Delivering great customer service is the driver of getting repeat customers and obtaining good referrals. Good referrals are ten times easier to convert and are more profitable than trying to find a new customer who knows little about your business' value proposition.

Teach, inspire, communicate, train, educate, review and reinforce repeatedly and consistently the importance of great customer service with your employees.

Encourage customer service employees to think like customers.

Help them expand their awareness of the customer experience: Ask them to visit another store, maybe a competitor. Be a customer. "What do you experience and see?"

The message: "When you are at work, everyone who walks in the door, including your fellow customer service employees are your customers."

Thoroughly explain and model the customer mind-set to get across to employees the basic concept of the employer-employee relationship.

Explain: "Working here is a transactional series of events, just like a customer relationship. This is the basis of your responsibilities at work to everyone: your co-workers, your boss, and of course, your actual customers."

Get customer service employees committed to, and in a constant mind-set, to care about and deliver great customer service.

Communicate, explain, and review the message: "Delivering great customer service is a skill that makes a customer service employee more valuable in any role in any company."

Communicate, give feedback about and reward the behaviors that drive home the message that good customer service has a huge impact on their ability to enjoy work and ultimately save everyone a lot of time and energy.

Not only that, people's job security depends on it - not a threat, is a fact. Because without customers we don't have a business.

The negative is that poor customer service results in a downward spiral that puts the business at risk, their jobs at risk and their families' future at risk. It also makes everyone's working experience downright unpleasant.

Finally, communicate, review, remind, reward customer service employees to buy into the fact giving great customer service will result in a long-term, deep satisfaction in their jobs and life in general.

Have them imagine themselves walking down the street and bumping into a customer that had a great experience with them. See the friendly, warm smile.

As Lance Armstrong says, "It's not about the bike."

So too, in business, "It's not about the sale, it's about the customer's experience."

Be awesome, or... be forgotten.