Written by Jodi Beuder:

In honour of National Small Busi­ness Week, we'd like to offer some tips for all of you hard-working small busi­ness own­ers out there. Small busi­nesses face many chal­lenges when com­pet­ing against larger com­pa­nies, but one huge advan­tage small busi­nesses have is their abil­ity to offer per­sonal, thor­ough cus­tomer ser­vice. Give your small busi­ness an edge by fol­low­ing the below tips so that you can offer even bet­ter cus­tomer ser­vice to all of your loyal cus­tomers and clients.

When your cus­tomers call you, they should reach a live person

As a smaller busi­ness, giv­ing your cus­tomers the abil­ity to reach a live per­son when they dial your num­ber is some­thing that large com­pa­nies just can't match. Instead of nav­i­gat­ing through an inter­ac­tive voice response sys­tem or through numer­ous call cen­ter employ­ees, your cus­tomers will love the fact that you’ll be there to answer the phone and give them imme­di­ate answers. When you’re out of the office, use a call for­ward­ing sys­tem so that their calls will still reach you. You can also hire an answer­ing ser­vice, or have staff avail­able to take calls. The key is to have a live per­son avail­able when peo­ple call dur­ing busi­ness hours.

Keep your promises

Peo­ple enjoy work­ing with small busi­nesses because it feels more per­sonal and trust­wor­thy. A car­di­nal rule of small busi­nesses is to keep your promises. Often, when peo­ple shop or do busi­ness with large com­pa­nies, promises become more com­pli­cated; requests get shuf­fled around the cor­po­rate hier­ar­chy, and pretty soon, that “promise” becomes some­thing that may not align with com­pany pol­icy. How­ever, as a small busi­ness, your word is your per­sonal guar­an­tee to your cus­tomers. If you say you’ll make a deliv­ery on a cer­tain day, let a dis­count pro­mo­tion last longer, or promise to meet a dead­line – make sure you do it.

Deal with cus­tomer com­plaints – right away

If some­thing goes wrong dur­ing a pur­chase or trans­ac­tion, cus­tomers want reas­sur­ance that they can call you, and get their prob­lem resolved quickly. Cus­tomers will often choose small busi­nesses over larger com­pa­nies because they per­ceive they’ll be treated bet­ter and that their issues will get resolved faster. Don’t let your cus­tomers feel they were mis­led to think this: address their con­cerns imme­di­ately. In addi­tion to fix­ing the prob­lem, offer them some sort of reward for their incon­ve­nience – a dis­count off of their next ser­vice or a free prod­uct, for exam­ple. When some­thing goes wrong, a small busi­ness has the agility to fix it faster, and you don’t have the cor­po­rate red tape to nav­i­gate if you want to offer your cus­tomers a dis­count for hav­ing to deal with the problem.

Train your staff to treat each cus­tomer with the spe­cial small busi­ness touch

As a small busi­ness, you can only do so much. Most likely, you’ll have employ­ees help­ing out and work­ing with cus­tomers. Make sure you retain your small busi­ness edge by train­ing your staff to treat cus­tomers well. Coach your staff to offer per­son­al­ized ser­vice, listen carefully to customer’s requests and com­plaints, and to go the extra mile when help­ing cus­tomers. How you treat your cus­tomers reflects your brand and busi­ness, so make sure they under­stand the impor­tance of great cus­tomer service.

Make mean­ing­ful connections

In a world where large com­pa­nies dom­i­nate, and where per­sonal con­nec­tions are lost in online inter­ac­tions, the abil­ity to make mean­ing­ful, per­sonal con­nec­tions with your cus­tomers will really stand out. Offer­ing a con­nec­tion and rela­tion­ship to your cus­tomers is some­thing that large com­pa­nies just can’t match, so make sure you take advan­tage of this edge. Give cus­tomers a per­sonal phone call to check in with them about their recent pur­chase. Send them a post­card on their birth­day with a hand­writ­ten note. Get to know them by first name, and know what their pref­er­ences are. Lis­ten – really lis­ten – when they talk to you. Let them know, on a fre­quent basis, how much you appre­ci­ate their business.

Tak­ing these extra, per­sonal steps will go a long way in build­ing your rep­u­ta­tion as a small-business. It doesn't mat­ter how hyper-connected peo­ple become – they still appre­ci­ate good, old-fashioned customer service, and as a small busi­ness, you have the abil­ity to give cus­tomers the per­sonal atten­tion that they deserve.