In order to understand customer service, you have to understand your "customer" and your "service". Sounds like common sense right? You may be surprised. Too many businesses and affiliates that they are in the business of "selling stuff" rather than a customer centric business. I am here to tell you it is the opposite, customer service is what leads to the selling.

First things first though.

Who is your Customer?

First of all, you need to be able to create a customer before you can learn how to treat one. This is why I always suggest people go into niches that they are passionate about because this typically means that you are the customer within that niche.

If I love playing basketball and I then choose that as my niche on the Internet, then I have an upper advantage because I am a customer myself (therefore understanding customers).

If I went into the knitting niche, I would have to do a lot more research and communicate with many people within this niche to truly understand the subtle "customer" issues that people have.

The process of turning a visitor into a customer requires your to first understand that customer. Likely, customer service will also be required. Customer service begins from the moments an interaction between a customer and you takes place (or between your website and a customer). A customer relationship can either begin prior to someone actually becoming a paying customer, or after they have already made a purchase.

If you offer quality customer service, it will teach you a lot about your business and....YOUR CUSTOMER. The better you understand your customer, the greater your business will become.

What is your SERVICE?

OK, this may seem like a crazy concept to you, the fact that you don't understand your business. However, it happens much more than you think. Can you think of a situation where you called or emailed a company and thought, "they don't even know what the hell they are offering!". I can.

This is almost always the result of outsourcing customer support. Handing off your customer service to people that don't fully comprehend your business can delimit customer service quality. It is a task that needs to be addressed with a lot of attention and you need the right people in the right places if you plan on handing off the MOST CRITICAL aspect of your company.

If you don't actually own a product/service, you can also totally miss the mark. This can also be a result of promoting something that you have no product knowledge of or that may be irrelevant to what you say it is. Because of this I do recommend you try to own products that you promote, and if you don't, you better be prepared to do a lot of research about the product. Tough to fake product knowledge with customers and if you get it wrong, you may lose a potential "lifetime" customer.