson to be learned? Quality customer service — just do it.

By John Ingrisano

John Ingrisano is a small business owner and the author of The Back to Basics Book of Selling: A Guide to A Successful Sales Career. Contact John at john@ TheFreestyleEntrepreneur.com.