Many small business owners think that customer service is a department that only large corporations have. They tend to think of their own customer service as merely replying politely to emails that might come in, or being reasonably civil on the telephone.

However, in reality, providing a good, or excellent level of customer service to customers, both existing and potential, is essential to the long-term growth of any business. You may also be surprised to learn that having a clear customer service policy or method of dealing effectively with customer queries can add great value to your offering, and help to boost its popularity and appeal to potential new customers as well.

To begin with, most small businesses will have only a few clients, and enough time to spend on each, creating personal relationships, and writing each email as though they were writing a letter to a friend or family member. They will know each of their customers or clients individually, and be able to remember past queries or questions, specific issues, and any difficulties with which they have had to help them in the past.

However, while this personal touch is great, hopefully your business will grow and flourish, and as it does so a number of things will happen that will start to cause you to draw the reins in slightly as far as providing this personal customer service is concerned.

To begin with, as the number of customers increases, you will find it increasingly difficult to remember each one's personal needs, or past queries. You may also find your inbox filling up with queries, and questions, and trying to keep a track of these can quickly become a daunting task.

Very quickly two things happen: firstly you find that you might well be spending hours every day simply answering questions, queries and emails, and secondly, your customers may feel that you are not able to provide a helpful enough solution. If a customer has to wait a day or two for a response or the response you provide doesn't seem to bear in mind an earlier issue that was raised, or you provide incorrect or contradictory information, then customers will simply go elsewhere.

Customer service can make or break a business, and regardless of your size, if you do not provide an adequate level of service, then you will very quickly find that you have all the time in the world to answer emails because business is so slow. The only problem being that you'll have almost no emails to answer!

The solution is to make sure that you do not rely on the personal touch and the ability to remember all previous queries and issues for every customer you have ever had. Instead, get organized and create a system that allows you to keep a record of each customer, their past queries and orders and all communications. Set up a system which will allow customers to correspond with you in such a way that you can provide a more robust system of customer service and support, without increasing your workload each day.

There are a number of possible solutions and systems available for providing a good level of support to your customers, and ultimately which you choose will depend upon the level to which you feel your business is likely to expand, and how comfortable you are with managing each solution.

For example, a popular method is to use a ticket-based system. Customers can open a ticket, which is a little like a private discussion thread between you and the customer. Their question is posted, and you are able, at a glance, to identify how many tickets are open, what the status is of each ticket, how long people are waiting, and the priorities for each, and all previous communications relating to the issue.

In this way, if there is a general issue that seems to apply to a number of customers, you can address that issue and reply to all of those customers in one go. You can also address urgent needs first, and those who have been waiting longest. You will be able to identify previous issues or questions, and your solutions, so that you can follow the conversation properly, even if it has been carried out over several weeks.

This is only one possible customer services solution of many, but it is very simple to install, can fit in easily with your existing website, and be associated with your email system. You are now able to address each issue properly, and close tickets once the matter has been resolved. Over time, you may even find that your responses lead to you being able to assemble and publish a frequently asked questions database for customers to scan, which could dramatically reduce the number of queries.