1) Make Becoming a Customer Difficult

The quickest way to lose a customer is making them unhappy right from the get-go. If a new cafe owner wanted to set up an account with a coffee roaster, and the roaster put them on hold, asked for location and order details, put the cafe owner on hold again, then asked for that information a second time ("sorry, couldn't find a pen before!") - the coffee served at that cafe probably won't be coming from that roaster.

First contact with a new customer should be as streamlined and easy as possible. If becoming a customer isn't easy or pleasant, why should someone think being a customer will be?

2) Ruin Your Brand With Social Media

Businesses now operate in a brave new world of social media, where watching what you say or do is more important than ever.

That's what Evergreen Entertainment, a small chain of movie theaters in the Midwest, learned. A customer had a bad experience, and wrote a snide, condescending letter of complaint to the owners. She received a harsh response from the company's vice president, laden with expletives and personal attacks. By the time he could calm down and apologize, his screed was already posted to her Facebook page. A Facebook group for boycotting the theater soon followed - and topped five thousand members. No matter how provocative a customer complaint might be, it's never appropriate to take the bait.

While most business owners know better than to fly off the handle, it's always important to remember that social media makes word of mouth more powerful than ever - and makes each customer interaction that much more important.

3) Make Customers Wait

We've all heard horror stories about rude or incompetent employees and automated rabbit-holes. But even the best staff can leave a customer wanting - if they leave them waiting.

This spring, Apple's British wing fell from first to thirteenth place in customer satisfaction, according to a poll by the Consumer's Association. Many consumers need some help with Apple's products - hence the "genius bar" of experts in every store. But according to the survey, an impersonal appointment system and long wait times to see those geniuses frustrate many Brits (and no doubt Americans).

Automation or lowering the number of employees might seem like a good cost-cutting method, but bad, slow, frustrating and/or impersonal service can end up costing you customers.

4) Make It Hard To Leave

Sometimes it just isn't meant to be, and a customer decides to go elsewhere. When that happens, it's important to not only keep your cool (see #2), but also make the experience as easy as possible.

When Forbes contributor Jonathan Salem Baskin decided to stop using SiriusXM radio, the process frustrated him so much he wrote an article about it. "The website provided no way to cancel my account," he writes. "There were many ways to upgrade (and pay SiriusXM more money for the privilege), but cancellation required a phone call during business hours." That turned out to be the first of a series of hoops he had to jump through.

If SiriusXM had let Baskin go with a click - well, there wouldn't be a Forbes article about bad customer service at SiriusXM.

Good customer service is one of the best ways to protect your brand, but, more importantly, it's the best way to keep customers. Because no business can last without keeping customers happy.

House calls have gone the way of the horse and buggy. Sure, gas prices are up, and doctors are usually tethered to their offices. But consumers are also taking to their mobile phones, where for around forty bucks a pop they can have a 15-minute face-to-face with a doctor from the comfort of their homes. Apps like HealthTap and  Doctor on Demand are popping up to fill the distinctly modern call for instant, web-based, round-the-clock service.   

Don't expect your local family practice to go under any time soon, though. Medical advice apps and websites can't possibly take the place of much older, more basic technologies-tongue depressors and reflex hammers, throat swabs and stethoscopes...you still can't pee on your phone to find out if you're pregnant, or get diagnosed with a urinary tract infection.

But what about your business? Are you providing your customers with the contemporary service experiences they've come to expect? Have you asked them lately what they want from you? As companies expand their web presences, they also showcase a more personal side to business transactions. Customers want to see the face behind the logo-they just want to see it on their iPhone screens. Here are 4 ways to give them the personalized-yet-digital service they crave.

Affability.  

In 2006, American Express told its customer service call center employees to tear up their scripts and stop putting time limits on phone calls. Since then, the number of AmEx customers who say they would recommend the brand to a friend has doubled (and those customers spend more, and are less likely to leave).

True, your customers may want to conduct business with you without ever seeing your face. But they still want a real person to be at the other end of that DSL or phone line, not an automaton reading a script. Whether in-store salespeople or administrators of your Facebook account, those employees who deal directly with customers should be friendly, helpful, and easy to talk to. Unfortunately, sometimes tech support people or social media mavens are chosen for the job because of their technical wizardry, but lack the interpersonal skills needed to provide a really great customer experience.

Speedy responses.  

"I'll get back to you within 24 hours" doesn't really cut it anymore. If you can't answer a customer's inquiry promptly, they'll appreciate getting an email telling them when to expect your response, or asking them when they'd like to hear back. If possible, provide live web chat support. It'll cost you $14 - $100 per operator per month for the software, plus whatever you're paying your employee to use it.   

Transparency and generosity.  

Blame it on Amazon. The online retail giant has set the bar especially high with services like a money-back-no-matter-what guarantee, ease of returning and exchanging products, and not charging hidden fees for shipping, handling, or anything else.

The web-based footwear and clothing store Zappos, which is now a division of Amazon, takes generosity even further, like when they overnighted shoes to a best man for a Vegas wedding when UPS didn't get his package to him on time. And re-routed his original package back to Zappos so that he wouldn't have to return it. Oh, and upgraded his account so that all of his future orders would have free overnight shipping. Plus, they gave him the shoes gratis. In fact, excuse me while I go buy something from Zappos right now.

No matter what product or service you sell, you have opportunities to be generous with your customers: be generous with your time and spend a few extra minutes with them; be generous with your policies and make returning items or changing or cancelling services easy as pie; be generous with your resources and give free samples of your product or, if your product is you, free samples of your expertise.

And because some things never change, the customer is always right--especially on social media.  

Internet anonymity has given every crank and complainer an ideal forum for their vitriol, one in which every affront (both real and imagined) can be sniped about without fear of consequences. For those of us who wouldn't say "boo" if a waiter brought us an ice-cold burger and a room-temp Coke, it can be a less intimidating place to voice an opinion.

But there are plenty of people out there who are complaining just to complain, or settling an old score that has nothing to do with how quickly you rotated their tires, or are just plain nuts. Unfortunately, since everyone is given an equal voice on Yelp regardless of motive or sanity, you may run across angry customers who are smearing your good name online, and as far as reputation management goes, ignoring the crackpots really isn't an option.

So here's your four-step quickie guide to best practices in dealing with customer complaints and negative reviews online, even baseless ones:

1.) Acknowledge the problem and listen to the customer.

2.) Apologize...sincerely. Even if you don't think you're in the wrong-even if you know you're not-sometimes an apology is all it takes to soothe ruffled feathers. And feathers notwithstanding, apologizing to an upset customer is just the right thing to do.

3.) If possible, rectify the situation the way the customer wants it rectified.

4.) Thank them for their feedback...again, sincerely. Is it possible that there are improvements to be made based on the customer's grievance? Can the complaint be used as a springboard to train an employee, upgrade a product, perfect a recipe, amend a policy that seems unfair to the client, or generally just enhance the customer's experience?

And while there is no definitive list of worst practices for dealing with complaints, some businesses seem to have nailed them all. When a number of Yelp reviewers found the quality of food and service lacking at Amy's Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro, owner Amy and her husband Samy responded by taking to Facebook and Reddit to call their complaining customers "oppressors," "punks," "weaker than my wife," and a variety of less savory terms we can't print here.

The information superhighway is riddled with potential pitfalls, both personal and professional. But if you drive cautiously and obey the road signs, you can usually avoid ending up with a busted axle, even if you pop a tire once in a while. Just try not to rubberneck too much when the Amys and Samys of the world pour gasoline on their cars and strike a match.